mummynegin

Can anyone tell me what the going rate is for a childminder (for term time before and after school care) in East Dulwich? What's included (e.g. snacks, petrol for school run etc)? Also should an unregistered "childminder" expect the same rate as an ofsted registered childminder?

Hi all, I had my third baby (girl) on 18 December. I've also got a 2 year old girl and almost 4 year old boy. I've requested to join the Facebook group. Look forward to meeting some of you. Negin

Hi Maeve, in relation to your question as to whether you'd stand less of a chance of getting into your 2nd and 3rd choice schools, I think the answer is no. My understanding from reading the Southwark admissions brochure is that the schools are not told which order you have listed them. Each school provides a list of the children it can take according to the admission criteria. If only one of your 6 choices can offer you a place, then obviously you get that place. If more than one can offer you a place, then you'll get offered the school that was your highest choice. So you should put your first choice school first and if you don't get into it, you will not have less of a chance of getting into choices 2 and 3. I am sure people will correct me if I'm wrong...

Saffron, you can get Aveeno on prescription. Our GP was very reluctant to give it at first and only did so after we'd tried all the other (cheaper) creams, but once we got it on prescription, we haven't had any problems getting repeats. When my son's skin was at its worse we were getting through 2 x 300ml bottles every 3 weeks...

Hi Sally 81, it's totally natural to be worried about putting your son into nursery full time. My son started nursery at 5.5 months going 3 days a week with 2 days being looked after by my mum. I was really anxious about it too, but it worked out really well and he loved nursery. I'm going back to work full time after my second maternity leave in a few weeks and both my son (now 2.5) and one year old daughter will be going to nursery full time. It would actually be significantly cheaper for us to have a full time nanny, as the nursery we use is in the City and is much more expensive than nurseries in the area, but as my son loved it so much there, we'd rather have both our children go there than use other childcare options. They learn so much at nursery and have a lot of fun. For us it's been a really positive experience. The only negative thing I would say about nursery is that the children pick up a lot of viruses there. For my son's first six months at nursery, he picked up a new virus every week (and passed it onto us). Luckily at his nursery they rarely send them home if they're ill, so I didn't have to miss any work because of it. After the initial 6 months, he didn't get ill too often though and on the plus side hopefully it will mean that he won't get ill so much when he starts school. The other thing to mention is that not all nurseries are the same. We transferred my son to a local nursery when I started my second maternity leave and we didn't like the nursery, so we transferred him back to the nursery in the City. Until you've given it a go though, you're not going to know for sure if the nursery will be right for your family.

My son (2.5) only goes to nursery one day a week and really loves it. He's been going to the same nursery since he was 6 months though and he went 3 days a week until he was about 21 months old. Obviously as he was already used to the nursery when he went down to one day a week, that has helped. I can imagine it will be a lot harder for a child who's new to nursery to settle.

Just to back up some comments already made, try to get a referral to a dermatologist to make sure you get effective creams. Also consider food allergies. My son is allergic to eggs. Once we found out when he was about 7 months old and I stopped eating eggs (I was breastfeeding him), the eczema cleared up within a week. He's 2.5 now and still gets small patches of eczema, but it's very well under control and we rarely use the steroid creams now. Try as much as possible to avoid using products with sodium lauryl sulphate and sodium laureth sulphate. Other than washing his hands with soap, the only products we use on our son is to wash his hair max twice a week with dermalogica sensitive face and eye wash (very expensive, but actually we don't use a huge amount of it, so a large bottle lasts for months) and Aveeno cream and Aveeno oil. I found that bathing my son made the ezcema worse, even if we used prescribed bath oils. When he was a baby, I would take him in the shower with me once a week. Now he has 2 showers a week and only has a bath occasionally, as he enjoys playing in the bath. We used ecover delicate liquid to wash my son's clothes until he was about 2 years old. I've switched back to fairy liquitabs now, as the ecover delicate doesn't get stains out, but the fairy does irritate his skin more. I've found Aveeno cream to be the best moisturiser for my son. It won't clear up the eczema, but it will help keep it away once the steroid creams have cleared up the eczema. The dermatologist gave us a much more effective steroid cream that clears up the eczema after one or 2 applications, whereas we were using the 1% hydrocortisone cream that the GP gave us for a week at a time before having a week's break and each time it would improve the eczema, but not clear it up. The dermatologist's view was that it's better to use a stronger steroid for a few days to get rid of the eczema patch within a few days than to use weaker ones for weeks...

Thanks, that's very helpful and gives us a few more choices.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I've ordered a Maclaren Quest.

We live in Southwark, but only one street away from Lewisham. Our closest primary school is Horniman School, which is in Lewisham. We're about the same distance away from both Goodrich (Southwark) and Fairlawn (Lewisham). Are we restricted to the Southwark schools only or can we apply for Lewisham schools as well? We're actually a year away from having to apply, but it would be good to know now so we have a better idea of what our options are.

Thanks for the recommendations. I've just been to the pram shop in Peckham to try the pushchairs out. Unfortunately, they didn't have the Maclaren Quest, but I tried out the Maclaren Triumph and Silvercross Pop. I found them both pretty easy to push and lightweight. The man in the shop said he'd recommend the Quest over the Triumph, though I'm not clear on what the difference is other than the Quest having an adjustable footrest. I'll probably go for the Maclaren Quest, even though I didn't get to try it out as that seems to be the most popular recommendation (looking at KateW's thread also).

Can anyone recommend a pushchair for my 1 year old that's lightweight and is compact when folded up? I don't want to spend too much money (around ?100 max) as I already have an iCandy peach blossom for my 2.5 year old and 1 year old and will use that most of the time. I mainly need a second pushchair, so that my husband can take the kids to nursery one day week (the older one will walk) and leave the pushchair there. They have very little space for pushchairs and most other parents leave Maclarens there. A Maclaren seems like an obvious choice for me, but I'm not sure which one. Should I even bother considering other brands? Other than using the pushchair one day a week for nursery, we may use it when going on holiday.

We've been with our 2.5 year old and baby and we all really enjoyed it. We went mid week, outside the school holidays. Peppa Pig World was packed in the morning and the queues were really long (over an hour wait), but the rest of the park was really empty, I guess because the older kids were at school. The crowds died down in the afternoon though and my son got to go on all the rides in Peppa Pig World in the afternoon without much queueing. There's a great soft play area in Peppa Pig World that you could go to during the busy morning period, as it's really not worth queueing an hour for the rides.

I don't have any experience of this, but in the same situation as you I would have taken her to the doctor too. I'm very surprised that the doctor didn't even want to see her standing or walking. I would ask for a second opinion from another doctor. In a completely different context, I had an experience with 2 different GPs at the same surgery dismissing my son's severe eczema at age 3 months as "something they see all the time and that he'll grow out it". I was lucky enough that my son's physio saw it differently and referred my son to a paediatrician, who they referred him to an allergy specialist and dermatologist at Kings. It turned out my son was allergic to eggs and fish, which are a massive part of my diet as I don't eat meat, the relevance being that he was exclusively breastfed. I stopped eating eggs and within a week his eczema was almost gone. Also the dermatologist was very critical of the handling of the situation by the GPs and said that the creams they had prescribed were useless for the severity of the eczema. My son's 2.5 now and he's still allergic to eggs. I was lucky that we got to the bottom of the problem before he started eating solids as the consequences could have been severe if I'd given him egg to eat. He's only "eaten" or rather his tongue has come into contact with egg twice accidentally and both times the reaction has been pretty bad given that he hadn't even ingested the egg (i.e. red swollen tongue and red itchy face within a minute or so). I've gone on a bit, but the point is that I don't think you're being over-anxious. Hopefully the doctor you saw is right, but what if she's not? Unless you find lots of others who've had the same issue and agree with the doctor, you should see another GP and asked to be referred to a physio. I'll PM you about this, but it may be worth phoning Sunshine House in Peckham and trying to speak to a physio. I'd have thought they'd be able to tell you on the phone if it's something common and whether it needs further investigation/treatment.

A friend of mine had her first and (so far) only baby at age 43. She'd only met the father (now her husband) 6 weeks before she got pregnant. Because of her age she just assumed she's never have children. They were both really thrilled as he's older than her, so he'd assumed he'd never have a family either. She didn't have any problems with the pregnancy or birth and their son is healthy.

My son's reaction at the time was either to ignore it or to have a little cry (when it really hurt him) and then to give his friend a kiss and a cuddle once he said sorry. I had a talk with my son about why he was upset last night and he said that he was upset about being hurt. I assume he's been dreaming about it, as he has previously had bad dreams about things he's anxious about (eg. when he was scared of monkeys he used to dream about them and wake up crying). When I asked him if he wanted to go [to my friend's son's name]'s house he said yes and got very excited, so he clearly still wants to play with him. We're planning to go to theirs as a family, so the husbands will be there, which should make it easier to watch the boys.

I wouldn't count on the older siblings not waking up. If I let my little one cry, my 2.5 year old usually wakes up and starts shouting "baby crying" - as if I didn't know! That's in spite of the fact that my 2 have bedrooms on different floors of the house. My little one settles well to sleep, but still often wakes up once during the night and I always immediately feed her back to sleep so as not to wake up my son and husband. She's 11 months old now and I'm trying to cut out all but her morning and evening breastfeeds in preparation for going back to work, so I'm just going to have to go through the pain of everyone being woken up and let her cry to see if she'll settle back to sleep without a feed. I'll wait until next week though as my husband has a week off work, so can have a lie in if his sleep is interrupted and can help if my son wakes up too. My son was about 18 months old when he stopped waking up in the night. I stopped breastfeeding him at age one, but then he got into a habit of wanting a yoghurt in the middle of night and I would just give it to him as it was easier to do that than have a sleepless night and work the next day. I did eventually let him cry it out at around 18 months though, mainly because I was 6 months pregnant and just too tired to get out of bed to deal with him. Neither of my 2 were frequent night wakers though, so I just had/have one waking a night to deal with. I think maybe for both of mine, the waking and feed/yoghurt became a habit rather than being anything to do with hunger or not being able to settle to sleep.

Thanks Renen and Cuppa Tea. It's helpful to get the perspective of families having to cope with a child that bites/hits other children. We've had another night of my son waking up crying during the night. He woke up 3 times last night and in the end I ended up "sleeping" on the floor in his room. I use quote marks for "sleeping", because I didn't actually sleep after 3am. When he woke up this morning he kept repeating "Get off, too close" to himself. I now therefore have no doubt that the waking and crying during the night that started on Monday night after my friend and her son came over, is due to my son being bitten and hit by my friend's son. I'm not sure now whether to take my son when I go over to my friend's house in a couple of weeks. We were all going to go, but perhaps my son and husband should stay at home and I'll just go with my daughter. Minder, in response to your question, my friend tells her son that his behaviour is "not kind" and makes him apologise.

Thanks for your views. I would never fall out with my friend over this. She's had a tough time with her son right from when he was born as he was a particularly bad sleeper and I think it must be stressful enough dealing with bad behaviour from a child than have friends give you a hard time about it too. Having said that I think I'll leave it a few months before having him over to our house again. We're going to my friend's house in a couple of weeks, so it will be interesting to see if he does the same in his own territory or not. Interestingly, he didn't attempt to hurt his 1 year old sister or my 1 year old daughter in any way. They have, however, had a lot of problems with his behaviour at nursery, so it seems that the issue is with playing with children his own/similar age. Just to add, my friend's son is very articulate and intelligent. I think he still sometimes doesn't sleep well and has eczema and hayfever. I had therefore thought that his behaviour is probably due to irritability and boredom, but I've never seen a child just bite or push another child unless they are both wanting to play with the same toy, getting in each other's way etc (that's why I describe it as "unprovoked", i.e. unprovoked by my son) and I'm having difficulty understanding how irritability and boredom can lead to "unprovoked" hurting of another child. As regards the question about my friend's reaction, she does apologise about her son's behaviour and I understand that they've tried various ways of dealing with it from completely ignoring it (so as not to give him any attention for the negative behaviour) to "time-out". She tried putting him in time-out several times at my house, but it can be difficult doing that effectively outside your own home. From what I could tell, it was her son who was deciding when time out was over. We actually have a time-out pad, which we call the naughty matt that we take with us everywhere to make disciplining our son easier (usually just the threat of the naughty matt is enough for my son). From what I've seen my friend's approach to discipline is quite a gentle approach.

A friend came over for lunch yesterday with her 3 year old son, who's had a biting and other difficult behaviour problem for a while. I knew the problems with her son's behaviour were bad, but I hadn't myself seen how bad he can be until yesterday. He bit my 2.5 year old son 4 times and pushed him several times knocking his head into a radiator cover. There were other more minor pushes and hitting. The biting, pushing and hitting was unprovoked and my son didn't retaliate in any way. My friend's son's behaviour was also appalling at the table at lunch with a lot of screaming and spitting out food. I've had a lot of 2 and 3 year old children over for lunch while on maternity leave over the last year and I've never encountered behaviour like this before in my home. I've seen a bit of pushing and shoving when both children want to play with the same toy and some fussy eaters, but I have never seen totally unprovoked violence from a 3 year old before. I know that dealing with this behaviour is difficult for my friend and so I played down the incidents while she was here, but my son was left quite confused by what happened and he woke up crying during the night last night. I've thought about it quite a lot today and I'm just having difficulty understanding why a child would behave in this way and how parents cope with a child with a biting/bad behaviour problem.

I had both of my babies at St. Thomas (in January 2009 and September 2010) and would highly recommend it. You get top class care at St. Thomas', especially if you have any complications (which I really hope you don't). I had reasonably long stays in St. Thomas' (on the ante-natal ward) for both my babies. I stayed 3 weeks for the first one and 2 weeks for the second one, so I know most of the midwives and consultants. They do a really wonderful job. I can understand that it is frustrating to have to wait hours to be seen. I too spent many hours on 3 or 4 different occasions waiting to be seen in the Day Assessment Unit for my first baby. One thing to bear in mind though is that St. Thomas' provides 24 hour ante-natal care if you need it. That is not the case with all hospitals, where you may have to wait until the next day to be seen if you have a problem/worry during your pregnancy. As for the birth experience, both of mine were c-sections and both were a positive experience in spite of that. The post natal care for first time mums is ok. The ratio of midwives to women on the post natal ward is pretty low, but they prioritise the first time mums. My experience as a second time mum was that I was pretty much ignored, whereas the first time mum in the bed opposite me had someone come to help her/check on her every one to two hours for the 2 days we were both there. She also had had a c-section just after me. Also the views are amazing, especially from the garden room in labour ward. I watched the new year's eve fireworks from there when I was staying at St. Thomas' before my first baby was born and I think it's the best view I'll ever get of the London new year's eve fireworks. Even without fireworks, the view is great, especially at night... I hope you have a great birth experience and if they're really busy and you need to be a bit pushy to get enough attention, don't worry about it and just keep pressing that call button!

Reliability is another issue with my cleaner. She often texts me on the day she's meant to come to say that she can't make it and she'll come the next day. It used be be every other week that she did this - I think she had another job every other week on my day, but rather than telling me kept making excuses. She's been better after I got cross with her for not turning up one day without telling me when I had guests coming in the evening and got home from work half an hour before my guests arrived to find the house hadn't been cleaned. She still changes her cleaning day with very little notice about once a month though, which isn't going to work for me now that I'm at home with 2 kids so if I wasn't sacking her anyway for ripping me off that would be another reason to get rid of her. Also has anyone experienced their cleaner asking them for money upfront? A couple of times I've paid my cleaner one week's pay upfront (ie a week in advance) when she's asked if I would do that as she's been short of money. I haven't minded helping her out in that way, although recently she asked me for 6 weeks pay in advance (i.e. ?240) as she didn't have enough money to pay her rent. I wanted to help her out, but I wasn't prepared to pay her so much in advance, so I paid her just one week's pay in advance. I think I've just let her take too many liberties. She clearly thinks I'm "rich" and so it's acceptable to rip me off!

Yes please PM me the details. To be honest I don't know what the etiquette for tipping is. My cleaner travels in from Essex so I decided to tip her to help with her travel costs.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I also initially wondered if she brings a helper, but I think it's unlikely because on the few occasions that someone has been home when she's cleaned she's been alone and also a couple of times she's brought her daughter, but on those occasions she's asked me beforehand. Once I've got through the c-section recovery period I think we will probably confront her about it before we sack her, just in case she has some sort of explanation. I think next time round I'll go through Selclene Dulwich. It'll be a lot easier dealing with an agency, as I'm dreading having to confront my cleaner about it. I was reluctant to use an agency before as I wanted the cleaner to keep all the money I was paying, but with 2 bad experiences I think an agency cleaner would be better for me next time. new mother - as I said I pay this cleaner ?10 an hour (all of which she keeps) plus I normally leave a a ?5 tip every other week. I paid my previous cleaner ?9 an hour (all of which she kept).

I've just had my second baby and spent some time in hospital beforehand, which meant that my cleaner ended up cleaning one day with my sister in law in the house (she normally cleans with no-one in), who said that the cleaner did not stay for the full 4 hours I'd paid her for. This led my husband to check our burglar alarm records as the cleaner has her own alarm fob registered to her name and it turns out that she's been doing around 2 hours work each time she's come when I've been paying her for 4 hours at ?10 an hour. I'm really disappointed as I thought she was trustworthy and a good cleaner. We've got a big house and she never cleans the whole house, but I assumed it was because 4 hours a week isn't enough to clean the whole house. I feel like a real idiot now that I know she's been taking me for a ride. We had the same issue with our previous cleaner not doing the hours we were paying her for, except her standard of cleaning was really low and she was also using our phone (usually for around 30 mins each time she came, calling the same couple of numbers). Is this normal or have I just been really unlucky/too trusting? I've given these cleaners keys to my house and let them come when I've been at work at any time they wanted on a set day of the week. I know cleaning is not an easy job, but only doing 2 hours work for ?40 is surely taking the piss. I don't think the service is worth ?20 an hour and even if I thought it was, I don't like being deceived. I've decided to sack my cleaner at the end of October, but until then I've had to ask her to do extra hours as I had a csection and need the help. I'm staying at home while she cleans though to make sure she does the hours. When I do find a replacement cleaner I'd like to be able to trust her to not rip me off, as I don't want to be stuck in the house every time the cleaner comes and also when I go back to work after maternity leave there will be no-one to stay at home to "supervise" her anyway. Have others had this issue with cleaners? Both my cleaners have been recommendations from friends/colleagues, which I thought meant they'd be trustworthy, but now I'm thinking maybe I should get agency cleaners going forward. That way I can at least take it up with the agency if they don't do the hours, use my phone etc and hopefully get my money back if I get ripped off again.