Day 3,840 —Adventures in Parenting #289: PTC —

 

        I went to my first parent-teacher conference as a parent yesterday, and I can confirm that I was always much more nervous as a teacher than a parent. My daughter is doing well, of course, there are some normal concerns, but she has a lot of adults who care about her and are working with her. She is ahead for her age in the standard assessments that she took, which was great to see because I don’t think the way the teacher has currently been assessing her has fully taken into consideration her speech issues. Still, she was very open to talking about it, so I am not concerned. I am confident I will be able to work with her teachers in collaboration to support what is best for my daughter. It is great to feel useful. I spent the night thinking about other ways I might work in more words and numbers practice as part of her routine.

I told her teachers about her recent drama with her friends, and it was good to hear them comment on how social she usually is, and how many other kids want to be her friend.

There was one kid who immediately gave her a hug when we all went there together at the open house, but my daughter kind of ignored the kid but later said that they played together.

I couldn’t help but think about what my daughter told me yesterday about how she played by herself when she tried to play with the other two kids, but they didn’t want to play with her. She said that she liked to play by herself, and I thought about how I like to be myself too, but that’s not necessarily the easiest or healthiest to deal with these kinds of things.   

Sometimes, when people get upset, they want people to get close to them and hug them. I usually want to be alone, and so does my daughter, so how am I supposed to tell her she should try something else?