November

Well the decision we were mulling over last month has been made. We are moving Daniel and Falco to another school.

It is not something we do lightly. Daniel is happy in his current class, but he has only one friend, who was not loyal enough to invite Daniel to his birthday party. Going on his reading skills and the ongoing issues with his hearing and being involved in class work it seems that he is not getting the attention he needs. We thought that the smaller school where they are now would be more focussed on the children and less of a “factory”. The current school is a friendly environment and very linked to the local community, but we now feel that we need a more professional organisation with more resources and more muscle.

Falco is also a concern. Though he has a great class now and plenty of friends he does regularly say that he does not want to go to school: not a good sign and reminiscent of the first hints of school issues with Matthijs… He has the social skills in the family and will find his way in any social setting, but he will become alienated if he does not get enough stimulus and challenge at school.

Matthijs got a rotten tummy bug which resulted in him being sick. Unfortunately when heading for the bathroom he vomited at the very top of the stairs… It came rolling down towards us. Eeeuw. Marjolein looked after him, while I scrubbed the gubbins off before it sank into the stair carpet too much. Ahhhh, Fatherhood! Other than that things are going pretty well with Matthijs at home and not so great at school. He is cheerful and involved at home but got a very low mark for his last dictation. That was because there were long pauses between the sentences (most people are slower) and he got bored and read a book. Being gripped by the book he then missed all the other sentences. Talking over an action plan with school we managed to persuade the teacher to get some help in finding more challenging material for Matthijs but, given our other experiences with school, we are not optimistic.

We also got an enormous amount of work done this month, partially catalysed by a book on decluttering. We cleared out the attic entirely, generating a good load for the rubbish dump and a couple of carloads for the second-hand/charity shop. It is amazing how much better you feel after tackling something like that. The key is working together – it makes it much easier to make all the keep-where/chuck/give-away decisions you need in order to process the piles of stuff you find. It also enabled us to move some large items, including a spare door, out of our living space. Marjolein also cleared out and made current everything in the boys wardrobes.

We also cleared out Falco’s room, took his old bunk bed to the second-hand shop and got him a new (second-hand) much less imposing and more convenient one and a new wardrobe. That required some improvised carpentry from me as it turned out that the doors and drawers in the wardrobe were badly placed for the layout of the room… The final result is very gratifying: his room is much roomier and lighter. He has the smallest room, so making the best use of his space is very important.

Conversation with Matthijs: he wanted to invent a device to compress air until it was solid. He thought that his would provide him with an invisible shield: very handy for fighting monsters with. Being a geek family this unleashed a discussion of properties of materials, temperature and pressure etc. including the example of the pressure cooker, which can cook things hotter and faster because it raises the boiling point of water and that at very low pressure water would boil at one degree.

Matthijs then started to speculate what it would be like cooking on top of Everest, Falco wondered how one degree could be the least when being first generally means being the best and Daniel wondered if it would rain less if everyone used pressure-cookers all the time…. Daniel wins the lateral-thinking prize hands down as always.

Falco, biking without side-wheels now, flew off, landed hard and grew a bump the size of half an egg on his forehead, poor soul. Marjolein was comforted by the opinion of our neighbour the neuropsychologist (who has experience of the effects of concussion): if there is a big bump then the force went outward and not inwards. Falco was of course very miserable, but healed quickly.

End of the month he went to the birthday party of one of his friends and carefully, of his own volition and inclination, dressed in his best clothes: smart trousers, jacket and a shirt. He had a great time, building a car out of a banana-box and racing with the others, but did get laughed at by the other boys. The friend’s mother thought he looked very handsome but of course your peer group matters more. ‘

On the 11th the madness started again: first St Maarten with hand-made lanterns. The boys had a find time and harvested piles of sweets singing door to door. Next weekend Saint Nicholas arrived in Holland and now it will be time to put out shoes in the evenings and Black Peter parties at school and all the clubs. The kids will be high as kites until January I’m afraid…