AIBU - HV Visit

[RalphLaurenLover]

Been to the HV today for my DS's 18-24 month check and she spoke to me like I was a complete and utter idiot.

His name is double barrelled and both names is what he goes by yet she refused and would only use the first one despite me asking numerous times.

My DS didn't want to sit on my lap and wanted to stand yet she point blankly refused this so made me hold him down kicking and screaming whilst she then waved a tub of 100's and 1000's in his face and wondered why he wasn't cooperating!

I was with my friend and her LO (6 weeks older) and every time he come up to the desk to look what she was doing she'd turn to him and go "No these aren't your toys go and stand over there" then gently push him away his mum couldn't even get a word in to ask him to move before she'd do this.

She asked me how many words can DS say and I said I'm not sure as I don't really count never know I should of just off the top off my head I said about 15/20 and she looked at me and said "Is that it?! He should be stringing sentences together like "mummy can you get me a drink please I'm thirsty" and saying at least 50+ word clearly" She looked disgusted she carried that look on when she showed my DS a picture of a dog, cat and ducklings face and asked him what they were and to point to them. Well he completely ignored her request and looked at her to which she then said "So he doesn't even know the basic animals then?!" I told her he did if you took him and showed him a real dog/cat/duck he'd say it and point as he does when I take him to the country park.

She then gave me a lecture about why he's not in Pre-School yet (I don't work and I am a single parent plus he's not even 2 yet so I can't get him seen round until he is) and if he was he'd be 'normal' for his age I.e the speaking and pointing at pictures.

AIBU or was she just a douche I mean I don't know any 2 year old that can string together a lengthy sentence and knows over 50+ words

Exactly tge body, I was developmentally delayed, hardly said a word, and I have an Msc in health psychology, I chat for England, means nothing. Children develop and grow at different rates. Dd 7who has ASD was very delayed in her speech at pre school level. Now she does not shut up, asking question after question. Is sounding like her other non ASD peers.

Op I am so sorry you have such a rude hv!

When I had my third child, my fantastic hv (who had been my hv for all of my children up to this point) was the person who noticed I had PND. She was fabulous and got me doctor apps and when the dr wasn't listening she made them! She visited weekly until I was feeling better and arranged gym sessions to build my confidence and even made my mother understand that I couldn't just "snap out of it"!

Fast forward to hv for dc4 (fabulous one retired) and she was useless. I have up trying to connect with her!

Dc1 was born when I was 18. I never had trouble with the hv or the paediatric doctor at our practise (who also happened to be my own gp and knew me pretty well) but other "younger" mums said she was judgemental and treated them like kids. It's so wrong on so many levels. I, and most of my friends, were perfectly capable of taking care of our children and knew if there was a problem.

For the record, ds1 and ds2 didn't have 50+ words at 2 years old and I was told off by a hv for potty training too early with dd1!!! I was told she would regress if I did get her dry (she didn't) and that she didn't have the ability to know when she was weeing. Funny that cos she was dry within a couple of weeks of her saying this and has been ever since. She's 11 now!

Nearthewindymill, to be spoken to like that is unacceptable, but to be honest you don't sound particularly pleasant. You've decided that they're all vile and you wouldn't want to be referred by someone less educated than yourself..,good god!!!!
I hope your Oxford bound child learns a better attitude than you. What a ridiculous attitude to encourage people to reject the service of health visitors. Yes, there are sadly poor ones but there are also amazing ones too.

All I'm trying to say ilovecolinfirth is that if a mother has a concern about her baby she can visit the GP and ask for a referral. It doesn't have to be done via the HV and shouldn't need an HV to facilitate it. For the mother above who is worried about ASD traits in her two year old son and whose health visitor is not taking her seriously, I would advise that she makes an appointment with her GP and asks for a specialist referral if the HV isn't taking her seriously.

I think it's of great concern that HVs miss so much, do not take parental concerns seriously and that the service overall is so hit and miss.

Thank you however for your rather nasty comments - clearly you are on the vile side too.

Huh? How can a child be expected to string a sentence together like 'mummy can you get me a drink please I am thirsty' with a vocabulary of about 50 words? He would be using 20% of his entire vocabulary in that one sentence!

My ds just had his 2 1/2 year check and on the questionnaire hey asked if he could speak sentences of 3 to 4 words so I assumed that was the general expectation.

Either you have misunderstood somewhere, or your HV is bats hit crazy
or you are exaggerating somewhat

At 24 months they should be expecting around 50 words plus 2-3 word combos in sentences that are not learned phrases. So 'here you go' would class as a learned phrase because you learn it as one chunk. But 'more grapes' 'more milk' would be a sentence because they have formed it themselves. I think this is what she meant. Unfortunately she didn't say it correctly because she's a complete and utter douche!

I have been to the GP and all I was told was go back to HV as they only refer when HV service tell them to

sleepI had a lovely HV and she's just been replaced, this one just did DD2s 18m check (must be a new thing as DD1 didn't have one).

i'm one of those "30s middle class" mums and still got crap so don't worry!

Apparently DD2s speech is extraordinary, yet when shegot further down the tick list to me saying she has her dummy to sleep suddenly it was holding her speechdevelop m

Well then sock what I'd do is this. I'd write in the Red Book a note that says: "I saw HV on x and she said there was no problem. I went to GP on x for a referral and GP said to refer back to HV because they only refer on upon instruction of HV". I would go back to the HV with that note and if the HV refuses again to refer I would write another note in front of her and ask her to initial it and confirm in writing that in her professional opinion there are no grounds for referral. I bet you'll be referred within in nano seconds.

Erm just seen my partial response not sure what happened there!

Basically all was fine until she realised we still had dummy and bottle to sleep then apparantly these were massively affecting DD2

So I was to go away, sort her sleep out, at the same time as removing her bottle and comforting dummy. Piece of piss, great planning to do all 3 things at once.

So don't fret, its not just you, they have a tick list and some have to stick to it rigidly and some are actual sane human beings, much like the rest of the world!

Good lord! What a weird and stupid woman!

Reminds me of the (locum) midwife who visited me after ds was born. She was so patronising and her tone of voice so disapproving.

After she left, I was in tears because she told me off for having dog hair on the sofa (I'd just had a section) and for using colic remedy. She was foul. She was so unhelpful about the problems I had breastfeeding and said my boobs were 'full of milk' (they weren't).

She hadn't bothered to read my notes and asked me, rather accusingly, why I was still having midwife visits when my baby was three weeks old. Had she read my notes, she would have seen that ds had been in SCBU for the first two weeks as he was ill when he was born. I actually believe this woman contributed directly to my PND.

Nice. Was she even an actual hv? She doesn't sound like she knew what she was doing at all!

Glad you've got a normal one coming to you. Well done for complaining.

I didn't misunderstand her it's what she said.

When complaining I told her I have no concerns and how obviously I don't write down all the words he say's. The thing with DS he goes through phases as most children so he continuously use to add "good boy" on to the end of everything and now he doesn't now his thing is No, or "get out now". Yet when writing down all the words he can say so as what I remember so far it's 36.

Apparently she's one of the oldest team members but doesn't normally do checks (maybe this is why) I said i most probably won't be participating in any more checks I had a C-Section at first and they didn't even follow that up it ended up getting infected because she was too focused on getting me to do pelvic floor exercises and not listening to me when I said I'd had a C-Section she didn't even notice I had non-disposable stitches in.

tutu she told me off for DS not knowing what a train is, he has no interest in trains we've been on one once to see santa at Harrods but we don't live near a train station. If you give him a train he'll put it down and find a car say car, say 'Go Go Go Broom-Broom' he knows what they are.

To be fair though it's up to your community mw to check your cs scar - as a HV I won't be checking scars unless the mother mentions it to me and even then I'd refer back to the mw or GP.

ralph

My dd knows what trains are. They are all called Thomas or live in Chuggington. You're clearly not letting him watch enough TV

We have a HV (actually think she's a nursery nurse) who can be incredibly rude/insensitive. I used to always pretend to be feeding when she came to call people in to baby clinic so I could wait for the nice one to come out.

In defence of hv though the nice one was amazing and got me a referral to another pct for tongue tie after the local ent dept decided not to snip it as dd was still gaining weight. Apparently feeds being excruciatingly painful was not a good enough reason.

We defiantly don't watch Thomas or chuggington is that bad? :p he doesn't watch Peppa either!

We're jake and the Neverland pirates, despicable me and Doc McMuffin haha

I don't get this idea that you're supposed to know how many words your child speaks, surely you lose track quite quickly? I have to admit with my PFB I once tried writing them all down, but I soon gave it up as a lost cause because I always found myself realising I'd forgotten some, or she's just learned a whole batch of new ones (like 'bollocks' at age 17 months on the way to nursery and that was all I heard for the next week).

pointythings, agree. There's the stage where you're not sure if what they're saying is meant to be a word or not. Then there's the stage where they say one word one week then drop it and say a different word the next week. Then there's the stage where they echo every single thing you say and you have no idea what's their words and what's mimicry. Then there's the stage where they use five new words every day till you lose count.

I agree that she sounds horrible and very unprofessional. I'm glad you got an apology. I would definitely make a formal complaint about her. She should not be doing the checks with that attitude!

I have a list that I add to every time he says a word that is not on the list already,purely because if I ever get as far as an ASD assessment I know it's quite important

I'm voting for HV is a douche too - some are.

Actually all the ones I've met from my practice are

DP became (luckily temporarily) disabled when ds was 5 weeks old. I went to the HV for clinic, told her and asked for help. Was told she'd look into it and ring me. Went back the following week, again on the verge of tears, asked for help. Went weekly until ds was 6 months then monthly (for my sins, it's on at the same time in the same place as breastfeeding group!). By the time ds was 10 months - and I'd had no phone call, nothing except the advice to cook extra food and freeze for another day when I was subsisting on cereal and toast while breastfeeding - I let off at what turned out to be the Nursery Nurse. HV rang, apologised, referred me to get Health Start vouchers (useless as didn't qualify!) and as a result of the call got my GP to ring me because she suspected PND no shit sherlock! GP had seen me/ds several times for other things, rolled her eyes with me and agreed that what the HV thought was PND was actually justifiable rage at the complete uselessness of the system hv's themselves and she was impressed at my lack of swearing :o

Maybe once MNHQ have finished with Bounty they could start on post-natal and early years care? I keep hearing about wonderful HVs, and despite a rocky start was determined not to tar them all with the same brush; but actually I have been universally confirmed in the negative stereotype by every single one I've met