Monday 9 September 2013

Club

It’s nice to belong.

My daughter used to go to Guides, and loved it: the songs and promises, the rituals and rules, the church parades and camps, and the whole Hitler Youthy uniform thing.

After we moved house, she couldn’t go to her old group where many of the girls had known her since nursery and primary school. She joined the troop in our new town, but 
was a bit shy, complained of being tired by the time it finished, and made a decision not to go any more.

We’ve been trying to think of an earlier activity that could replace it, and give her a bit of social interaction and stimulation out of school hours. And, by George, I think we’ve got it! 

Today, she started After School Club. It’s two hours on a Monday, where the minibus picks her up from her satellite class at mainstream school and trundles her up to the special school secondary site.  

Her younger friend Bethany was there (I’d checked her days with her mum and deliberately synchronised my girl’s attendance).

They had a great time. Most of it, I gather, spent cutting out and sticking every item from the four pages of Hello Kitty branded goods in the Argos catalogue, which they have decided they are going to present as a shopping list to the headteacher, entitled: ‘Toys we need for After School Club.’ Good luck with that, girls.

How do I know it was a proper success, though?

My daughter, the one with Prader-Willi Syndrome, the one who never physically feels full up and who has her tea at 5pm on the dot, announced pointedly to me when I picked her up at 5.30pm: “I really don’t mind having a late tea, mum.”

Fulsome praise, I can assure you, doesn't come any fulsomer.


Song is Ray Charles - At The Club

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