The school meeting

I sent the school a nice vague email to say that now we've had time to process things, we'd like to meet with the teacher and principal to discuss some more.

The meeting was on Tuesday.

D and I agreed beforehand on the three things we wanted to get across:

1. the tone of the discussion last time was so serious and we are upset that they haven't mentioned anything to us before if, in fact, things are indeed that serious

2. we are concerned that they can't seem to get the best out of our boy because he does display very different positive behaviour outside of school

this part of the blog post brought to you by Kendra

';lkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkjjjjjjjjjjjjjmmmmmmmmmmmccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

3. we think the reason he wants to play with K during play times is because he doesn't feel secure in the class and she is his safe place

4. bonus if things were going well - maybe there's a personality clash between him and the teacher

Both owners of the school were there plus the teacher.

D intro'd, I said about a sentence or two and then went into point number 1. The one lady showed me C's report and said there's actually nothing in there to be concerned about and that they apologise for coming on too strong.

I'm a high S (details!) and D's a wordsmith so we consider the choice of words very carefully. We were able to give examples of words used and I think they saw why we freaked out.

I won't go into everything step by step but bottom line, we said we agree they have to socialise but by forcing them separate might be doing more harm than good, and they need to rather do it as I've suggested to them - play together but include other kids.

The co-owner said that Connor has mastered all the emotional aspects - that is the thing they look at seriously. The things he needed to work on are not that important (which was what I got out of the report before the actual meeting!) in the grand scheme of things, like the jumping, etc.

We also said now that we know they need to jump, we'll practise jumping. I mean, it's quite ridiculous, some of these things. D took the kids into the garden after church on Sunday and they were all jumping around while I "fixed" lunch. Done! They can jump.

see, this is how I know Alice - with blonde hair :)

K told me today that they've been playing with other kids. K is actually not keen on this at all - she prefers to play alone if he's not there.

Today C stayed home (fever) so K played with another little girl and my friend's twins.

However, did you know the girls at age 3-4 are already cliquey and even my friend's kids don't always want to play? Oy! They all do this switching around of friends which, of course, I talk about immediately and tell them I don't allow meanness.

We also talked about how we know they have 14 kids to teach but we want C to keep loving learning and school and being a happy, loving little guy because it's not necessary to go hard-core since he's 3 (okay, nearly 4), not 7.

It all seemed to go well however his actual teacher's body language was not great and D said to me afterwards he doesn't think she's changed her mind and that it seems the other two might be a bit scared of approaching things with her in case she leaves.

I told her on Tuesday we'll be working together with her a lot more closely to make sure he's doing all the stuff they want (but unsaid by me although implied... also to check on things over there!).

I picked K up today and said HI like I normally do to C's teacher. She was a bit reticent but I just pushed through and she was fine at the end. So we'll persist.

That's it.

they still had their "babies" on their backs!

I have asked Nanny S to speak to the teacher's assistant and suss out how C behaves in class with the teacher. C likes the TA - he always talks about her helping him so I don't feel quite so bad to leave him there.

I'm going to defer to D's instincts on this one because he (rightly) says, "sometimes, Marsh, you refuse to give up on a bad situation" (too right - I do have a problem letting go).

What do you think?

PS Julia read that last post and emailed me a lovely long reply (I have lots of you who do that - I love the feedback but miss having the responses all in one place) because she can't access my blog from work to comment.

Anyway, I showed D and he said she's spot-on. I said she has some experience with people not seeing her children the way she does. And then she wrote the most beautiful post right here (go read - worth the click) and all this Connor stuff was put into perspective once again.