Too Much Pressure?

Charlie is such a lovely little chap. At 6, he is bright, happy and despite the ability to be a bit of a diva at times on the whole he’s a pretty easy kid. He is now in year 1 at school and from what we can gauge from his teachers reports he is really excelling especially in his maths. But with this good progress and sound knowledge brings homework and this is where I’m starting to worry.


Charlie is putting enormous pressure on himself to get things right. I am sat writing this after we had tears when practising his spellings in which he got 3 out of 10. Phonics have worked really well in his reading but when it comes to spellings it’s proving that little bit harder to grasp. But in all fairness if you have been taught to sound out the letters words such as said, treasure, little and injure are proving a bit of a challenge this week. By Wednesday we are starting to get over the hump in the road and he’s clicking with them but today there was a meltdown.
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Why Won’t My Child Eat?

I’m starting with an exasperated sigh. For the fourth night in a row the dinner table has become a battle ground; Charlie on one side and me & my husband on the other and I fear we are on the losing side.

I don’t quite know where to start or what to say but mealtimes with my six year old have become frustrating, frightening and left me wondering what the hell I can do.

Charlie has always been a somewhat fussy eater. Although over the last few months I’ve really noticed they started to get better and seen a great improvement in his eating, but over the last few weeks this is rapidly declined and become a nightmare. He has started gagging, coughing, screaming and claiming is going to be sick when is eating his meal at teatime. He becomes hysterical and cannot be calmed down at all. He seems to be gagging and retching at the smallest tiniest bits of food days previously eaten with no problems whatsoever. I’m at a complete and utter loss what to do we have tried everything; with tried letting him choose what he wants to eat, we have tried tough love by telling him he’s got to eat everything on his plate and we have a even told him that he doesn’t have to eat anything he doesn’t want to eat but all of this just seems to fall on deaf ears. When he becomes involved in one of these episodes and is Coughing like mad and we are telling him to take the food out and spit it out but he just becomes incoherent and just starts screaming and won’t listen to anything you’re saying. I’m really don’t know what to do as when he’s snacking and eating breakfast he’s absolutely fine. But it all comes to a head for the evening meal and we are all sat round the table together the girls look on absolutely bewildered as he becomes hysterical for no apparent reason.

Is anybody else experienced anything like this? I am thinking the only option we really have is to go and take into the doctors to see if they can get any further insight and hope that it’s nothing more serious than him just not wanting to eat what I’ve cooked.

Please can anyone offer any advice?
B xx