Letters

We've had a couple of letters of importance recently. We usually get a few a week addressed to 'The Parents/Guardians of Bethany F....', they tend to be appointment letters, or summaries of recent reviews. The first we received last week, however, was different. It was a letter from the nursery Bee will start attending in September. We'd be waiting on confirmation of the hours Bee will attend along with her start date, and this letter was it.

Thursday 8th September will be Bee's first day at nursery.

Technically it won't actually be a day. We'll attend with her for an hour in the afternoon, she'll be able to play while we chat to her teachers. The following Tuesday Bee will attend for 90 minutes and we'll have to leave her, although will be able to stay in the building and have a cuppa just in case she doesn't settle well.

After that it's a 'play it by ear' scenario depending on how Bee adapts to the new environment, which I'm so happy about. She scheduled for 3 hours every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon but we're under no pressure to force her induction and can take as long as we (and she) needs to settle in. I'm very conscious that my girl will still only be two years old when she starts, she's not three until 28th September. She still just a baby and I worry for her all the time. I know in my heart though that she is completely ready for nursery and is going to absolutely fly. I am going to miss her terribly, for nearly three years it's just been me and my girl every day and when she's been away from me she's been with family that we love and trust. For her to be in the care of strangers who don't know her behaviours, quirks, mispronunciations, Makaton signs... will be wrenching. What if she can't make herself understood? What if she's lonely and left out by the other children? What if she's picked on?

Our second interesting letter of the week was an invitation to group speech therapy. Bee has had speech therapy for both communication and feeding since 9 months old but they've always been one-on-one appointments. I didn't even know group speech therapy existed. But there was the letter, inviting us for six sessions over the course of six weeks, every Tuesday morning.

We've had our first session and when we arrived I was pleased that the group was only small, six children in total. Bee is the youngest of the group and seems to be the most behind in terms of speech development. Despite her attempts to spend the session crawling round instead of sitting and participating, we had a lovely time. Mostly singing songs and playing words games, choosing specific items etc. We have another this Tuesday and only time will tell if they are beneficial to Bee.