A while back I read Bunches and Bits idea of creating a parent-teacher conference survival basket. I thought it was such a great idea, that I stole it for gifting our teacher (Teacher N) when our conferences finally rolled around (yesterday).
I decorated a basket with some pretty ribbon and filled it with shredded paper. I included water, an energy drink, some fruit, a muffin, mints, citrus candies, tylenol, blistex, a stain remover pen, and added a very cute stamp (she uses them on paper for the kids all the time) from MJ’s Art Stamps for Teachers, just for fun.  [Do I have a picture of ours? Of course not! Grr camera!] Kidlet decorated a thankful for teacher card (since conferences lined up with Thanksgiving week it seemed appropriate) and we tucked that in as well.
Teacher N loved it! She said that in 23 years of teaching she’d never gotten anything like that, and was so touched to get such a thoughtful gift to help her through 12 hours of conferences. When we arrived at our conference time in the afternoon, she said that she’d been making the other teachers jealous all day, showing off her basket, LOL.
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The conference itself didn’t really hold any suprises. We all know that his behavior is something that we are all working on — he just seems younger than the other children emotionally and socially (and that’s not really shocking, given his history). But he is improving, having fewer emotional melt-downs, etc.Â
As we (immodestly) know, Kidlet is very bright and Teacher N had nothing but good things to say about him academically.  It’s not just that he knows things that are well ahead in grade level (ie, reading, math, etc), but the way that he looks at the world. He is constantly seeing things that tie into whatever the class is doing and the things that he knows (finding “wall words” in the community, pointing out that such and such is a noun, or a solid, etc –  that kind of thing). He is so enthusiastic, he apparently has some of the other kids (including a couple of the slower ones) doing the same thing.  She would like to have Kidlet enter TAG, but thinks we should wait a little bit to give him more time to work on his behavior and emotions.
We are probably going to have an occupational therapist look at Kidlet, mainly because of the writing situation I posted about the other day. There just seems to be a disconnect between what he knows to do and what his hand does. I had read enough on the internet to wonder if he might have some kind of sensory processing disorder. Mom and DH and a SiL thought I was just making the symptoms fit the disorder, but without any mention of it by me, Teacher N brought the subject up. So we’ll see what comes of that.
