Vicarious Rocky

That's what Sage says this pre-meeting to the November teacher parent meeting was all about this morning. And I hate to admit that my worry was unfounded, but I think he's right. He shared with me his realization that at this price point for a school, teachers are going to find out what it is your kid needs to work on to be an uber-human being and then communicate and team up with you to measure progress and issue reports. He doubted any child got the, "She's doing great! No worries" meeting as that would imply lack of involvement on the teacher's part and a lack of challenge in the classroom.

In my defense, I will say they should not send cryptic emails about spontaneous meetings involving adjustment and development. That is simply not cool.

So Indy is fine. The language thing is still up in the air and he may be tested again today. They do have things they want to work on and things we can work on at home, but it's all stuff that would resolve after two years of preschool (of which he is in week 5, for the record). They acknowledged he was the youngest kid in class. Assured me that they have these pre-meetings with a lot of new parents. Then stroked my ego saying he was a bright and creative little boy that had clearly had lots of interesting life experiences.

Then came the less sugary part where they implied that those experiences did not appear to be particularly structured experiences or experiences with large numbers of children or large amounts of simultaneous stimulation. Right. True.

So this is what we are working on . . . getting Indy to respond immediately to his name when said only verbally. They always have to touch him to get his attention. Speaking of attention, he has very little of it on tasks he doesn't enjoy. Puzzles were specifically mentioned, which I find hilarious because I HATE puzzles. Apple next to tree trunk. Evidently he spends a lot of time wandering between tasks and little friends and not much time staying in one spot as he is told to do. Then there's the question of willfullness -- how much of this is him not "getting" what's expected vs. not wanting to do it? Quite a bit, it would seem, as he suddenly seems to lose auditory processing skills right around clean up time. "I'm sorry what? Did you say something about picking up toys?"

When they said the word, "Attention," I of course had to ask if they were worried about attention deficit and was relieved at their "Hell No!" reaction. Because I've seen him play with army men for a solid 45 minutes. And yes, that's not a puzzle, but I'm glad to see they were not implying any kind of serious diagnosis around puzzle time problems. Jesus Christ! Did I just write "Puzzle Time Problems?" This is god damn absurd.

Me being me, I have a plan all set for home that involves a chart and little accomplish-able, direction-able tasks and games that require attention and follow through. I'll keep you posted.