Bedtime stories

Well, not for me as I have an exciting evening of Downton Abbey and ironing ahead. Yay me!

And sadly not quite for this little one either who I can still hear pottering about. At the start of this term A went through a very unsettled period and had trouble getting to sleep. She is a lot more settled now but somehow seems to have lost the going to sleep knack. Unfortunately this is starting to impact her days and frankly the walk home from school today was fairly horrendous. A's reaction to being tired is to argue that day is night before you've even finished a sentence. And if she can't make day be night (or whatever particular thing that is inconveniencing her, such as checking her recorder timetable to see why she didn't have a lesson today) she gets very upset. For a long time. And it takes quite an enormous amount of energy and patience to calm her down. I should probably just leave her to cry it out but I know it is just because she is so tired and I really can't bear to see her so distraught and not comfort her. Even though she grows such vicious spikes in these moments that she doesn't want comforting. Anyway, with patience that I didn't know I possessed I persevered and we got to a good place just in time for her Spanish tutor to arrive. I was dreading her lesson but he managed to quickly engage her with something fun and she had a great lesson. As did J, who was doing maths in Spanish - his teacher knows how to connect with that boy!

Which reminds me that the lesson to remember is to appeal to A's sense of fun in these moments and not rational logic. Which is the exact opposite of what works with her brother. Which I would have know had their manuals not been lost in transit when they arrived.

Not much else to report from the rest of the day. Lots of work stuff, some head-hurting but all good and possibly even a little progress made, so that's nice.

Well, the ironing fairies didn't appear whilst I was blipping so off I go.

Night all
Lesley x