Since Lauren is now in high school, we only need to go to her parent/teacher conferences if we have a specific "issue" that needs to be discussed. I am able to look at her grades and progress through an on-line grading system, so I have a pretty good handle on what's going on with her. The hubby and I went to Dominic's parent/teacher conference last week. When he comes home from school every day, I'll ask him how his day went. He usually says, "good!" He can recite back to me his entire schedule for the day (like whether he had gym, art or library), but there isn't usually a lot of detail involved. At Dominic's conference we discussed his progress. At school, they work a lot with him on social interaction. We heard something pretty cool that he did recently. They are learning about the United States and where each state is located on the map. One of Dominic's classmates was struggling and didn't know where one of the states was located. Dominic evidently gave the classmate a "hint" and then told him that he did a good job! When I heard that, it made me super proud. We also had his social worker and speech therapist at the conference. Since Dominic is in an inclusive special education classroom, one thing they work on is "mainstreaming" him into a general education classroom with other third graders at his school. He has been able to be in there for up to an hour at a time (a major accomplishment). The social worker,who accompanies him, was telling us that when he goes to the general education classroom and is asked to do something that he doesn't want to do he says, "no, thank you." I'm glad he's polite, but Dominic has to learn that just because he says that, he may have to do it anyways!! The speech therapist gave us some good tips on how to encourage him to read even more than he does. Teachers do an important job every day in teaching our children, especially those teachers that teach in special education classrooms. I've always thought it takes a "special" person to teach a special education classroom :) I look forward to Dominic's parent/teacher conferences. Do you still go to parent/teacher conferences for your kids? I would love to hear!
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...
Comments
Post a Comment