A Gentleman and a Scholar

It's that time of year...Parent-Teacher Conferences. Early this month, Abiding Hope did their annual hearing and vision screening, and I knew as the screening approached that Aiden would be in for some more in-depth analysis.

Sure enough, his teachers approached me about having a more involved evaluation done on him about a week before the screening and I agreed to is so long as it would not affect Aiden negatively, i.e. - I wouldn't want him singled out and I surely wouldn't want him to feel any sort of pressure to do something differently, or "correctly," because he is truly sensitive to those things and it seems to make him feel as though he has done something "wrong."

All these concerns addressed, Aiden had a screening and we discussed it all this morning. I have known, for over a year now that developmentally, Aiden's speech is not where the other kids' are at. However, having since been in speech therapy and more and more time in school, as well as more and more reading at home - he has VASTLY improved. Luckily, one of his teachers this year was one of his teachers last year and she could affirm this also.

For right now, Aiden is going to have another evaluation done, by his speech therapist. We are all in agreement that since he is comfortable with, and probably misses her, she should be the one to determine whether he needs further intervention or not. That being said, he definitely needs Occupational Therapy and there's just no way around it.

The real concern at this point for Aiden's teachers, is his lack of spatial awareness. Literally meaning, he doesn't understand what is "his space" as opposed to someone else's space or just in general - how much of the space around him is comfortably his. Some of the clues to this are, rather hilarious, that he will explore that "unknown space" with his body. By running his hands along all surfaces, spreading him self out as much as possible, and even running his head along the carpet - I told you, rather hilarious.

If only it were a perfect world where Aiden could test and learn his limits via head rubbing whenever and wherever he wanted....sigh. Unfortunately, this leads to other problems within the class room. He has trouble  getting from Point A to Point B simply because he doesn't understand the space between. In attempting to do so, he knocks things over, tramples things, and sometimes tramples other kids.

Obviously, he doesn't do this on purpose and no one is suggesting that he is. Quite to the contrary, his teachers have on occasion told him, "Aiden, you hurt your friend," and he will not have even realized it, furthermore, he then gets terribly upset and cries because he feels so bad for what he has done. Bless my little guy's heart.

This is the only area on his "report card" scholastically where the teachers show concern - emotionally, being tied to his spatial awareness, he gets really down when he thinks he has hurt someone. But everything else is going great.

He interacts extremely well and respectfully with adults, which I find humorous because at this stage, it is obvious that Aiden views my friends as his friends/peers/playmates - so of course he interacts well with them.  Aiden and I are even in the habit these days of telling each other, "You are my best friend."

He is counting beautifully, knows all of his colors (except grey which we just happened to be working on in the car this morning) and is great with geometric shapes. Earlier this week at dinner, he was using his food to show me some of his shapes even.

My biggest joy from this morning though, was hearing about his aptitude for reading and writing. Aiden views himself as a reader. Even though he is not necessarily reading all the words on all of the pages, he believes himself to be. He will sit and take a book from beginning to end without interruption and work through it as though he is reading it. (Not to be extra boastful or anything but he did point out the word "Big" to me last week).

Aiden is the same way with writing. His pencil grip is developing beautifully and when he sees someone writing, he wants to write as well. When asked to write his name he produced a beautiful "A" - really it would bring you to tears, and then he drew a pumpkin and told the teacher to write "pumpkin" because it was very important that this go with his "name." Just like with reading, when he is "writing," he fully believes himself to be writing clearly, legibly, and lengthily.

I am a proud mama bear today. My kid can write an A.

OOOO! Also, Kids Kreations orders are due next week - 

And I will have new school pictures shortly :)