Though we experience many defeats, we must never be defeated.
The dreaded parent teacher conference. Man, I had NO idea before I had Ashlynn how emotional school meetings are for parents. I’m pretty sure that is across the board regardless of a child having additional challenges or not, but it is SO brutal for us who have children with additional challenges.
I think I was clueless for a couple reasons.
1.) As a child, I loved parent teacher conference. They were usually really predictable. I had good grades, my teachers praised me and in turn my parents praised me, and everyone left with smiles.
2.) As a professional in my pre-children days, I interpreted silence as many things such as: agreement, disinterest, lack of caring, inattention……..oh I could go on, but let’s not. Let’s talk about what I have recently discovered silence usually means:
PAIN, WORRY, IMMEDIATE PREOCCUPATION WITH WHAT I NEED TO BE DOING MORE OF…….
It’s really that simple.
I recently had Ashlynn’s conference and I was DREADING it. I was talking to a client’s mom a couple weeks ago, and were commiserating that the conference serves to remind us that no matter how much growth or progress we are seeing, they are still remaining behind. We are faced with numbers to prove to us how behind they are. It sucks. What is there to say? Then you’re left with so many things to help fix that you become instantly overwhelmed. What is the priority? How do I fit this in?
Last year exactly a day ago today, I wrote my post about Ashlynn’s Pre-K conference.
It sucked. Out of 14 pre-literacy boxes, 4 were checked. Basically she knew how to hold the book upright, find the cover, and turn a page. Instead of being focused on that, all the teacher could talk about was how to help her with her routine. I sat at that meeting wondering when we were going to talk about academic related stuff, but that never came. So again, silence. I guess that teacher didn’t think she could do that stuff so she just focused on her following a routine.
Anyway, back to Ashlynn’s conference this year. I was probably quieter than normal, but I was…happy? Yes! Ashlynn is making progress in all areas. Her teacher seems to genuinely love her, has actual data and data points showing me the progress and areas of need, and gave me stuff to take with me to work on. I don’t have to go home and think, oh my gosh, how am I going to help her. Everytime I think that, I have a folder full of stuff now.
Ashlynn is following the routine, doing better at paying attention, apparently is a little actress during care and community, loves to sing, has a strength in MATH…yes people..you read that right…a teacher noticed she has a strength and then showed me the results. It was still hard. She’s still struggling in many areas, but I didn’t leave devastated. I left with hope. She has an amazing team. Everyone is working together. I could also see how private OT that is just doing Handwriting Without Tears has really helped her, because she couldn’t even write her name in the Spring and now she can copy letters or write letters when people dictate them.
I was transported back to preschool when they were arguing with me that she has to write her name using both upper and lower case, and the OT’s were telling me we needed to stick in upper case or we would have a situation where she couldn’t do either. I wrote about that here in a post entitled something I say all the time:
There are no easy answers, only tough choices
……and I smiled. I smiled because her letters are all in uppercase, but last spring she couldn’t even write her name and this year she can copy and write from dictation…and really that is only within maybe 6-9 months of intense handwriting work. Talk about being worth every penny and talk about being happy I trusted my mommy gut.
Throughout preschool I had to believe everything we are doing to help her will pay off, just like when she wasn’t speaking and I had to believe all the work I was putting in seemingly without any progress would also pay off.
We have to work harder than everyone else, well, I mean, SHE has to work harder than everyone else, but luckily she has a mom who is not afraid of work; and now she has TEAM behind her at school who isn’t afraid of hard work either and who I can tell genuinely believe in her like I do too.
We’ve climbed a lot of mountains, and we have a lot more to go. At least though I don’t feel anymore like we are slipping further and further behind while the mountain only grew taller. We take it one step a time, but we are getting there. We are getting there.
