Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Uncategorized”
It’s not even 10am and I’ve already made five phone calls to five different medical departments. The first was to chase up Little Bear’s speech and language report following a routine assessment at the end of May. Nobody answered so I’ve left a message and put a note in my diary to ring again in a couple of days if …
I can’t claim credit for this idea as my mum made it but it’s proved such a hit in our house that I wanted to share it with you. The idea’s so simple: six baby birds sit in their nests while mummy bird feeds them worms. We’ve had it about two months now and Little Bear plays with …
Over the last few weeks we’ve had a LOT of appointments – about 15 in total for both Bears. Paediatrician, speech and language, audiology, immunology, occupational therapy, orthotics, pre-school, plus three school appointments…you name it, we’ve had it. Armed with my notebook (a journalist’s best friend), I made pages of notes at the appointments for each Bear detailing the next …
It’s been brilliant to have so much sunshine this summer but it can be hard to keep the little ones cool. Our south facing garden is a sun trap with no natural shade for most of the day. We’ve erected a tent to give the Bears a cooler space and created a waterslide with the help of a slide, a …
Overall I’d say I’m a positive person. When things go wrong, I might wallow for a while but I’ll generally snap out of a low mood fairly quickly. The last six years have tested this positivity to its limits. Big Bear’s respiratory, hypermobility and developmental difficulties followed by Little Bear’s in-the-womb dramas (doctors thought he had a hole in the …
I’m not looking to create an Olympic swimmer, I just want my child to be able to swim safely by himself. However, finding a suitable swimming lessons for children with additional needs where we live is a major problem. Last September, after years of looking and lots of tears, we finally found the right teacher. Jean was amazing. She ran classes …
When we received the global developmental delay and hypermobility diagnoses for our boys it set us off on a path of never-ending therapy. Their diagnoses were two-and-a-half years apart but each time we were hit with a deluge of ‘homework’ which is updated on a regular basis. The physio gave us exercises for improving mobility and strengthening muscles to help …
My little sensory-seekers love interactive stories. When Big Bear was two years old my mum came over with the We’re Going On A Bear Hunt book and a box she’d filled with sensory props. There were green pom poms to make the ‘swishy swishy’ sound of the grass, blue satin material and a water spray for the ‘splash splash’ of the river, …
Big Bear has always received homework from school with varying degrees of success. In reception, it was daily reading and weekly maths homework. Maths was a difficult one because not only did Big Bear not understand a lot of it (spherical and cylinder shapes was one of the many disasters), because it was only once a week, the tasks were …
Anyone who follows this blog regularly or knows me personally will know that we have a problem with sleep in this house. Big Bear is big sensory seeker and a very restless sleeper. He often wakes in the night to go to the toilet and generally likes to start his day between 4.45am and 5.15am. This is not when J …