Year 2 - AugustAugust 2006
All those nice things I was saying about Evan and nursery last month completely changed this month. We'd lost a few of the nursery staff in Evan's room in July, some that I was rather fond of and Evan absolutely adored. He seems to have his favourites! This month I received a shock when our favourite member of staff, the lady in charge of Evan's room decided that she too wanted to leave and it was all rather sudden. There has been a lot of changes implemented in the nursery since the change in management and this has caused tension amongst the staff. I don't know the full details and I probably never will but I'm not happy at all with how it was handled and it caused a lot of unsettled children in Evan's room in particular. Evan was still happy after the first few left, but when Heather suddenly left, things took a turn for the worse. Evan no longer wanted to go to nursery and I had to leave him there crying and upset every morning, where as previously he'd always go to Heather with a great big hug. He started to be really pleased to see me at home time and couldn't wait to get into the car. It's taken a few weeks for him to settle back down, but he's still not as happy as he was, I just hope he starts to form some strong bonds again with the new staff.
We've had a few issues with the nursery in general this month and I've had to have several chats about the quality of care. I was shocked one day to arrive home with Evan only to discover he'd been left in a pooey nappy for what looked like a few hours. His bottom was very sore and I checked his report to find out that his last nappy change that day was 2pm and I collected him at 6pm. A few other parents have also complained and as a result they now get at least 4 nappy changes a day. The most recent issue I have at the moment is that Evan is ever so thirsty when I arrive to collect him from nursery and they assure me that he's allowed to drink whenever he likes, but my issue is that he can't yet say "I would like a drink please", all he can do is respond to a question or point to the cup if he sees it. When you leave your child with whatever childcare that you use, you want to know that your child is safe and being well looked after. I absolutely loved the nursery he is at, but recently I've started to have concerns, I just hope they get resolved soon. We've got to be careful with what we say, Evan is picking up several new words every day now and he only has to hear it once. We were out food shopping this month when I just called out to Caroline to get something and for the remainder of the shopping trip he just kept reciting "Caroline", well it sounded more like "Carowine" because Evan is having great difficulty with words that contain "L" - lorry, plane and now Caroline.
I took a day off with Evan this month to get together with all my friends that I met whilst on maternity leave. It was great to see them all and to see how well everyone is developing. We had planned to go to Odds Farm Park, but it was pretty windy and wet that day so we decided to camp out at mine and just let the children play together. We did go for a little walk to the local supermarket to get some food for lunch and that was so cute watching all the children with their little walking reigns on. It was a really fun day and it's a real shame that we don't see more of each other. After witnessing Esther use the "naughty step", we decided to start using that technique soon after. We had planned to introduce it when he was older because we thought he wouldn't really understand what we were trying to achieve at this age, but we found it really worked well. He understood what we meant by it straight away. I've used it a few times this month for when Evan really has done things that he knows he must not do and being consistent is key to this working. Emma |
