UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

NEW SPECIMENS OLD SPECIMENS THE SCIENTIST MY LOG CONTACT ME
2002-09-17 - 7:45 p.m.

TREASURE

Part of being a parent is living for those moments when you say to yourself, �This kid is getting it. This kid will do fine.� Days like with those moments are days to savor. They are days to hold on to during all those arguments that whatever they may be about on the surface are, down below, about breaking away. They are days to hold on to when your teen or tween has just regressed to the two-year-old level�at least at home. They are days to treasure.

Kat has both coordination problems (or, as she would say, �issues�) and an organizational problem. Both problems have improved tremendously with patience, hard work, and, in the case of the coordination, a wonderful occupational therapist she saw in elementary school. Kat is so bright and her verbal skills tend to cover her deficits so well that teachers often fail to grasp the extent of her problems. Until now, that failure has been what Kat wanted. She preferred to puff, grumble, and act cynical than admit that something was difficult. She preferred to get a low grade for having the wrong format than get help in straightening out her notebook.

But all of that changed today and it changed without my prompting or my interference. Kat has been doing very, very well on her math quizzes but poorly on the homework. The problem has not been the content of the homework but the format. In other words, it�s not the math but the organization and the coordination. She�s doing it and getting it in but not doing it on the right page of the notebook or storing it in the right place. She�s doing it in erasable ink, not pencil. We got Kat the erasable ink because she has such difficulty writing in pencil. She smears it but worse, she breaks the point frequently. She spends almost as much time re-sharpening the pencil as she does writing.

In the past, she would have covered with me until I realized what was going on either at conference, by seeing the spiral left around, or by hearing from the teacher. In the past, the teacher would not have heard from Kat about the real problem. But all that changed today. She went to her math teacher and explained why she was having problems. She explained about her difficulties with organization and the steps she had taken and was taking to overcome them. She explained her problem with pencils and even demonstrated. She even demonstrated that the pen she was using was erasable.

The teacher was impressed. She told Kat that most kids would not have approached her about the problems and would have just let them build up. The result of the conference was a compromise. She may do homework in erasable pen and the teacher is seriously considering letting her do tests and quizzes in the same medium. She needs to organize her notebook the teacher�s way but the teacher gave her help in understanding exactly what the teacher wants there and why.

Sometimes treasure is silver. Sometimes treasure is gold.

And sometimes treasure is not having to play the mother because your kid can do it all by herself.

LAST YEAR: The Craving for SecurityUnfortunately, everything I feared in the wake of 9/11 was justified. I could have written this entry today.

LAST FIVE ENTRIES:

Dry Run
Girl Scout Fun
Delegation
Second String
Infinity

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