gothams3rdrobin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gothams3rdrobin) wrote2008-01-28 02:23 pm
gothams3rdrobin) wrote2008-01-28 02:23 pm
Entry tags:
*musings*
I 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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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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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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