Poo-Gate

I just had my second telephone conversation in a week about my son’s toilet habits, whilst at work and in front of the rest of the office. Ah the joys of being a working mum!

Embarrassment aside it was quite an eye opener since this call was from a speech therapist who has apparently been working with him for the last few weeks without my knowledge. Yes, I knew it was on the cards, but I was totally oblivious to the fact it was already happening.

I feel like I’m starting to lose my marbles here, did I miss a letter in the post? Did someone tell me about it and I forgot? Or is someone not telling me what’s going on? Is it me? Is it them? Is it because I work so I don’t pick him up from the nursery very often that I’ve fallen out of the loop?

 I just can’t keep up right now and I’m feeling totally lost!

There are two specialist teams working with him now, the specialist speech therapists and the early years inclusion, and taking advice from both of them the nursery are also giving him special treatment.

People are bending over backwards to help him and I don’t want to sound ungrateful or uncaring, but I’m really not sure why? It all seems so over the top. He was slow to talk and he’s been a shy little thing in the past, but I’m not really sure why that warrants this level of support?

He’s possibly an introvert like his parents, I’m not certain, but I don’t think there’s anything actually wrong with him. All this is happening because of conclusions the speech therapist jumped to months ago, but she only met him twice, has barely spoken to us since, and is oblivious to the fact that he’s a totally different boy now.

So I don’t know whether the speech therapy team, the nursery et al have got the wrong idea about him and are going overboard to do the right thing and help, or is it me who’s in denial and refusing to see that there’s something more serious going on with my son… Pregnancy hormones are flying here and I’ve got my knickers in a twist again!

It’s lovely that people are so willing to help him integrate into nursery and I can’t tell you how pleased I am about that. But they obviously seem to think something is really wrong with him and no one is telling me what that is. And now people keep turning up to work with him without introducing themselves to me first or telling me what or why… and that’s both scaring me and pissing me off.

Someone else’s three year old has a meltdown and it’s perfectly normal, mine does and teams of support workers get drafted in to come up with strategies to help him out. What on earth? Is he the Anti-Christ or something? I know we used to call him Guantanamo Baby when he was tiny, but now he seems to have half of Sheffield jumping to his every whim.

Surely he’s not the only shy kid that ever existed? The only kid who was nervous starting nursery? The only kid who won’t talk to nursery teachers the same way he does at home?

He’s certainly not the only newly potty trained boy who poo’ed his pants at nursery. But whereas with other kids it’s shrugged off, I get two separate phone calls about the same incident in one week to devise a plan to help him out.

But at least they’re talking to me now!

Apparently the other week the speech therapist wanted to test his level of understanding so she asked him whether he wanted an apple or a banana, when he simply answered “yes” she took it his understanding wasn’t very good. To help him out she went away and laminated up some pictures of apples and bananas so he could point to which he wanted at snack time. The next week she asked the nursery teacher how he was getting on with his new prompt cards and was told he’d never used them. The next time the nursery teacher had asked him to choose, he’d simply told her. Because he is perfectly capable of that.

The speech therapist seems to seriously underestimate him, he understands things just fine. He just suffers from that common three year old ailment of selective deafness.

I don’t know what it is about speech therapists and laminators, but they seem to love them. After “poo-gate” she’s now gone off to laminate pictures of Thomas the Tank Engine to put up in the nursery toilets to make them more appealing to him…

See, there I go again sounding all ungrateful. In all fairness this latest speech therapist sounds really nice, and it was good to finally have a chat to someone about him. Much of what she’s doing with him is really great, she’s been helping him to mix with the other kids and that being one of my big fears, I think that’s wonderful.

In general I’d say the way she’s helping him sounds wonderful. She might underestimate him now but surely once she spends more time with him, once he’s more comfortable around her, then that won’t be an issue anymore. Surely? And obviously I gave her a few insights into the little boy I know, so the more she talks to me too the better.

Anyway I’m now drafting up an email to the lead speech therapist to hopefully clear things up.  She has her speech therapist reporting back, and the early years inclusion team have done their assessment, I think the only “assessment” missing here is mine. (Yes, I need my voice to be heard on this!) Her notes on him are so woefully out of date it’s only right I bring her up to speed.

She wrote down that he hated strangers, refused to make eye contact with them and seemed traumatised by new situations – and it’s that description of him that set this ball rolling. But that same little boy is now unfazed by strangers and I can take him anywhere. Take this weekend for example, we had an impromptu visit from rather loud family members he’d never met before. Taters was quiet for all of two minutes before becoming the centre of attention and loving every minute of it, he was a proper little show off. Even my two nieces, (who are supposedly totally “normal”) wouldn’t have come round in that short space of time.

 

Also that little boy who couldn’t put two words together now speaks in full sentences and never stops talking. And he doesn’t just repeat what we say (though he does that a lot). His running commentary of everything he does, and we do, is full of new sentences, words he’s just learned, and his tried and tested favourite phrases. He’s also beginning to answer our questions now, something he couldn’t really do before.

I appreciate this might be behind other kids his age, I don’t know, but it’s a far cry from the kid she thinks he is and I really need her to understand that.

I don’t want to sound defensive, I hope I’m not being overly defensive? It is hard when people seem to be saying there’s something wrong with your precious child, of course it is. That’s why I’m struggling to be rational about this. But I don’t think it’s anywhere near as extreme as they seem to think it is. I think he does need some help settling in at nursery, and in bringing him up to speed with the other kids, a little help to bring him out of his shell. But I’m sure between the nursery and perhaps one other person, they can probably do this perfectly well.

I can’t tell you how much this is stressing me out! Hence another long winded post of me trying to untangle my head and get my thoughts straight on this whole thing.

Sorry. Back to the day job now…