Friday News Roundup

It's been a seriously busy week. Just getting back into the swing of things and caught up with work would have been enough this week but we also have had a lot of other stuff going on.

1. The girls' teacher conferences. Becca earned all A's for the first quarter of 4th grade. The focus with her is still trying to figure out what's keeping her from getting her classwork finished. We had a psychologist come to the school and observe her during a time she was supposed to be working on answering some questions during literacy, and while the rest of the kids finished 5 or 6 questions she was still stuck on the first one and didn't seem to be able to write anything down although when you ask her she can perfectly articulate what the answer to the question is. She seems to get lost in her own head. The psychologist, who I also met with this week, said he thought it was more related to situational anxiety than ADHD and asked that we stop her meds entirely for now and he has an appointment to meet with her in a week. So much of Becca's conference was spent discussing her puzzling classroom behavior and the psychologist visit, when clearly she's perfectly intelligent enough to get the work done. Caroline's conference on the other hand was also a bit frustrating, as her teacher has not been challenging her at all and although she said there will be more opportunity in the second quarter for enrichment, the examples she showed me of the types of enrichment she had in mind are all stuff Caroline can already do and would be too easy for her.

2. To piggyback on #1, we had Caroline undergo educational testing on Tuesday morning. I brought my laptop with me and worked in the waiting room while she spent several hours with a neuropsychologist taking an IQ test and doing some academic testing to see what grade level she is performing on in reading, spelling and math. About half way through the psychologist popped out for a moment to allow Caroline to take a break, and commented on how much spelling Caroline knows -- "She just spelled 'suspect'!" she said, clearly impressed. And then at the end she also commented that she was surprised how much math she knows and that she's definitely performing ahead of where she ought to be and that it was a good thing that I brought her in for testing. I go back on Tuesday for the official results. We're hoping to be able to use them to set up an IEP for Caroline, to force the school to provide formal enrichment for her.

Besides all of the meetings and appointments, Halloween, work catch-up, piano lesson (Only Caroline now, as Becca has decided to take a break from piano -- school has been very stressful for her so far this year and getting her to practice piano on top of all the school issues was not happening), Becca this afternoon has her first yearbook staff meeting at school, and tonight we have the 4th & 5th grade Shabbat dinner & family service at temple. Phew, what a busy week! Now back to work!