Toby is six (and a half) years old

A blonde boy cheering with arms in the air

I usually write these update posts right after the boys’ birthdays but somehow I’ve ended up being rather late with this one! Toby’s birthday back in July, and his Forest School party, seems an age ago now. We’ve had a whole summer holiday and a full term at school since then, but I couldn’t let a year go by without writing one of these updates that I’ve been doing since Toby was four months old!

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The transition from Reception to Year 1 // Two weeks in

Toby all ready for his first day in Year 1

Friday, and we have made it to the end of the second week of Year 1. The transition from Reception hasn’t been plain sailing for Toby, and I’m sure we’ll have a while yet before he’s fully settled in Year 1. After a great first day when he was literally the first one in the classroom with a smile on his face things haven’t gone quite so smoothly so I thought I would fill you in on what’s been happening and how we’ve been dealing with it, or trying to at least! Read more

Getting ready to start primary school

Toby looking super smart in his school uniform

Schools have now broken up for the summer holidays and that means it’s only six weeks until Toby will be starting in Reception. And that means just six weeks to get Toby ready to start primary school. I know lots of children are super excited about starting school – they can’t wait to get their uniform on and go off every day to learn and play and make new friends. Toby though is going to take a little more convincing!

Although he says he is looking forward to starting school, and will be joined by a few of his friends from nursery, he is still quite apprehensive about the whole thing. This seems to be manifesting itself in some pretty out of character behaviour, and this week a couple of bed-wetting incidents too. He was only four a couple of weeks ago so he’s still quite young really and I think it’s going to take quite a lot of adjusting to get ready for school. Read more

Toby is four years old

Four years old! How on earth did the tiny squishy baby that we brought home from the hospital turn into a four year old who is going to be starting school in a couple of months?!

I last wrote an update when Toby was three and a half and in some ways he’s changed so much since then, and in others he’s exactly the same! He is now 110 cm tall, which means he’s grown another 4 cm in the last six months and he is still on the 91st centile. He weighs about 2 stone 10 lb (17.2kg) so is still super skinny even though he eats really well. He is mostly wearing age 5-6 clothes now, although some of his pants are 18-24 months because his bum is tiny! Oh and he’s got size 10 ½ feet. Read more

Potty training // 8 months on

Like most things parenting related potty training was something I had no idea about. I’d heard of kids being out of nappies before their second birthdays and others being closer to four before they potty trained. As with most other things we took a fairly relaxed approach to getting Toby out of nappies, and let him take the lead.

He had no interest in the potty for a long time. We had one in the house from him being about two I think and he would occasionally sit on it fully clothed but wouldn’t entertain the idea of sitting on it with a bare bottom. I wrote back in October about our reluctant potty trainer – at that point he was three and three months and although we had finally got him weeing on the potty at home he was still insisting on wearing nappies.

I realised I have never written an update about what happened next…so here it is. A week or two after I wrote the last post Toby decided he would wear pants instead of his nappy and once he had made the decision that was that really.

Toby in the early days of potty training

For the first five months or so we hardly had any accidents. He was still wearing a nappy at night at first, and it was often wet when I took it off in the morning. But I realised if I took it off as soon as he woke up it was actually dry, and he was doing a wee in it once he was already up. Read more

How to make your own reward chart (and does it work?)

I don’t really have a parenting style. I try and be fair and remain calm (although that doesn’t always happen) but most of all I try and be consistent. One thing I have learnt from my years as a teacher is that children need to know what the rules and boundaries are, and for them to stay the same. Quite often, knowing what is expected of them, and receiving praise when those expectations are met, is enough. But sometimes they might need a little bit more encouragement… and that’s where a reward chart can come in.

You can buy lots of reward charts, or download templates online, but when I decided to try using a reward chart with Toby I decided we would make our own. And it’s super easy.

Both reward charts

If you want a reward chart to work I think it’s really important that you involve your child in deciding what will be rewarded and what form those rewards will take. Toby is only three and a half so there was quite a bit of input from me, but if your child is older then you can probably let them make a few more of the decisions. Read more