ABSTRACT
John had attended the children’s centre since he was 2. Now at 3 years of age he
was about to move into the attached nursery for 3 to 5 year olds. It was essentially
the same building his elder brother and sister had attended several years before
when it had been an LEA nursery school. John’s brother and sister had been seen by
both parents and nursery staff as exceptionally able children, the label ‘gifted’ having
sometimes been applied to them, especially in relation to their early reading and num-
ber skills. As his parents had been vocal about their two older children’s achievements
and ‘gifts’, they were equally open and forthright about their disappointment in John’s
apparent lack of literacy and numeracy skills. The Centre had found John to be a quiet
child, ‘almost reclusive’, one member of staff had said, given to sudden short outbursts
of ‘difficult’ behaviour. On looking through the new entrants’ profiles, Angela, the cen-
tre’s EYP, felt that John was making age/stage appropriate progress in most of the
six areas of learning. What did concern her, however, were his keyworker’s comments
regarding his reclusive nature, punctuated by sudden acts of aggression towards
either staff or children. Often he would soil himself after such an episode, which nearly
always seemed to occur at the end of the day. The soiling was seen by his parents
as a particularly ‘backward’ step, even after Angela tried to explain that transitions
sometimes had this effect on a child and they should be patient. John’s parents got
into the habit of expecting to talk at some length on a daily basis to his keyworker or,
failing that, another member of staff about their son’s progress, often making compar-
isons, within John’s hearing, between him and his elder siblings. When his keyworker
discussed this with Angela, she suggested the keyworker made more regular close
observations of John. These highlighted his interest in dinosaurs and model making,
as well as his skills on the computer and on the outdoor apparatus. He particularly
liked to find original ways to negotiate the obstacle courses and spent time setting up
complicated ‘dens’ from twigs and other materials at hand. However, John’s parents
were not responsive to his keyworker’s reports of such positive activities; what they
wanted to see was some clear evidence of writing or mathematical skills.
