Parents evening

We had our first parents evening this week. It was preceded by a parent/goveners meeting which was kind of compulsary if you wanted to talk about your kid. It was our first time going to one and I was getting really frustrated by the end of it. I didn’t realise that the nursery we use for Cassie, the one I am still not completely enamoured with but is the only one in our area, is actually a community not-for-profit effort and actually gets very little funding from Surestart.

To be honest, I thought it was a commercial nursery because it charges £4 an hour which is £1 an hour more expensive than the couple of childminders we have round here. One of their main issues was that there were more 15 free hours children than full fee paying children, which is an issue because the amount the government pays to nurseries for these children hasn’t gone up in about 5 years, the nursery has to take them and at the rate the government sets, but the costs of everything else has gone up. So they were talking on one hand about increasing the costs for the fee paying children (of which Cassie is one) to cover the surplus for the free hours children…and then on the other hand saying "well what can we do to encourage more people to use the nursery?"

To make matters worse, they then brought out their budget sheet and they weren’t doing badly at all. I mean, for a not-for-profit they’d managed to make an £85 profit that they’d declared plus a further £4500 a quarter which they’d "ring-fenced" to pay for/subsidise something but they couldn’t actually think of anything they needed. So that’s an average of £18k a year which they have no idea what they are doing with…and they want to increase fees? I really don’t think increasing fees is the answer at all because the reason the nursery isn’t people’s first choice is that when the average wage up here is £6.50 an hour, people don’t want to be shelling out £4 an hour plus on childcare.

Then they were asking for fundraising ideas and I had a lot of ideas, I mean I’ve been on the fundraising committee for CAB and done fundraising for the Hospice, never mind being Events Secretary of University societies, that kind of thing is right up my street. But the other people there at the meeting were asking such stupid questions and making such stupid suggestions that I couldn’t be bothered discussing or arguing things with them, I decided to go and speak to the head of nursery another time. The one thing I did say, which I felt was common sense was that if they wanted to make more money they needed to engage the wider community rather than just the parents and grandparents of the nursery and that an event would probably be the way forward. I also said that people were more likely to put their hands in their pockets if they actually knew what they were fundraising for – like a piece of equipment or a nursery day out or something.

After the meeting, we had the chance to talk about our children. Cassie’s assessment still hadn’t been done but we got to have a lovely chat with her keyworker. Cassie originally had the head of nursery as her keyworker but after 6 months of Cassie referring to the other ladies by name and her referring to the head of nursery as "That lady" in disparaging tones they obviously decided that it was better that Cassie came under the remit of someone she actually had bonded with. Cassie’s keyworker is Cassie’s favourite person at the nursery now and the way she spoke about Cassie was a little more reassuring than the chats I’d had with the head of nursery. She said that Cassie is ahead on communication and exactly where they would expect her everywhere else. She said Cassie is very strong-willed and follows her own agenda in nursery, they are not sure whether this is a maturity thing or a personality trait (it’s a personality trait) and that she really doesn’t like rules or being made to do anything other than what she wants to do…but that this isn’t uncommon for a child of Cassie’s age. Basically, we know Cassie can be a bit of a brat, to be honest she’s going through a bit of a difficult patch at the moment where she’s trying to assert her own will. It seems like she’s on the naughty spot at least 3 times a day at the moment and she keeps refusing to apologise for her bad behaviour when she’s always been very good about that.

However, she said that Cassie is an absolute joy to have in the nursery, she’s mostly a very sunny, bright little girl. She loves dancing and the minute there’s music she really gives it her all. She’s also really into painting and imaginative activities, not so much anything that involves sitting and being quiet!

Apart from that, I’ve been trying to enjoy my last month off with Cassie. However, for the reasons mentioned above, it’s not been going according to plan. Basically, it’s like Cassie has decided to make herself as unlikeable as possible so I don’t miss my time with her when I start nursing. I think it’s just a stage she’s going through at the moment but I am finding her quite frustrating and hard work at times and Cassie and I have always been the best of friends. She just is so defiant – like I’ll put her hair up and she’ll lock onto me with her eyes, smile a really smug smile and then pull them out with one sweep and drop the bobbles deliberately on the floor right in front of me. And if one of us tells her off, she tries to get reassurance off the other one, we are really having to show a united front at the moment. I think some of it is to do with the fact she’s outgrown her afternoon nap and she’s still a bit tired, but I think a lot of it is that intelligence wise, she’s beyond her years but emotionally, she’s very much a 2 year old and that’s got to be just as frustrating for her as it is us.

Apart from that, not much to report. We’ve had a bit of a panic in the fact that childcare is going to cost us £60 a week more than expected, which puts another spanner in the works. At least childcare is actually sorted now.

Also, Rachel – Emma’s mum (Emma is Cassie’s best friend) tried to con Dan’s mum out of her wages for the last couple of weeks and they’ve had a bit of a stand off about it and fallen out, so I get the feeling that Emma and Cassie might not be as good friends anymore. It’s been a bit awward lately anyway because I’m more friendly with Rachel’s sister Nichola who has a little boy called Harry and Rachel hasn’t spoken to Nichola in years and Emma and Harry have never even met, despite living in the same village. There’s only one reception class at our local school so all Cassie’s little friends are going to be in the same class, so it seems a bit daft.