Conferences

Parent/Teacher conferences were held last week. I must confess that they are not my most favorite activity. It was nice this time to actually have most of Jadon's team present for the conference. Most of the time it is just the teacher, but this time we had the OT and SLP there as well and had a very good conference. First off, I have to say that I hate the way the report cards are set up. Of course they show that he is below level in everything, but they do not take into account all the wonderful strides he continues to make. Sure he's not up to grade level, but this year he has learned to barrow and carry in addition, he is taking spelling tests, and is telling time to the 5 minutes. He is reading has taken off and he has started to write complete sentences describing what is happening in a picture (The horse in jumping). His big error in his writing is that he forgets the period. He has started to learn how to type and is actually using a couple of fingers on both hands. His speech continues to be the area that concerns me, but they have decided to encourage longer utterances and after my request are giving him a sheet of sentences for routine things that he can say such as May I go to the bathroom, please? instead of go potty. Jadon is such a visual learner and I think that this may have the possibility to help his speech! For some reason people tend to equate how smart someone is with their ability to speak (a topic for a future post). My response to all this is to listen only partially to all the negative and to celebrate all the positive. I figure as long as there is progress from conference to conference, as long as the percentage points are going up, I will shout for joy and we will have high 5's all around!