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gothams3rdrobinI think I should probably have friends visit me more often. When they go home, I tend to wander around the flat feeling aimless and decide to go to bed early for a change.
Not that I actually got to sleep any sooner last night, I don't think. Plus I kept waking up every few hours, and had to order Rowan back to his own bed at five this morning. *sigh*
It would probably do me good to step away from the PC more often though. I have a bad habit of staying online till much too late - even on those nights when all I'm doing is pressing the refresh button in the hope that someone actually posts something. I've noticed that if I'm not online I'll get stupidly sleepy around nine-thirty, when there's generally sod-all on TV.
I took Rowan to get his eyes tested yesterday; his teacher has been speaking to me about his attention span, particularly during the writing section of his day, and I wanted to rule out a problem with seeing the board. At this age, its hard for them to say why it is they can't concentrate in class so you have to do all the research yourself. But apparently his eyes are in good condition so it's not that.
He's a very good reader - he's finally been assigned a reading level that's challenging him - and he's pretty good at maths too. Which is encouraging, as I'm not. Plus he doesn't appear to be having any problems with the weekly spelling tests. It's just his writing that's letting him down, it seems. I've tried getting him to practice at home - even setting up an email address for him, to give him some motivation to write something, which I then type up and email out for him. But he bores of that pretty quickly, at least at the moment.
He is trying to write - he gleefully writes all the birthday cards for his friends himself, and when he tries to write something in his books he asks me "How do you spell..." A few weeks back he was drawing a picture at Mam's of Gordon from Thomas The Tank Engine, and he wrote something along the lines of "Once upon a time, Gordon went up the hill." He didn't get most of the spelling right (like that matters at this point), but it was very obvious what he was trying to do *grins* I lavished praise on him for that, and made a point of showing his grandparents this little masterpiece so they could be suitably impressed too.
I'm really not sure what to do. I don't want to throw up my hands and go "OMG, my son has an attention disorder!" 'cause it might not be that. He may just be feeling a combination of boredom and lack of confidence. But I also can't rule it out either. He is very much all about the shiny, and it can be hard to get him to focus. But then again, what six year old isn't like that? *sighs*
The worst of it is that, when I was sick the other week, his teacher passed on a message about his lack of attention via my mother. And she is uber-strict with him, almost as though she's trying to drill any behaviour out of Rowan that even remotely reminds her of his dad. Sometimes I wonder if she did that to me too, in the hopes I wouldn't 'grow up like my father'. It also makes me extra tense with him when she's around, as I so desperately want him to not get on her nerves, so I get on his back for things that wouldn't bug me so much normally.
Anyway, time I was heading out to pick him up from school. *crosses fingers he's done all his work today* Hopefully I can get him doing some practice work once we get home.
Not that I actually got to sleep any sooner last night, I don't think. Plus I kept waking up every few hours, and had to order Rowan back to his own bed at five this morning. *sigh*
It would probably do me good to step away from the PC more often though. I have a bad habit of staying online till much too late - even on those nights when all I'm doing is pressing the refresh button in the hope that someone actually posts something. I've noticed that if I'm not online I'll get stupidly sleepy around nine-thirty, when there's generally sod-all on TV.
I took Rowan to get his eyes tested yesterday; his teacher has been speaking to me about his attention span, particularly during the writing section of his day, and I wanted to rule out a problem with seeing the board. At this age, its hard for them to say why it is they can't concentrate in class so you have to do all the research yourself. But apparently his eyes are in good condition so it's not that.
He's a very good reader - he's finally been assigned a reading level that's challenging him - and he's pretty good at maths too. Which is encouraging, as I'm not. Plus he doesn't appear to be having any problems with the weekly spelling tests. It's just his writing that's letting him down, it seems. I've tried getting him to practice at home - even setting up an email address for him, to give him some motivation to write something, which I then type up and email out for him. But he bores of that pretty quickly, at least at the moment.
He is trying to write - he gleefully writes all the birthday cards for his friends himself, and when he tries to write something in his books he asks me "How do you spell..." A few weeks back he was drawing a picture at Mam's of Gordon from Thomas The Tank Engine, and he wrote something along the lines of "Once upon a time, Gordon went up the hill." He didn't get most of the spelling right (like that matters at this point), but it was very obvious what he was trying to do *grins* I lavished praise on him for that, and made a point of showing his grandparents this little masterpiece so they could be suitably impressed too.
I'm really not sure what to do. I don't want to throw up my hands and go "OMG, my son has an attention disorder!" 'cause it might not be that. He may just be feeling a combination of boredom and lack of confidence. But I also can't rule it out either. He is very much all about the shiny, and it can be hard to get him to focus. But then again, what six year old isn't like that? *sighs*
The worst of it is that, when I was sick the other week, his teacher passed on a message about his lack of attention via my mother. And she is uber-strict with him, almost as though she's trying to drill any behaviour out of Rowan that even remotely reminds her of his dad. Sometimes I wonder if she did that to me too, in the hopes I wouldn't 'grow up like my father'. It also makes me extra tense with him when she's around, as I so desperately want him to not get on her nerves, so I get on his back for things that wouldn't bug me so much normally.
Anyway, time I was heading out to pick him up from school. *crosses fingers he's done all his work today* Hopefully I can get him doing some practice work once we get home.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 03:04 pm (UTC)Relax, cariad. *hug*
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Date: 2008-01-28 04:13 pm (UTC)*hugs* Thanks, cariad.
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Date: 2008-01-28 03:55 pm (UTC)Part of it is they have to be interested, he writes when it's something that interests him maybe what they are doing at school doesn't hit that button.
When at home you just need to make the practice something fun that doesn't seem the same as his schoolwork. Like the email thing, that's a good plan. Maybe you can open it up to thing like him emailing your friends for specific things like asking people in the states to take a picture of something we do here that might be different there etc. Or you can do crafts like make a storybook. He figures out a story you guys write it out and he finds stuff to illustrate it. or find lots of interesting pictures he'd like (in Liam's case it's godzilla lol) and make a book then have him make his story below.
We had to do a lot of that stuff with my nephews not because they were ADD but because they were smart and the class moved too slow and was boring for them. Or because the teacher didn't make things interesting (they had some doozies as teachers let me tell you lol)
Anyway hope this stuff helps :)
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Date: 2008-01-28 04:26 pm (UTC)I really don't want to get in a panic about ADD at this early stage, 'cause that really won't help him.
*grins* Right now he's making a list of things he did in school today, so he can write an email to his cousins.
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Date: 2008-01-28 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 05:59 pm (UTC)*snugs* It's good to see you around again.
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Date: 2008-01-28 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 06:09 pm (UTC)But then I stopped questioning how your mind works years ago. ;-)
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Date: 2008-01-28 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-28 06:12 pm (UTC)*huggles*
From a teacher's perspective I don't think you've got anything to worry about. It sounds to me like he's been bored for a while at school and has learnt non-attending behaviours when he wasn't stretched. It will take the teacher time and patience to fix that but then a) that's her job and b) they should have noticed he was bright earlier.
Many boys develop their handwriting skills at a slower rate than girls, it's fairly common. Particularly, as your friend points out up thread, if he isn't interested in the tasks set for writing things down. Making writing fun is definitely the way to go and it doesn't always have to be writing either. Making letters out of plasticine or playdough to check his letter-sound correspondence, drawing in circles and lines with fingerpaints and making a hell of a mess everywhere with competitions to see who can paint the 'best', the smallest, the whatever...
It could be that his concentration is poorest during the writing section of the day because that is where he lacks confidence. He's used to being good at things - reading, maths, spelling - and he's probably bright enough to know that his writing doesn't quite match up.
The other thing I would ask is how is his speech? I only ask because lack of attention and difficulties in phoneme-grapheme correspondence (which is the posh way of saying can he sound out words to spell them) combined with possible word-ending dropping ('s', '-ed', that kind of thing) can indicate a problem with glue ear, which can cause significant, though temporary, problems with hearing. 1 out of 4 children aged 5 and under are suffering from it at any one time. The numbers go slowly down after that, but many are never diagnosed because it resolves after a cold is over and the teacher doesn't make the correspondence between the lack of attention and presence/aftermath of a cold/virus. It might be worth figuring out if Rowan's problems concentrating are more pronounced at this time of the year.
Anyhow, there's my thoughts on
yaoithe matter at hand.Honestly, sweetie, don't stress. He's happy, bright and progressing. That's the important stuff. Anything else can be handled.
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Date: 2008-01-28 09:41 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm thinking boredom's a definite factor here. We spent the entire evening doing writing exercises tonight, only stopping for tea and to do his other homework, and he's been just fine. He's written three emails, having made a list for himself of the things he wanted to talk about.
Isn't that just a typical kid? *grins* Just as you've about stressed yourself into a puddle, they turn around and do exactly what they're supposed to? *chuckles* I think it's a lot better that I quietly freak out in my journal than outloud where he could overhear me, though. As sweet as his teacher is, I think the playground conversations about his concentration are still getting him down.
As far as I can tell, his speech is fine. That's something I've always been very concerned about, for obvious reasons. He still indulges in the odd mispronunciation or two ("I want to do it on my oh-mm!") and people often mishear him when he tells them his name, but his vocabulary and sentence structure is generally good. I know what you mean about the glue-ear though; my sister's eldest boy had hearing problems his first year at school and had to have grommits put in - they only realised when the teacher noticed he was mouthing along to the national anthem with no clue what he was actually supposed to be singing. Since then he's had no problems whatsoever.
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Date: 2008-01-29 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 10:46 pm (UTC)At this stage, I have to mostly assume it's his inexperience that's showing, not that something's the matter. The fact he keeps getting his b's and d's confused when he's reading? Could just as likely be because he's rushing and not paying full attention, than any early indicator of dyslexia. And he's completely capable of writing when he puts a mind to it, even if he does make up his own way of forming the letters - no paying attention to the magic pencil for my boy! *chuckles*
*sighs* I just have to keep an eye on him. But not so that he notices.
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Date: 2008-01-31 10:09 am (UTC)KIDDING. REALLY.
I don't know... I'm no expert on getting kids' attention, by any stretch. Maybe, and this is a really long shot, if he has special shiny super pens that he gets to use only when he does his homework or is working on his writing or something? I don't know what the rules are on using coloured or glittery ink... I don't know. I can ask a friend of mine - she's got two daughters with ADHD, so getting them to sit down and do anything is a challenge. Maybe she's got some ideas, if you'd like me to ask her.