We've been invited to attend a TAF (Team Around the Family) meeting in a few weeks to discuss Eden's development.
For those that don't know, our son Eden is showing traits of autism and is quite behind on his speech and language development. The local support organisations have been very positive - the Local NHS Trust, Hull City Council have been nothing but helpful, Eden gets to go to a couple of classes each week, one run by the local Childrens Centre and one by a charity called KIDS, which is all good.
Anyhow we've now been invited to a TAF meeting. The thinking behind the meeting is that all of the professionals that are involved with Eden meet, discuss what actions should be taken, and assign actions to people. Sounds like an excellent opportunity for collaboration.
To try and prepare us for the meeting, I pulled off the net a copy of a PDF from the government about the Early Years Foundation Stage which basically lays out whereabouts kids should be in their development against their age.
Obviously children do all develop at different speeds (I didn't talk until I was two as an example), it's quite interesting to see the "typical" development and compare Eden with it. As expected, areas such as relationships, behaviour, speaking and showing interest in others, he's not as advanced as the guidance indicates. On the flip side, many other areas he is pretty much on target for what the guidance suggests, and some, such as numbers he's quite advanced in (he should be able to count to ten - we've had him counting beyond 100 before today)
I'm looking forward to the meeting because as well as giving us visibility of what everyone else is doing, it also gives responsibilities to us as parents - sometimes you can't help but wonder if you were doing something else if Eden might have developed further by now.
That said, one thing all the guidance hasn't told me is how being able to throw a rubber duck into the toilet whilst stood in the bath compares to other children. It's all good.
A reminder about the awards...
If you've got a Twitter account and got nothing better to do, why not nominate me for a Shorty award?
The Shorty awards are described as "The Shorty Awards are a worldwide effort to engage hundreds of thousands of Twitter users to identify the best people and organizations on social media, culminating in a blockbuster ceremony in New York City." - basically they're social media awards and it's a great opportunity for everyone to have their say in who is the best.
Obviously there's no chance that I'm going to win but I've checked the charts and even just eleven votes will get me into the top forty bloggers!
Tweet the following:
I nominate @ravenswingthog for a Shorty Award in #blogger because... (put here a reason why you're nominating me!)
You need to include a reason otherwise the vote won't count! See how the awards are going here.