Parent/Teacher Conference

We met with Serif's daycare teacher, Ms. Jen, yesterday. We were thrilled to have an overall good report of Serif. It's always interesting to see how he is around his peers. I feel like we just learned a lot about his personality. Prior to our meeting, we were talking to the director. She looked a us and said, "Ya know? Serif just walks to the beat of his own drum." Then it was like a light bulb just went off and she said, " I know why Serif is like that, he's you two! I mean you know, you're both artist . . ." We laughed and said, "That's good . . . we think."

He's doing well with all of his skill sets. They said he doesn't really have a "buddy" that he tends to like to play with, like many kids do. He prefers just being on his own and doing his own thing. He's very content and very happy. Always smiling and loves to cuddle.

He apparently has just started to take toys from other kids. He does give other kids his toy (he does share) . . happily at first but then gets upset and wants it back. He's a sensitive little guy. The only thing they have trouble with is Serif running away or not staying with the group.

Serif is almost always last for everything. He tends to stay in his own world and wants to do his own thing that he misses out on opportunities. One example of this is that when they line up to go to the Rainy Day Room, the first 3 kids get the tricycles. Serif is never that kid. This seems to be the goal for all the kids in this room. They all want to ride but they only have 3 and so they time it out and take turns for the 30 minute slot they have in there. Many times when it's finally Serif's turn, he'll get off before his 5 minutes is done, another kid will get on it, then Serif will want it back. It takes him 10 minutes sometimes to fully get over it and quit crying. She said his attention span is very short with everything and he never spends a lot of time on just one thing.

He loves lunch and snack. He's usually the last up from the table. Many times he won't get up to use the bathroom because he's afraid that he'll lose his food. Hopefully this will improve as we switch to underwear.

They have circle time every day. She didn't go in to detail with what that entails but I'm assuming it's stories or group songs and involvement. They have to reel him back in 10 times because "he has ants in his pants" an he won't sit that long.

These meetings are always so helpful for us. The timing of this one was great. It just helps us to put pieces of this puzzle together to get a fuller picture of how Serif is doing, across the board.

This past week, we were in Target. Serif took off running around an aisle and would not stop when we said. It was like we weren't saying anything. This flew all over me and Jeff both. He's never done that and it was a huge eye opener for us. Since this happened, he's been in time-out a lot for not listening or obeying. We are working really hard to be sure he obeys without a lot of repeating ourselves. We realize he is two and I'm sure this is just part of "the terrible two" phase, but this is a safety issue to us and concerns us a good deal. I'm hoping that this helps at daycare too. He has apparently been running away at daycare too lately and so it's showing to be concern. Hopefully all of our efforts to correct this will show positive soon. This type of behavior is not just embarrassing but it scares me to death!