Wednesday 18 April 2012

Nursery and eating battles

Another busy couple of days, Charlie had his first session at nursery yesterday. G went with him but Charlie was soon engrossed in activities. He is far from shy and soon had all the staff going soft about him. He managed to loose one sock and a pair of slippers....

Whilst Charlie has appeared to be more happy go lucky about all of the changes in his life, we've started to see some indirect signs this last few days. He's wet himself a few times, and getting him to eat meals is becoming a bit of a battle. At first we were getting frustrated and perhaps not helping the situation by almost making him suffer with us constantly whinging at him and cutting out the nice bits like dessert. However we both reflected last night, and realised that this could be a sign of his stress at all the changes in his life, perhaps impacted by his older brother starting school and him starting his new nursery. We always new that regression was probable with looked after children when moved, and there's every chance that the wetting could either be a bit of stress, or a call for an opportunity to be taken off on his own, cleaned and changed, and that the food battle could be a call for us to feed him. Looked after children are often known to need to revisit more baby stages with their new carers, such as being fed. In Joe this has been apparent in his desire to always have us dress and undress him, wash him and help him with the toilet - all things he is capable of doing himself, but we decided to indulge that. With Charlie we assumed none of that was happening, but maybe this is it. So tonight when he stopped eating, we fed him.

Of course, it could be something completely different and everyone will have a different theory. It's hard because he's not at an age where he will communicate his feelings, or even understand them himself, so it's all guess work. Sometimes you don't know if you're reading 'adoption theories' into acts that are in fact, just normal toddler acts. But it's all part of us learning to read the boys, learning to be parents, picking up on the queues and trying different tactics. G thought he had got somewhere this morning when after a slow breakfast, G asked him how he was feeling to which he replied "I feel sad" all excited about the fact that he may be about to open up, G asked why he was feeling sad to which he replied "Because I wanted to watch CBeebies....."  We are certainly finding that a diversion tactic with Charlie works well, if we can see a difficult moment coming, we can change his mind's direction by cracking a joke, and it saves all of us from getting wound up, and makes for a much calmer house.

I didn't have to leave home until 9am this morning, which gave me a chance to take Joe to school. He was fine until we got there when he became very clingy. I think it's probably a good sign that they do get clingy to us, it's good that it's us they are looking to for comfort. I think he's enjoying school though, he says the right things, and we already get the standard response to the question 'What did you do at school today' - "Can't remember...."

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