That's alright!

Today started with the familiar sound of Duncan running from his room to ours. He jumped in beside me and snuggled up, to be joined a few moments later by Thomas. After that it was just another normal day here at the engine shed. Lady started to write a story about ‘Pixen the Pixie’, which sounds like it’s totally plagiarising several by Enid Blyton. I read her some of Ms Blyton’s ‘Faraway Tree’ and ‘Magical Wishing Chair’ books last year, but I had to give up before finishing as I was getting so sick of them. I told her she’d just have to get better at reading for herself if she wants to hear the rest of those. Actually, when I was little we didn’t have 10% of the books that my lot have, and though my parents must have read aloud to me at some stage, I can’t remember it. Maybe that’s why I had the motivation to read early. But Lady is really getting there now.

And one more first from Duncan, da ta da!!
They were all playing ‘running up and down’ in the kitchen today when I walked by and bumped into him. I said ‘oh, sorry’ and straight off he said, ‘that’s alright’.
What!!? I wouldn’t have expected that and it just made me smile so much.

Later I called his (old) school and spoke at length to his teacher. She said she was so upset to hear that he’s not going back and that they’ve really been missing him. She also said that she isn’t surprised that we are going to home-educate him. He always hugely enjoyed one-to-one activities in school but he had problems with the strict structure, changing activities and all group tasks. He was, she said, the child they were having the most problems getting through to. She wished us well, invited me to visit some time to pick up all his little bits of art and to talk about what they were planning to do next with him. She said that she knew he would thrive at home. I also called the principle, who I’ve spoken to just once briefly before. He was quite surprised about this development. But then unlike Duncan’s class teacher, he doesn’t know we’ve been doing this for almost 2 years with Lady. I told the principle that I’d always intended to have him learn at home at some stage, but that he’d told me he didn’t want to go back. He recommended that I talk to the Educational Psychologist. I might do at some stage, but only because I’ve met her a few times and I like her. It sounded like he thought I’m a total push-over for taking Duncan’s wishes seriously! Anyway, that’s dealt with now, and we're just getting on with it and having a grand old time!