Oh boy. I might get some serious slack from this post, but here we go.
So as I'm sure some of you know I spend some serious cash on sending my son to a great "school". It's called the Child Development Center at my work and they are awesome. The child to teacher ratio is like none other, they are super clean, and teach my son things I would NEVER be able to. To refresh your memory on some previous thoughts read HERE.
Little bears teacher has recently been sending me emails (within the past two weeks) of how he's doing during the week, what they are working on and such. WHICH I LOVE. I don't get to pick him up from school in the afternoon because hubs gets out of work before me and grabs him. So the chance to really sit down and ask about his development doesn't really happen. Lets be honest, when I ask hubs he looks at me like I've got three heads- or says ok and totally forgets. Plus I've never really been concerned about his development because he's always the youngest in his classes and way ahead of them. He literally taught himself to go in the bathroom to do his business when he was barely two and never looked back. In many aspects I've been super lucky with him (except the whining business- YUCK).
So, when I got an email (while we were in San Diego) stating that they are trying to have the children recognize their names around the classroom and that Cameron was having difficulty with letter recognition I had a mini freak out. I did what any mother would do, I grabbed some paper and a pen and wrote three names on the paper. The first set I wrote was Cameron, Adrian, Brycen. And guess what? He picked out his name! Whew, no problems!
Then I thought why are these teachers sending me these emails then? So I proceeded to write three other names down: Chrissy, Cameron, Caylob. And low and behold.. He guessed wrong... Enter sad face.
Frantically I kept writing three names starting with C's in different orders, and he guessed wrong each time. Then I asked him to spell his name, and he rattled it off like a childhood nursery. AHHA! He's memorizing it, he doesn't actually know how to spell his name. He can sing the ABC's until he's blue in the face but he isn't putting a letter with a sound with a vision.
And guess what? I don't know what the HELL to do about that. So naturally I got super frustrated with myself, what kind of Mother am I?? I have no friends that are teachers (that I can think of right now, sorry if you are out there), and the hubs advice? "He'll catch on". Ughhhhh. I know he will- I KNOW he will, but I obviously don't want him behind any other child. Enter this feeling:
I proceeded to talk to one of my besties about it (she worked in this same school for years) and she said that her son is JUST starting to recognize letters, and he's 6 months older than my son. She also mentioned getting books that have the dotted letters in them for him to trace.
GENIUS. I literally don't know if I would have thought of that, and that's why I love her. So today I will be picking up a million books to help Cam with letter recognition.
THIS website is awesome for print-outs!
But I'll tell you what, there is no better way to give a first time mother anxiety then to tell her that her child is having a problem with something..
