Scheming For Literacy

Anna and I met our key-worker yesterday. Every child under the age of 5 in Britain is assigned one. They’re qualified nurses, and many are also midwives, who are the first point of contact for any and all health related questions. Anna and I had gone in to weigh Anna. She is on the cusp of needing a larger car seat. The 9 kg cusp. It turns out she is 8.54 kg, meaning that she is slightly too small for the next car seat and right at the 50th percentile.

She was given her “red book,” which I was most happy to receive. A few times fellow parents have asked about her red book relating to weight or height or whatever (it contains her immunization record, and a record of her check-ups, etc) and when I explain that I have no idea what they’re talking about, I get frowns and looks of “you’re not much of parent, are you?” Well, now I am armed with Anna’s red book and despite it being completely empty, I feel a better parent for it.

At eight months, all children are given a little package that encourages reading. It has details on joining the library, some book order forms that get you books inexpensively, and a couple of books too. The books are a bit odd. Not exactly Each Peach Pear Plum or Moo, Baa, La La La but new books nonetheless. For Anna, this means new pages to turn (which is so exciting right now that she seldom has the patience to actually let you read what is on the page) and new book spines to chew on.

I was clearly slightly baffled when they handed me our bag of reading goodies. The Nurse explained that it was a, “a government scheme to encourage literacy.” I’m not teasing the scheme, because I think it is great. And Brits reading this will think it odd that I find the word scheme funny because it is perfectly normal to use the word here in that context. But North Americans: a “scheme” to get kids reading? Don’t mind us, we’re just going to quietly trick your kid into reading. The nurse also wants to make a home visit. I’ve arranged for that to happen after we get into our house. I can only imagine our file, and what schemes might suddenly apply to us if they saw our current state of affairs. Mind you, we might get more free stuff.

All in all, it is great. The nurses were fantastic and genuinely helpful. I feel better for having had Anna weighed.