Sing in the rain

See this one and recognised myself in it too https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1M2hgBswdT/ That point of frustration is hard and sometimes I do take the moment to put on my own oxygen mask first, I.e. to breathe before I yell. Mostly though, it's better to be a robot or a lion or a monster.  Me doing a play roar and then acting surprised that it wasn't loud or came out wrong &  getting little one to do a bigger roar than me has helped her re regulate far better & far more frequently than trying to encourage calm when she's feeling anything but that!  It's mostly worked out that later she's been about being nervous or excited about something & not quite ready to work out what that feeling is or what has prompted it. A little time with a silly voice saved us a lot of yelling!

Spotted this one on fb and thought it was worth capturing and sharing

Oh my goodness! I have said I'd share the good and the bad and phew has this been highlighting a  lot.  This does - so far- have a good ending, but oh my goodness it's been hard work. I will therefore apologise in advance for some ranting and less positive reflections - this isn't everyone's experience, but it's worth sharing in case this is useful for anyone to be prepared/know it's ok! Honestly, Getting this set up has been a lot of hard work and nagging that it shouldn't be. I'm going to skip for now the bit of just getting to the stage of engagement with the social worker about direct contact  The social worker for contact is separate to any of the previous social workers. This social worker's primary responsibility is working with the bio family to support them - though also to be able to assess them - to know the headspace they are in and ensure contact is safe. They are normally responsible for both letterbox and direct contact. They should ge...

I'll preface this by not everyone is lucky enough to have the option of contact - either from safeguarding, capability, circumstances or simply whether they are still in touch with the social workers or anyone else to be able to. In our case, it is an option, albeit with some hard safeguarding back and forths.  It's been interesting being involved in some conversations with friends, family and colleagues about perceptions and the idea of meeting directly. With little one's bio family.. Honestly, it's an idea many have struggled with. So here's the logic on my mind... Little one has and will have, questions. Different ones at different stages of life, but even in nursery and reception there are discussions about types of families and some generic traits. I mentioned when I had my own first meeting with her bio family members, I asked if they could roll their tongue... Now, I could leave it and she could then reach the age of social media, in all likelihood at a diffi...

(See also  Contact: Letterbox and Voices of birth parents  &  Contact - settling in letter ) Different children and agencies have different letterbox agreements. Contact generally is something they're trying to encourage more in modern day agreements. I'll do a different post on the detail of why's and some of my own thoughts/reflections, but it's likely that there will be an attempt to have at least letterbox contact, even if not direct contact. So, our agreement is once a year, but whilst little one is younger and so much changes so quickly, then i try to put something together for each month, I don't always manage to write it in month, but have the extra bonus of getting to use it as a lovely tool to think about the changes, developments and achievements in that month. I've been able to share when LO is asking questions about them, or about when she was with them - one example was when a friend was pregnant they showed her their ultrasound and LO asked ab...

One discussion I had with the foster carers during transitions was whether little one had had chickenpox. They were pretty sure she had, though did question whether it was another child they'd looked after.  It was left as they had. Which I ran with and therefore didn't get the (£150) chickenpox vaccine. This was likely disproved when LO did get chickenpox (pretty severely) a year or so later :o I then found out some info that would have been really useful earlier... So I'll share that with you now: If you've had chickenpox, you generally don't need the chickenpox vaccine as you're considered to have lifelong immunity. However, if there's uncertainty about your history, a healthcare provider might recommend/can do a blood test to check for antibodies.