Well, everyone else is writing about their children’s parent-teacher conferences so I guess I might as well too. We had our chat yesterday and everything is well and good. Jake is highly competent in all the basic skills they reviewed. She said he is a very bright boy and just is still having trouble focussing and following directions. He’s one of the younger kids in his class, so hopefully those skills will catch up by mid-year. There are some things we need to work on with him (mostly related to focussing and not rushing through projects), but academically he is doing just fine.
As annoying as it is to hear that your kid is easily distracted in a large group, it’s something he’s going to need to learn how to do in order to deal with life in this world, you know? To me, these social lessons are just as important as academics. I have dealt with far too many socially inept individuals in both professional and personal settings, so I’m really glad that we have good communication with his teacher and we’re working together to get Jake on the right track.
I don’t remember if I talked about our parent-teacher conference, but we heard some of the same things you did. She said that T tends to do his work a little more slowly, he also won’t always raise his hand in a group but will in smaller groups or when it’s one-on-one. She said that he also needs to work on math(!) and try to stay focused – he gets distracted easily and sometimes seems to zone out. In his class he is the youngest, some of the kids are a full year older than he is (sometimes I wonder if I should have held him a back a year like some of the other parents did), so I think that’s part of it too. But overall, it went well and T is doing everything he should be for the most part which I was happy to hear. His teacher has been doing it a while and unfortunately I don’t think she takes any enjoyment in it and sees more negative than positive at this point, which really kinda sucks.
I hope that it’s something that will get better as he gets older. I’m very ADD and I know both of the girls are. Sounds like a good conference besides that though. You’re lucky she’s a good teacher. 🙂