Kid's Conferences

The week we got back from Thanksgiving in the US, we had conferences for Nolan and Lydia in the preschool.  Lydia’s was first and we were so excited to have such a positive conference after her conferences last year and Nolan’s conferences since we moved here.

Lydia doesn’t participate a lot in class (circle time, etc) which completely surprises me, but she is improving.  I think she is maybe confused that everything is in English this year and she feels the pressure of being the only native English speaker in the class ;-)  She has wonderful fine motor skills (finally we have one!) and is even starting to write her name, which her teacher was very surprised about (me too!):

Besides that, Lydia is a little bossy with the other kids (I asked the questions since she tries to boss her big brothers around constantly) and the other day she saw a boy coming her way and stuck out her foot to trip him.  But, overall, Miss Mary Beny was very happy with her behavior and her progress in class….WHEW!

The next day we had Nolan’s conference.  Poor guy has such a hard time.  There are never behavior issues, which is good, but always academic.  Since he is in the Student Support Services program in the school (implemented for him last year), we have conferences more often.  We had had a conference in late September/ early October that concentrated on his difficulty with paying attention.  We decided to have him tested for ADD among other things.  The results:  Nolan has ADD, a speech delay, and learning delays.  Not really a surprise to us (if they said he had ADHD, we would have been surprised).  When we ask him to do anything he gets distracted by  toys, books, heaters….basically anything in his path on the way to do what he needs to do.  We are not as worried about the academic delay since he will be repeating the grade he is in here when we move back to the US because of his age, but the speech does need some work.  So, Nolan has started therapy (speech, reading, and she’ll work on his attention span) twice a week.  He really seems to enjoy it which is good.  James and I are doing fine with it.  Like I said, no surprise, but it’s hard to know that the ADD is most likely something he’ll struggle with his whole life.  I do have to say though, that he has a great personality for it!