Today was the little man’s two-year assessment, which I
potentially expected to be a bit more intense than it actually was. If you haven’t
had your one yet, here’s what to expect, if our appointment was anything to go
by:
1. The appointment to be randomly cancelled in advance and then
rebooked for a month later with no attempt at an explanation
2.
It to occur exactly at the mid-point of what
would normally be your little one’s nap time, meaning he will either be a bit
over-tired or a bit hyper
3.
A brief explanation that depending on the
results of the questionnaire they posted out to you in advance, your little one
will either be categorised as black (behind where he should be), grey (a
smidgen behind where he should be) or white (where he should be). A curious
choice of colours methinks. Perhaps a rebranding to red, amber, green would
make more sense!?
4.
A complete disregard for talking about what you
ticked on the questionnaire – I guess parents are assumed to be honest and
trustworthy when completing questionnaires that may have the outcome of their
child being referred to a specialist!
5.
Your little one will stroll off and do his level
best to fall off the wooden slide in a variety of humorous ways (and being
someone is watching you feel the need to adopt your parent voice and keep
telling him to be careful and to sit down on the slide and to use the stairs in
a safe manner like he normally does)
6.
Little one will have his height measured, but
you will then be told that there is no scientific way to predict final height
based on this, despite lots of old wives’ tales to the contrary! He’ll be told
he is very tall for his age.
7.
Little one will have his weight measured on
proper standy-up scales, fully clothed. He’ll be told what a big boy he is!
8.
The staff member will then spend a few minutes
trying to work out in her head what his weight is in lbs and failing pretty
miserably. ‘Well, he’s xxx kg, and that is xx in grams, and this works out as
something like xx lbs, so that’s maybe about 2 stones, because there are
roughly around 15lbs in a stone.’ So we know that he is roughly 2 stone, but
only if you aren’t very good at maths.
9.
You’ll be asked:
a) if you have any concerns about
his health – ‘no’,
b) whether you are giving him a balanced diet, including fruit
veg, proteins and carbohydrates – ‘no we just feed him KFC, cake and Red Bull
like we eat’ (who would tell a health visitor that they aren’t giving their
little one a balanced diet anyway?!),
c) whether you have thought about / started
potty training (with accompanying leaflet if you say ‘no’) and that’s about it!
10.
Little one will say ‘bye, bye, lady’ and that’s
that done until he’s 3 ½!
So what I had anticipated would be an intense one hour
grilling of our parenthood skills turned out to be a 25 minute chat to tell us
everything was fine!
In other news today, the sun shone, I chopped a tree down, took a pretty photo of a flower and drank alcohol whilst watching MTV Dance and writing a blog entry, because
a fellow blog addict told me to (write an entry, not drink!!)
