State of the Child Address

It’s that time of year when parents everywhere trek to parent/teacher conference hoping for a good report, and not to be surprised by some off-the-wall issue like, “He sticks french fries up his nose during lunch.”

Fortunately I don’t think they’re allowed to serve french fries for lunch at school anymore. Because obviously it’s the school’s french fries and not the candy bar, bag of Doritos and 15 Oreos they ate for dinner at home that’s making kids fat.

I went to David’s Parent/Teacher conference this afternoon.

We won the lottery when it came to teachers this year. David’s teacher is excellent. She didn’t give the kids homework during Halloween week, because she knew they would be higher than kites on sugar. When David forgets his library book, and tells her it’s my fault, she tells him, “You can’t blame anyone but yourself.” See why I like this woman so much?

David’s progress report was pretty much what I suspected. He’s great at math. He’s needs a little help with reading.

I know what the issue with David and reading is. Math comes easily to David, so he likes it. Reading he has to work at. David doesn’t like to work at things. Add his stubborn streak to that, and getting him to apply himself to something he doesn’t like is hard. He is making progress, which is good, and someday I’ll figure what motivates him.

I was happy to learn that they aren’t teaching D’Nelian handwriting in first grade. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s some strange cross between cursive and printing that David learned last year. It is supposed to make the transition to cursive easier. I thought it was dumb, since it seems only elementary school teachers write that way. It think it caused confusion when it came to reading. Books aren’t printed in D’Nelian. How can they read when the letters in the book don’t look like the letters that they write?

His teacher this year doesn’t teach imaginative spelling either. You spell the word the way it’s spelled instead of however U fiel Lik. Woold U lik me 2 demonstrait a littl mor imaginativ spelling four U 2 emfasize its rediculosnes? (My Spell Check is calling me a moron right now.)

Here’s the question then. Why did they spend a whole year teaching that crap to him in kindergarten when the first grade teacher just has to undo it all? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Isn’t that confusing for the kids? If I had a job, and for a whole year they trained me to do it one way, then came in some Monday morning and said, “You know all that stuff you worked really hard leaning? Yeah, forget it. It was stupid. We’re doing this instead now.” Well, it would make me more than a little frustrated.

Thank goodness David has a good teacher this year capable of straightening all that out. Thank goodness I’m not the one that has to do it.

The best news though was when David’s teacher told me, “He’s just a really nice guy.” She said he gets along with a lot of different kinds of kids very well. He’s very kind, and it makes her job easier to have nice kids like him in her class.

Of course as she’s telling me this I’m thinking, “Are we talking about the same kid that water-boarded his napping brother in the back seat of the car with  a straw and cup of soda last week?”

He really did. Wade fell asleep, and David slowly dripped pop onto his hair. Why David did this I don’t know, but when I took Wade out of his car seat his hair was wet, and he smelled like Coke.

But it’s like they say, “If you can’t be nice to your family, be nice to everyone else.” OK. They don’t really say that. And David is a good kid at home too.

Most of the time.

I am so very proud that David  is so kind.

Reading and math skills certainly are important. But what good is all the knowledge in the world if you don’t know how to treat people with kindness?