parent teacher conference

My daughter's parent teacher conferences go something like this:
"Your daughter is wonderful, I can't say enough about how much I like having her in class, she's doing an excellent job, there's really nothing she can improve upon, what are you doing here?" I actually skipped her parent teacher conferences this year to go to Liam's monthly TSA meeting because I figured Liam and I needed our TSA meeting more than I needed to hear 7 teachers gush and ask me what I was doing there.

It should come as no shock that Liam's parent teacher conferences are not quite the same experience. Liam is empathetic, artistic, smart, and has TS. Which brings with it a whole set of behavioral problems. Kids with TS lots of times blurt out comments during class that are not pertinent to what's being discussed. They can't sit still. They move around a lot from the tics. They need to get up and move around the classroom or take a walk outside to get the tics out and refocus. They have lots of sensory issues that require different creative solutions. They make noise. They're inconsistent- some days the TS is practically non existent, and other days they can't stay focused, they're jumpy, and they're ticking like crazy. Many of them are incredibly impulsive. Most of them have dysgraphia (a hand writing disability that does not allow them to form letters well). Third grade was pretty much hell for Liam because of the dysgraphia. He had an old fashioned teacher who felt her mission in life was to make sure that every child coming out of her class have perfect penmanship. She was lovely, and a good teacher, but a stickler for neat, orderly and quiet. The end result of that for Liam was lots of work being sent home to recopy and lots of lost recess to redo work. I am to this day beating myself up emotionally that I allowed recess to be taken away and that I forced the poor kid to sit and redo page after page of trying to write neatly.

Liam's first quarter report card came home this year with "Liam is inconsistent and impulsive" written in the comment section. Then he came home with a time test (a time test?! For a kid with TS?!) that had a big red "parent signature needed" stamped across it. My heart sank. My stomach did flip flops. Did his wonderful teacher who I had such high hopes for totally not get it? Yesterday I spent time prepping. I gathered together the report card, the 504 plan, and 6 pages of information from the TSA website for educators, highlighted with info that I thought particularly pertained to Liam. I had a little mantra going in my head. "be patient, be understanding, be kind, know that she has lots of other kids with their own needs in her class and Liam cannot be her first priority all the time". I took a deep breath before I went in. I spent over 45 minutes with Liam's teacher. We had a wonderful conversation about how things were going with him, and the progress she had made with him, and we talked about some of the work she had dome to try to figure out what was associated with the TS and what was not. We had a discussion about how during the beginning of the year he would be rude to her, the aides, other kids- and how much it had improved. We discussed his medication and how it was going. We discussed some of the other things that TS can come with that Liam doesn't have. We talked about his TSA meetings and the article that he was writing for the class newspaper about having TS. We talked about the talent show and his magic act, and his group social studies project that he worked on first quarter. We talked about reading comprehension and how it's graded. We went over the 504 plan together to see if it needed any updating, and her fears for him heading into middle school.
It was a wonderful meeting, and put all of my fears to rest.