Parent teacher conferences

(picture from 2006)

Parent teacher conferences were today and continuing tomorrow. Today I had Joe's. Tomorrow I have Max's. I was also supposed to have Sam's but her teacher is on bed rest now and the sub has just not been there long enough to know the children that well yet.

So let's talk about Joe's, shall we?

He has the same teacher Max and Sam had. With Max there were some issues with her and Max, but seriously, Max comes with his own issues. With Sam she was fine. No issues. However, she finally told me she thought Sam was falling behind in reading towards the end of the year. Yes, reading in Kindergarten. My how times have changed!

This year with Joe there are issues. I see Joe as a typical 5 year old boy. Full of energy and craziness. She, however, does not. She thinks his behavior is "atypical," "odd for his age group," and just not normal. Whatever! He is a very smart boy. He is going to feed on annoying the heck outta someone if he knows he can. Now, I know some of these behaviors she is talking about are not things to annoy her.

Behaviors she sees are the following (or so she says)....
flapping his hands/arms
spinning in circles
hissing
hissing while waving his hand at someone
some posture thing
and some tongue thrust thing.

I have seen the hissing and hissing with him waving his hands. Flapping and spinning? Not so much. Yeah, I'll see him flap his arms if he is about to 'take off' or something similar. I don't see this as "atypical" though. Not sure about the tongue thing or the posture thing. She also says he just will flat out refuse to do somethings. Yup, that is Joe. And yup, that is ALL my kids. If they don't want to do something, well good luck getting it done!

She asked if I wanted her to wait it out or go to the next step. I told her I think she could wait it out b/c I really don't see him act so oddly at home, but if she thinks we should move to the next step, go for it. So we are waiting. Then she asked me, "what about at the end of year when these things are still going on or his learning is behind?" Me, "well is he behind right now?" Her, "no. He is doing great." Um, OK.

By the end of the year kindergartners are supossed to know 50 sight words. As of now he already knows 29. That is over half and we just finished up 1st quarter. He is great at mathematical things and pretty good at counting. He counts to 100 except he leaves 2 of the teen numbers out. He has NO problems with patterens. Personal safety stuff he is doing well in. That is first and last name, parents names, phone number with area code and address. I have not started on teaching him the address yet because we focused on phone number first. He now knows that with no problem. I will start with his address now and I am guessing it won't be long before he knows that as well.

She just could not stress enough on how "atypical" and "odd" his behavior was. While I was somewhat venting/gossiping with Max's resource teacher afterward, the Spanish teacher walked in to say Hi to Joe. He invited me to his room. He told me what all he does for the grade levels and just some basic info. I thought it was kinda odd but maybe he was bored! He said he never has visitors in his room so he was happy to share. Since I was there I asked for his observation. I asked if Joe acted odd or different in his class. He said Joe is an excellent student. Nothing odd at all. He said Joe is so quiet and does everything he is asked to do. Good to know. Now I think I will email a couple of the "specials" teachers and ask if they see anything odd. I mean really, if Joe is SO atypical, then surely other teachers see it as well, right?

People at school I talk to about this always say, "well SHE is the odd one!"

Seriously, am I going to have 3 for 3? 3 kids with issues in school. urgh!