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Okay.

So.

Don’t know where to start really…
No.1 has his SATS next week – school has decided to go ahead with them (and that’s a WHOLE other post), so it has been revision, revision, revision for weeks. Practice papers, homework and stress stress stress. NOT good for my boy, he’s been deteriorating rapidly since the oh-so-perfect easter holidays, and last night was final bloody straw. Sobbing in my arms at 11 at night, desperate for sleep, hurting from head to foot, and for the first time ever he wailed

“it’s not FAIR! Why ME? I just want to be normal, and for it all to just GO AWAY.”

Broke my heart, and felt like wailing and sobbing alongside him.

Utterly impotent to help beyond sympathy. Stress comes out physically in the form of pain with him, of course, and he puts himself under so much pressure. He didn’t get into the high school he wanted, we were refused again on appeal (appeals were last week – what a bloody stress that was, didn’t even have the energy to tell you all about it), and he took it a bit personally, so he’s desperate to do well in his SATS to ‘show’ people. Pre-illnes he was a predicted 5A across the board (highest he could get, national average is 4C I think). When he came back to school he was re-targeted as low 4′s, and having missed nearly a whole academic year and had no friggin help whatsoever from the LEA he has climbed back up to an expected 5C, possibly higher. And no matter how much we tell him how proud we are of him and how we couldn’t care two bat shits abot the SATS, he hears so much at school about results and the impact of them that he’s talked himself into the fact that if he doesn’t get at least 5B’s he’s failed himself. FFS. Wanted to rip his bloody teachers head from his shoulders last night. If I’d had his mobile number I would have rung him and had him listen to what the school has done. No.1′s not the only one – the whole class is looking white and drawn. Is such a crapfest, and I wish No.1 would choose not to go in and do the bloody things.
Have kept him home today, and am lavishing him with cuddles and chat.

Alongside that going on in the house, we are restructuring C’s entire bloody company. You know how these things snowball – disaffection with our web host/designers has gone from having a contractor optimise the site, to having him build a new one, to me building a new wedding blog (now done), a new pregnancy site (finished next week), researching all sorts of stuff we’ve been paying for over the last 7 years and finding that actually we’ve been taken for mugs and spent  THOUSANDS of pounds needlessly. Makes me so angry.
Have fired accountants too, who similarly overcharged, and at the same time got so much stuff wrong, and again cost us even more.
It’s so easy just to keep doing what you always have, believing it works without checking. The design company were cutting edge 10 years ago – but haven’t changed since, and of course the internet has changed a lot in that time. On the up side, the new site is going to be everything C has ever wanted, at a fraction of the price. The downside is the sheer bloody volume of work involved.

Oh, and LS is snowballing faster than K and I can’t keep up with it. She’s got the builders in and is knee-deep in house renovation and moving out for a while, I’ve got all this stuff for C, and LS is snapping and snarling at the tight leash cos it just wants to take off and run.

But I did manage to have a period last week (timed to coincide with schools appeal and Big Meeting with No.1′s teacher – perfect, eh?) and not only did I not take any anti-bleed drugs, but i managed to use tampax instead of industrial strength wadding. So I’m thinking the thyroid drugs are finally having an effect.

There’s probably a gazillion other things, but that’s enough for now!

So we dressed our best (easy for recently-personal-shopped-sharp-Mr-C, oh sooo tricky for she-who-grew-out-of-her-work-suits-two-babies-ago), and clutching our paperwork off we trotted.
Twasn’t terribly positive…

They got very caught up on NO.1’s CFS, despite us NOT appealing on medical grounds. We got told off for no supporting medical evidence from a doctor (despite being told AGAIN we were not appealing on medical grounds). But did get told that the Chair was a retired Psychiatric nurse and he had grave  concerns over the suitability of shipping a child in No.1′s situation 9 miles away from his support base (WHAT ABOUT IGNORING THE MEDICAL GROUNDS?????). They didn’t seem to comment on the whole academic achievement thing at all, which we felt was bad news, and it’s probably a foregone refusal.
But then came Stage 2B – the Playground Commiseration. Two other mums also had their appeals – one today (after us), one Monday. Both were quizzed in detail about their own occupations (?), which was never even touched on for us. One Mum had applied on Denominational grounds – two years ago she joined the village church, got her children to be Servers, made friends with the Vicar, and forced them to attend regularly against their grumbling and muttering… All because she knew it would help with the school application (WHAT??). Anyhoo, she was firmly told that her letter from her vicar really hadn’t helped her case at all, as he had implied she wasn’t really a regular church goer (once or twice a month around cricket practice). Felt a little happy about that, as had been cross they were trying that route to kind of sneak in the back door.
The other parents had tried on the grounds their son is gifted with sport. Got a vague hand wave and a “yes, yes, yes, never mind the cricket, ALL schools have cricket teams”. Then they tried the “we have cousins living in the town” to which they were told “yes but your family has been in business in a rural area for 150 years – you’ve probably got cousins in every town in the county”! This Mum came away acknowledging that beyond their own desire for a ‘better’ school, they had no real reasons to say their son would be better off there.
Neither set of parents was looked in the eye on arrival, smiled at or acknowledged when they left, neither set of parents feels they have a cat in hells chance.
I didn’t tell them, but we had lots of eye content, a warm welcome/goodbye, and didn’t once get shot down when talking about Cams education, his cleverness (more smug parenting on that in a while), and the reason we want him to attend this particular school is the wide ranging curriculum and the sheer number of opportunities that will be available to him, their Gifted & Talented programme, and their specialist status in science.

So, following Stage 2B, we’re eversoslightly a teeny bit more cautiously hopeful. More than they are, anyway. But still not much.

All shall be revealed after 3p.m. tomorrow. Positive universe thoughts welcomed.

So. No.1′s cleverness. Waa-a-y back in Yr 5, pre-illness, he was targeted as high L5 for his SATS. When he came back into school last September they dropped that to a hopeful 4.

He was re-targeted before Easter – at 5A/B across the board.
*beam*

SO proud of my boy. He’s missed almost an entire academic year in total, and despite the schools doctor and consultant agreeing he needs additional one-to-one tuition to help him keep up he received NOTHING. He has had absolutely no academic help whatsoever from the LEA, just random and sporadic homework from his teacher. And look at him now.

Had lo-o-ong meeting with his teacher today – had a few issues to sort out, and went in to the playground feeling cross; then No.1 came out and said he’d been weighed by the school nurse and the whole class knew he was the second heaviest (after we completed their form weeks ago and requested NO WEIGHING to prevent just such an occurrence for the sensitive boy)… By the time I made it into the classroom to see the teacher I was FURIOUS (period had just started, so I Was Full Of Wrath and Most Vengeful).
However, teacher was equally as wrathful, went puce at the fact the school had ignored a direct request from a parent on a health issue (I think his words were “Gawd! What if it had been on religious grounds? You could have sued us and hung us out to dry!”) , and will investigate forthwith. Fingers crossed no more teasing shall occur.

Anyhoo, he not only praised No.1 to the skies, he filled with tears when I drew him a complete picture of how No.1 is at home – I know they only see the best bits, and pretty much think he’s ‘better’ now (*whispers* I may have exaggerated a te-e—ensy bit about how often the bad episodes were, but on the back of three bad nights I felt justified). He also said that No.1 has returned to school with the best work ethic that he’s had in two years, he’s calmer, more patient, kinder to the not-so-brights and just far more chilled – which if course has led to him being far more popular.
Beams all round, much teacher/parent self congratulation.

The bullying incidents occurring with one vile and acidic boy are being closely monitored, and I’m confident will be dealt with.

He has been withdrawn from the residential activities week that is the ultimate goal of all Yr6′s – he’s been fretting over how he’ll cope with the nights, we’ve been seriously worried how he’ll cope with the days. But instead of him wafting around the school once again feeling isolated and alone while his entire class are off rock climbing/abseiling/kayaking/midnight feasting we have been given permission to whisk the family off to France at the same time, taking the other two out of school, and enjoying some much-needed family-in-the-sun time.

In fact his teacher (who is the deputy head)’s words were ‘after the crap year you’ve all had, I think it’s the least you need’.

The SATS pressure was discussed, and it was clear he’s carefully trying to walk a fine line, and is only too aware that when he tries to instigate some fear into a lazy child or two who simply refuses to pull their weight, he knows the rest of the class is listening, feeling guilty, and piling on the pressure to themselves. Still don’t like SATS, but am feeling slightly mollified at his attitude now I’ve spoken in person.

Blimey. This parenting lark. Just keeps on getting more and more compulcated, as a small boy used to say.

Today we had Stage 1 of the Schools Appeal. There were 17 appeals, one no-show, one woman left in a  strop after about 30 minutes. Remaining were evenly split – the silent over-awed half, and the vociferously state-our-case half (guess which we were in?). LEA woman was so unprepared I almost felt sorry for her (almost) – talk about woolly. She just kept repeating “well, I have spoken to the head, and he says there is no more room”.

But she didn’t know actual square metre-age of teaching space, changes that had been made to accommodate the high intake in previous years, the absenteeism rate… not even convinced she had actually visited the school. Two hours straight she was being interrogated by parents and panel.

The upshot was that despite the intake numbers being moved from 210 to 240 this year, the school COULD accommodate more – so we moved on to Stage 2. The personal appeal, where we have to convince the panel that it really is in no.1′s best interests to attend this particular school.

That’s on Wednesday.

Oh my.

So what helps rank you as being a bad mother?

Obviously I’m being cheery here, I’m not talking about serious you-should-never-have-had-children kinds of bad mothers.

No – I mean the really, you’re just-not-quite-cutting-it-in-the-parental-stakes-today kind of stuff.

Like today.

Today was one of my top five Bad Mother days I think.

First day back at school – and as usual, around 8.25 I start to think about PE kits… but actually they are sorted without too much drama. Then I realise we haven’t made school dinner menu choices yet (we’ve only had two weeks, after all) so am hollering those out at them as they pack their bags.

And then they go to put their shoes on.

Which is the point that I remember looking at their very very worn out old shoes on the last day of term, and plopping them happily in the bin – confidently stating we’d go shoe shopping over the holidays…

Guess who went to school in trainers today?

*blush*