Parent Teacher Conferences

This week we had parent teacher conferences at Ayden’s school (as I’m sure a lot of parents did) and they went well. It wasn’t the first time that I had to attend a parent teacher conference because we went to one while Ayden was in pre-k as well and those went really well.

I had emailed Ayden’s speech language pathologist earlier in the week to see how Ayden was doing because I did not know if she would be meeting with us as well and that is the one area that I am most concerned about. Ayden doesn’t have speech delay by any means, but he does have problems with articulating a few sounds. The ones that they are currently working on in therapy are ‘k’ ‘g’ and ‘l’. And those are all later developing sounds to begin with.

His SLP got back to me and informed me that she would be meeting with us during our scheduled slot and I was excited to ask her how things were going, especially since I have had some training and lots of schooling for that. I mean, most of my classes in undergrad were geared towards speech and NOT audiology.

So, the meeting started out great. Ayden accompanied us because we have no babysitters here in Point. Oh well.. don’t care. And I didn’t think it would hurt him to have his teacher tell him how well he is doing. His SLP started off the meeting by saying that Ayden is definitely working hard. He had some fluency goals on his IEP and she said that if she didn’t have that in front of her she probably would have never noticed anything and that since it hasn’t been a problem since the start of the school year it isn’t something they are actively working on. She also said that he is starting to get his ‘k’s and ‘g’s but not consistently enough where she really wants me to work with him at home. Although I know that I could be working with him. I don’t want to turn his therapy time in school to therapy time at home though either so that he no longer wants to work hard at school. She also said that they are starting on the initial ‘l’. That sound is easier to teach because the kids can see it when you are producing it.

Ayden’s regular teacher had lots of good stuff to say about him as well. We need to work a little bit on the sounds that letters make, but she did say that since he is having trouble with articulation, that it is expected that he might not know the sounds of some letters. To me, I think it is just something that we need to work on a little bit and he will get it. He also needs to be able to count to 50 and when she tested him he made it to 29. Although he counted to 50 in the car on the way home from the Y right before his conference. It was kind of ironic really, ha! But other than that, she said he was a really good worker and is starting to come out of his shell a little more.

She told me a story about how one student approached her and told her that Ayden said something (I’m assuming something not very nice) and that she went to ask Ayden about it to see if the first student was telling the truth or not. Ayden pretty much shut down and started crying for me and she didn’t push him anymore. I’m assuming that he felt like he was in trouble and didn’t want to get punished and that is why he shut down. His pre-k teacher had told us that he sort of did the same thing last year when she would ask him what he said when other kids weren’t understand him. Hopefully it is something that he can get over, although I know that he would feel guilty if he got in trouble. Most likely he said something he wasn’t supposed to and then thought he was going to get in trouble. Other than that, he’s doing very well and often gets his work done right away and neatly for a kindergarten as well. Yeah Ayden!

I love my little guy!

CIAO! LOVE!

P.S. I was bored while on campus waiting for my next hearing eval so I re-did my blog… likey?! It’s becoming easier and easier now!