We managed to cross off quite a few more things on our list today, including plenty more hugging. This morning we started a game of Monopoly which all went well until we continued after lunch, when M got upset at having to break into her last £500 note and had something of a strop. It wasn't so much that she minded losing in the end, but she really was not happy at having to give up her favourite property. Still, we did plenty of maths while we were playing and by the end all was well again.
Apart from Monopoly, I managed to make the Christmas cakes (ours and a little one for my brother) and we got household jobs done and some tidying, although that one is a never-ending task, alas!
K had her ballet lesson at 5 o'clock. During the lighter evenings, she has been walking to and from ballet on her own and indeed when I first suggested she could walk home on her own in the spring she was very keen on the idea. Now though, she would rather be taken and picked up although doesn't mind walking on her own, it's generally not a problem to pick her up though and now it's dark I prefer to anyway. Today, due to timing of cooking, I knew it was going to be tight, so having dropped her off I said that I would try to be there to pick her up but to start walking home if I wasn't. Ballet usually is at least 5 minutes late finishing and I was just arriving at shortly after 10 past, when I walked in to find one of the two teachers about to phone me, to ask if was alright for her to drop K home, as a 'strange man' (as in nobody knew him) had been seen hanging around outside and she hadn't wanted to let K go on her own. As a result of this, it seemed like the ideal time to talk about what to do in a situation where she was approached by a stranger. I asked her what she would so if a stranger started talking to her when she was on her own and she didn't feel comfortable and she said she would ask them to leave her alone. I said I thought that was a good idea and asked what about if they continued and K said she wasn't sure, so I suggested if it was, for example, when leaving ballet, she should quickly return to where she knew a grown up and ask them to phone me (she knows my mobile number by heart). We also agreed that going somewhere light, with plenty of people and/or asking either an adult she knew (such as one of the ladies who work in the Co-op, who we see regularly) or a mummy with children for help was a good idea. I also told her if anyone touched her or tried to get her to go somewhere with them, then it was absolutely fine for her to scream, yell, kick, hit, punch, bite or anything else she thought was necessary to get help or to run away. She giggled a bit at this and said that she thought she would enjoy that! I did point out that she might feel rather scared, which probably wouldn't be such fun and that the violence was a means to escape and that given the choice of another punch on the nose or running, she should choose running, and on reflection she took my point. We did also agree that the likelihood of needing to use any of these strategies was very small.
M was feeling rather grotty this evening, to the point that she was in bed about an hour and a half earlier than usual, asking for a chapter of Pied Piper (which was also on our list). It was a rather upsetting chapter, with German planes bombing and strafing a road with fleeing French civilians during the invasion of France in the early part of the war. Although there were no graphic descriptions at all, it was interesting that K, who has a very vivid imagination, asked why the author had to describe it so much, but when I pointed out that there was very little of that, she did agree. Although they were clearly uncomfortable, neither K nor M wanted me to stop reading the book, which I don't think would have been the case a year ago. K did express a desire for something not about war for our next book though.
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