Parent Teacher Conferences

This is the third (and final) year W will be in preschool and yesterday marked my fifth parent-teacher conference.  I’m assuming conferences in preschool are normal and W’s preschool takes them seriously.  Over the past 2+ years, I’ve come to dread conferences.  Yesterday’s started out like all of the previous conferences.  “Here are the results of W’s assessment.  He’s right on track in regards to his score, BUT…”.  I’m assuming preschool assessments are normal, but there is always a BUT in W’s case.  And it always gets me down and makes me feel like I failed him.  In the past, I’ve heard “he’s having trouble cutting and needs to work on his fine motor skills” or “he’s clumsy”.  So my mom found a cutting book in which he’d have to use scissors to cut a pattern and lo and behold he enjoyed it and mastered scissors use.  Yesterday’s BUT was “W’s fine motor skills are lacking and he is very behind in his writing abilities”.  The assessment included drawing shapes and W was unable to do so.  I already know that he doesn’t hold a pencil correctly and doesn’t show much interest in drawing or coloring.  I hadn’t been very concerned about it and just assumed that W wasn’t interested and would eventually master the skill.  And now I feel like I’ve failed him again.  Have preschool assessments always been a thing?!?  Because I’m not convinced I was assessed on my writing abilities as a 4 year old, but I digress…

I feel like these conferences fail to recognize all the amazing things W CAN do…  He understands time.  If I tell him that it’s 10 minutes to 10:00, he’ll say “so it’s 9:50?”  and if I tell him it’s 10:45, he’ll point out that there are 15 minutes until 11:00.  He knows every car make and while I recognize that this isn’t important in school, I think it’s impressive that he has picked up on the differences among cars.  He notices minute details.  He can count to 100 and recognizes several sight words.  He excels at puzzles and building.  He can look at something and recreate it.

W’s teacher did say that he was a great listener and a rule follower.  That he’ll point out when someone hasn’t followed the rules.  He always helps clean up and constantly looks for opportunities to help (he was cleaning up the class room as I spoke to his teacher).  He gets along with everyone.  He understands conversation and will wait for his turn to speak.  He has a large vocabulary. 

I’m sure he’ll master writing in time just as he mastered scissors.  We’ll work on writing shapes and letters and I’ll try to focus less on the shortcomings.

And you know what, at the end of the day, I’d much prefer my child to be kind and helpful as opposed to having perfect penmanship.  When did preschool become about assessments and meeting criteria anyway?

P.S.  S’s conference is next week… Lord help me…