The One Where The Boy Makes Me Wonder?

A new term of Jinglies music group has started.


Lemon Cake Lady and Lemon Cake Boy have decided to give it a miss so we've changed our day to Monday at a different venue.


Same teacher though. She may have an impossibly high voice and a look of Joyce Grenfell (George - don't do that!) but she is marvellous with the boy when he either kicks off or wants to go up the front and be the centre of attention! (don't know who he gets that off..hmm..hmm)!


Yesterday morning the boy developed a mild rash on his shoulders, a reaction to the mix of his eczema cream and our leather sofa we now surmise, but going to Jinglies I was a bit concerned he was out of sorts.


The new venue is nearer home and a smaller room than before. A lot of the children are younger than our previous class so sit still, mainly because they can't crawl or walk yet, but the overall result is that the boy doesn't run around as much as he did before.


This was our second lesson of the new term and when we arrived the boy seemed agitated. We sung the first "Good Morning " song and then he started pointing at the door.


"Door. Door. Car" he exclaimed


He wanted to go!


Then he started pointing at my bag. Did he want a drink? Maybe a snack? Maybe my car keys?


"Car, car."


Oh god this wasn't good. He normally loves Jinglies but he was yawning in the car on the way there and I started to get worried.


Then he picked up my jacket, that was lying over the bag, tossed it to one side and proceeded to root around in my bag.


He was after his book with cars in it.


"No you can't have that now darling"


Meltdown! 


"Look they're getting instruments out now. It's drums"


I thought at least he could bang the hell out of that to get rid of his frustration.


But once the class got going and the drums, bells and whistles came out the boy was a changed... well, boy!


So much so that I spent the entire class thinking there was still something wrong with him!


He sat still when he was supposed to, held my hand nicely as we did walking in circle songs, fetched the instruments and toys calmly and more importantly put them back, with a "Ta" too.


I have never known him be so attentive and compliant in class before. As a result he loved it and got so much more out of it but I couldn't help thinking he must be ill, he was so, well, docile!


I checked down the back of his shirt. The rash was gone. If I felt his forehead once in that three quarters of an hour I must have felt it about a dozen times. He wasn't hot. There was no fever.


The hall is on a roundabout at quite a main junction. Last week all the boy wanted to do was look out of the window at the cars. This week I spotted a fire engine riding past. Oh no I thought, we'll lose him. Now admittedly it didn't have it's siren's going but the boy didn't even notice. Normally he's like a heat seeking missile when it comes to "Nanus" but he was so intent on smacking that drum he missed it.


At one point the teacher looked over at me and mouthed,


"He's being good"


"Shhhhh" I whispered back "Don't break the spell"


We finished, as always, with the sleeping bunnies song and then it was all done. I was still highly suspicious , especially when he waved "Bye Bye" and said "Ta" as we left.


Back in the car I fully expected him to fall asleep, cry and, or be sick but he was happily eating his snack and staring at the cars.


Comes to something when you assume your child is ill just because he was well behaved, doesn't it!