Making An Impression

Readers of my blog (ie...my mom and Ken's mom), may remember me writing about getting summoned to Owen's classroom for a conference due to his disruptive and rude behavior. His teacher wasn't sure if it was due to his vision related learning problem or what was going on. She just knew that he wasn't acting right and was more than a little concerned about his inattentiveness.

This happened right before Christmas break. I told her that I didn't think that it was related to his vision problems. I thought he was just being a twit and she needed to put her foot down with him. His vision problems, while very real, don't give him an excuse for acting like a disrespectful twit who isn't putting forth any effort.

That's my opinion, of course. And you know what they say about opinions....

I'm not completely heartless (okay...I probably am but that's a different post) but I do realize that he's 7 and probably needs a break. So, we gave him a two week break on his vision therapy and his vision therapist and I decided that we needed to adjust the amount of work that he's doing daily once school gets back into session.

Anywho, on Sunday night before school started, I sat him down and told him about the conversation that I had with his teacher. I told him that I understood that he may be overloaded and explained that we were going to reduce his workload for vision therapy.

But I also reiterated that, although we do understand that he is probably feeling a little pressure from the vision therapy, that it did NOT give him a free excuse not to try his best and we definitely weren't going to accept him being disrespectful to his teacher.

He was, understandably, upset. By this point, Ken had joined the conversation and we continued to explain to him that he wasn't in trouble but we were "throwing a flag on the play" and giving him a "two minute warning" to straighten up and try his best. (He understands football, thus why we used the analogies.)

Apparently that conversation stuck with him. When we were talking to him, he said that he gets really distracted by the reading group and can't focus. On his own initiative, he asked his teacher to allow him to move to a different area of the room for his independent reading so he wouldn't be tempted to be distracted.

His teacher sent me a note a few weeks ago and said that he had made a poor decision about something and before she had to correct him, he self-corrected whatever it was that he was doing and moved in the right direction.

This was all good news. I had an IEP meeting yesterday with the team that was assembled to deal with his vision problem. I found out during the meeting that he had made a deal with his partner in crime that they had to stop talking during class and needed to get their work done.

I asked him about it last night and he said that he made a decision that he wasn't behaving properly in class and thought that he needed to have a conversation with his friend. He said that they needed to talk when it was appropriate and he needed to do his best. Additionally, he said that when he realizes that he's talking inappropriately, he stops and if the child beside him is instigating him, he asks to be moved away from the temptation.

His teacher confirmed all of this.

I wouldn't have thought that he could be so responsible and make such good decisions. I'm not surprised that he didn't say anything to me though. That's just his way.

But I'm glad to see that the conversation that we've had have made an impression on him. I didn't think that they did...though all of the tears, "I didn't do it" and eye rolls. But they did...in a big way.

So, good on you, Owen! Let's keep it up!