Just stuff - geepeemum - @ 20six.co.uk

Belle had a friend from school round for tea today - a pleasant little girl who was polite and didn’t mind Ned joining in all the games. And who told me blithely that she liked fishcakes and broccoli but then discovered she didn’t. Luckily she liked pasta. Pudding was supposed to be left-over birthday cake and fruit but it turned out she didn’t like fruit either. Oh well. I’m sure her mother has been told she was only given pasta and gooey chocolate cake for tea…
Given how much angst I managed to put myself through about Belle’s shyness, muteness and general lack of confidence I can’t believe what a waste of time it all was. Time and energy. The girl has bloomed and blossomed into a confident, chatty, happy schoolgirl and way sooner than we could have hoped. (One of the staff in her nursery class “reassured” us that her daughter was exactly like Belle - until she was 13). Please remind me not to stress about things again. *hollow laugh*
I’m not stressing about Ned’s speech - he is improving and I know that. It is suddenly more demoralising though because in the past, whilst he’s always been behind his peers he’s been ahead of those a lot younger simply by virtue of the fact that they’ve been too young to talk. Now it’s noticeable that quite a lot of children way younger than him are overtaking him at lightning speed. One of Belle’s classmates has a brother 7 months younger than Ned; we met them in a shop last week. Apart from the fact that a) they’d never met before and b) the boy T came straight up to Ned and shoved him hard without provocation the most notable fact was that this kid was chattering away like a 4 year old. And Ned was hiding behind my legs wondering who the nutty child was hitting him like that.
Ned has hit a shy stage. It’s frustrating because he never has really been shy up till now.But there’s lots of hiding behind legs at the moment. He started Tumble Tots again last week though and this week I left him in the class alone. He stayed without a fuss and seemed to really enjoy himself.
I found myself descrbing Ned as a “follower rather than a leader” to someone today and I think it’s true. Maybe that’s the inevitable position of a younger sibling.