Book Sharing And Surprise Visitors

Pip's favourite book at the moment:

 "Children all over the world wake up in the morning and go to sleep each night, but they spend their days doing different things in different ways"

The portrayal of the young lad from England is a true yet dispiriting reflection of the average child here in the UK... go to school, stay in after school club, come home and eat tea, watch television and go to bed.  In recent days there has been several well written commentaries relating to "Toxic Childhood" and "Too Much Too Soon".  Our children here are suffering the detrimental effects of forced early years teaching and damaging attainment targets, emotional and behavioural problems are on the increase as is the accompanying mental health referrals.  It is at times like these that, I am glad Benedict is no longer part of the conveyor belt system.

Pip's favourite character in the book is a young boy from Morocco called Ashraf.  He works hard in school and loves his faith.  Prayer is mentioned several times over the course of his day.  The other children also take their chores and school activities seriously, no chance of lazing around in front of the CRT when the animals need feeding and the household chores need attending!  In all, a lovely multicultural read.

 It is Dave's birthday tomorrow, so a quick phone call from Kathryn resulted in an after tea visit from her and her beau Steve.  It certainly raised a smile for Dave, who did not have the foggiest idea that, such a plan had been hatched!

  Oldest and Youngest Book Sharing.

Pip still a little under the weather, she was a little bit sick this morning but I think it's just the rubbish from her cold affecting her.  She is still quite tired of an afternoon so a short nap of an hour has managed to help her get through the remainder of the day.

I had my meeting with the teacher from the learning centre and she confirmed my suspicions that, we would have a terrible battle trying to access extra help for Benedict, since the authority and the school had backed us into a corner 18 months ago.  She concurred that at present Benedict is best placed at home.  She has however made some helpful suggestions regarding strengths and weaknesses assessment, so that a personal plan can be tailor-made for him.

I am currently re-trying Benedict on a low carb diet to see if I can work out an optimum carb quota and stabilise blood readings.  I searched two forums last night, an adult and child related one with low carbing in mind.  In short it is a logistical nightmare!  The risk of severe hypo is very real hence I've kept his carb quota for each meal at 30 grammes, some folks are running on that amount for a whole day!  Not good if you are a developing child.

  The other quandary is that in order to meet the body's energy requirements the  fat/protein components of each meal are then converted into glucose.  This "glucose" conversion is an unknown quantity, and as such it is impossible to adequately calculate the carb/insulin ratio for said meals!  Still, it is early days and hopefully a pattern might emerge.  I cannot however see me following this diet with him long term, there are too many unknown variables. 

DH note re CRT; this is our alternative name for television, TV or tele, as we can speak to each other without small people knowing!