I’m feeling less tired now because I am on holidays. A couple of months ago one of my bosses (yes, I have several) came to see me, sat me down and asked how I was. I said I was feeling pretty good, to which she responded something along the lines of “well, you look like crap. When are you taking holidays?” So now I am on holidays, and it is also the school holidays up here so I am enjoying plenty of time with the kids and even some with my beloved wife, which is great! We are about to head down to Kingscliff for a few days. We’ve booked a rather swanky two bedroom apartment across the road from the beach and hopefully it will be too cold to do much other than hang around and enjoy each other’s company. We’re off tomorrow and we’ll be coming back on Thursday.
Anyway, back to the title of this post, we did the obligatory round of parent teacher interviews in the second-last week of school, pre-empting the release of the school reports in the final week. It was an interesting process, as ever. Child A’s report was good. In fact, even considering that we often have high (even unreasonably high) expectations of Child A’s academic achievement, we were very happy with what we read. Science is an increasing area of interest and achievement, so we are encouraging that. We’re pretty sure, however, that some other child’s music report was attached to our daughter’s. We have no problem with the “B” grading that appeared in the main part of the report……good achievement really, IF it is actually her grade. The supplementary music report attached to the main report is all well and good, except that it compliments her on her achievements in keyboard (which she doesn’t do at school at all) and doesn’t document her school-based extra-curricular participation in flute or choir at all. Our conclusion is that the grade in the main report might be right but the supplementary music report is most likely somebody else’s. We’ll take it back and get them to “reconsider”.
The suprise of the process came with Child S, our grade one boy. Love him as we do, and knowing he is no dumb bunny, we have always considered him, well, just not as sharp as Child A was at the same stage in life. We pondered all sorts of reasons for this…..he’s a boy, every child is different, how could he get a word in at our house anyway etc etc……and felt generally happy with this state of affairs. We went to his parent teacher interview to be told that the teacher believes he is “borderline gifted and talented”. Oops! BLK (that’s Beloved Wife K, for anyone who is unsure) and I were suitably flabbergasted. And as gasted as our flabbers were, we also felt this sense of excitement, tempered by a sense of guilt that we hadn’t worked this out ourselves and might not have supported him in some of the ways that he needed. The guilt has passed somewhat, but we are still a bit lost as to what to do next, other than to keep doing what we already have been because it must be helping to an extent, or at least not doing much damage! The teacher described him as more mature than most of his classmates (male or female) and advancing through the various Grade 1 learnings at a great rate of knots. For anyone wondering whether we have started social isolation training with him yet, don’t worry…..he is still finding a lot of time for Spiderman 3, Star Wars, Warcraft (re-enactments because we won’t let him play it) and, the latest addition to his imaginary play, Pirates of the Caribbean.
Must go…..we’re off to Jury’s place today with a hell of a lot of pasta and some great sauces (they would be marinara, bolognase, carbonara and whatever the other one was!).
Cheerio!
