Cally, I'm glad you've got your voice back now , that can't have been nice.

Re reading, I found with DD1 that there were definitely different "windows" during the day when she would read with a lot more concentration/patience. After tea is good here, before tea is a disaster. TBH we don't have any problems with miss E fidgeting - but I suspect the readers were "too easy" last year, they had a very limited range in the reception box. Already we've had completely different readers come home (longer text, more words, etc). BUT - I'm quick to prompt her when she stalls. I usually sound the start of the word and then she gets it.

TBH I have no idea how well she is actually reading because she constantly surprises me at what she reads in other contexts. Like when I'm reading to her (eg, Milly Molly Mandy, not a huge # of pictures) and she corrects me (!). I think she uses a predictive method more than decoding the letters phonetically, which is good for fluency now but I'm not sure whether it might be a disaster a bit further down the track? Anyway, they have this trick at school which is pretty neat: every time you can't work out a word by yourself, you hold up a finger. If you get to five fingers, then maybe you're reading the wrong book, and it's best to pick another one.

LOL Arte at your internal happy dance. Ah it's so peaceful when they just come home and there are no homework, isn't it? Re the alexithymia - from my reading it seems like there may be a bit of both aspects. For the family member I'm thinking of, I think there may be an inherited aspect, but then I think about that person's mother and their extremely limited range of emotional expression (including facially) and then I wonder if it's a learnt response to the absence of emotional feedback? Plus in this case there was also a significant head injury at a young age. (FWIW alexithymia can also be a trait in people with PTSD, another kettle of fish). BUT I do believe that even IF it was a born personality trait, early recognition and then explicit teaching of self-awareness and corresponding social skills would help enormously and might even grow some adaptive brainal pathways, kwim? There are plenty of kids with aspergers who display alexithymic traits and who, with good early intervention, go on to function well in this area. It's the people who get to their 40s and 50s without ever realising they're out of sync with 98% of the world's population who are the ones who are going to struggle, IMO.

BTW "gypsy fair" sounds awesome. Again I'm wanting to move to NZ.

Cass, I will let you know how the colour thing goes, I'm kind of just feeling my way because i don't want to spend a bajillion dollars on buying other people's kits. Bummer missing the CFA meeting, but I'm sure they would be happy to send someone out to talk to you, seeing as how you're new to the whole shebang. Anyway, it's good excuse to knock on a few more neighbours' doors, if you haven't already.