A hard week.

Well apologies are due to my regular readers.

What must you think!

No Meatless Monday!

No new posts!

Even limited twitter time.

There where a lot of small and personal niggles this week but the main upset was a parents consultation I had with my youngest two boys teachers on Monday afternoon.

Usually these things follow a set pattern.
The kids are friendly, polite, work well enough when prodded with sharp sticks that sort of thing.

I LIKE their teachers, really I do. I have know the head teacher for the last 6 years and we have been through some challenging times with my eldest with allergies and dyslexia and have always come out the end on the same track and usually laughing.

The consultation was supposed to be about Alfie as this is his first full term as a Primary one pupil.
A quick 10 minutes to let us know how he has settled in.

As we say down we where told that actually they wanted to talk more about Owen (who is P2. The first 3 classes are mixed though, so they are in the same "class")

Immediately we where told that they were worried about how "immature" they both were, how unfocused when working. Owen especially they said had slipped back and wouldn't concentrate on his work and whined that he was still a "little boy" and wanted to play with the P1's.

Apart from a few extra points this was the basic summing up of the meeting.

I can tell you I was broadsided.
As I had to rush home to meet the older kids I had no time to even process what had been said , let alone ask any questions.

Me and Kim briefly talked about it ont he way home, but then kids and other jobs got in the way and I put it to the back of my mind for the evening.

By the morning we where both fuming and I decided to send the headteacher an email asking for another meeting.
Well I can tell you I was in tears as I wrote it. I sobbed as my fingers typed and I saw how unfair they had been to my boys.

Here is the email.



Hi -----,

Yesterdays consultation broadsided me a bit and as I had to get home for Ollie and --------, I didn't really have time to think of any questions to ask you and Mrs ---- .

May I start by saying we have always found you approachable and understanding and I hope this will be the case now.

Firstly, we were disappointed that a consultation for Alfie turned into a meeting about Owen. We felt we came away with very little information on how Alfie is doing apart from the fact you find him "Immature".
If you felt there was cause to talk to use about Owen before his consultation maybe we could have organised a separate meeting?

We also felt that the problems you feel Owen (and Alfie) have are down to immaturity.We fail to see exactly what you mean and found the whole thing to be a little vague, the word immaturity being bandied around rather than a specific problem being discussed.
We don't consider either of them to be immature when interacting with boys in their age group (which they do out of school) and have always considered them to be MORE mature than boys their age in some respects, that is looking after themselves personally (toileting, dressing etc) and emotionally.
The only reason we can think you consider them immature is in comparison to their peers at -------.
However in the case of Owen I feel comparing him to his peers in unfair.
His class is made up entirely of girls, which in the main (and you admitted this yesterday) do better at this age academically and socially. For Owen to be held up against them is a false comparison In our opinion.
I should also point out that all of the girls in his class attend a great deal of after school, weekend and holiday activities, so are in effect in a "school" environment for almost twice the time Owen is.
For one thing we are unable to afford to send our children to every activity available to them and on the other hand we have no wish to as this is not the way we want to bring them up.
You already know my thoughts on not allowing children to have time to themselves and, without getting personal and I trust this will go no further, we have no wish to listen to our children whining and crying and being generally unhappy because they are being bundled into the car yet again to go to yet another after school activity. This is something we hear every day by living close to people who practice this.
In this instance it feels like we are being penalised for not having the money to do these things and also having a different opinion on child raising.

On the subject of Owen falling behind slightly and wishing to be seen as a "little boy" we feel you are being unsympathetic to his feelings in this case.
If you cast your minds back to when he started P1 he was devastated when the P3 boys would not play with him. Yes he eventually played with the girls but lets face it they played with him like a doll most of the time and for most of the year he moaned to us about having to play with the girls.
Is it any surprise that he should be initially excited about --- (another boy) and Alfie starting school?
Is it any surprise that he should then feel unhappy that he isn't able to work with them in class?
You talk about your fear of Alfie catching Owen up and maybe overtaking him academically, well we don't see this as a problem.
Remember there is only 9 months between them, the same as between Oliver and ---- in P5.
Also shouldn't Owen be given the opportunity to develop self impetus by failing? Surely this is better than spending a life time coaxing him to do better?
We find it hard to get upset about something that when the boys are 10 & 11 or 20 & 21 will simply have no relevance.
This was obviously a big concern between you and Mrs ----- though.

In summing up we both felt that the whole consultation came across as very negative.
We understand that when classes are so small any child lagging behind makes a big impact on class performance statistics, but we have no wish for our children to be educated as statistics.
In this case we would like to arrange another meeting with you to discuss what the real issues of immaturity are.
In all honesty if these boys are going to be treated as though "under performing" we will be considering bringing our homeschool plans forwards.

Yours sincerely

---------------------.

I don't think I could write that out again if I tried I was so upset.

That afternoon I received an email from the headteacher apologising profusely. She agreed that immature had been vague and in retrospect really the wrong word to use.

I actually saw her that afternoon as it was open day and we snatched 20 minutes or so talking and she agreed with me that taking the pressure off Owen to "grow up" is fine by them, yes he should be allowed to develop naturally.
In her defence I am in the minority of parents who feel this way, most if the time she is fending off angry parents demanding to know why their 5 yr old children aren't getting as much homework as the kids in another school!

The trouble with these consultations is that they are so short that to try and cram everything in things get lost along the way.

Anyway another meeting is being arranged and hopefully we will get a clearer picture of their concerns and, as parents, we will be able to take the time to discuss them with the teachers.

I have very definite ideas about my children's education.
Although the plan is to let all 3 of them finish primary education I don't want to end up with broken spirited 11 year olds with no love for learning.
On the other hand the small and personal school is a safe and (mostly) nurturing place for them and gives them a chance to make village friends they will keep.

So that is why I have been off this week.

My crying jags and fits of mild depression over whelmed me and made me feel ill.

But I'm back :)

And I have LOTS to post about :D