to be cross that DS' teacher didn't say one positive thing at parents evening?

[zisforzebra]

DS (6) has been getting extra help and has been having some pretty intensive speech therapy at school since september. His speech has improved massively and he's tried so hard but that doesn't seem to have made an impression on his teacher, she just talked about how he was behind in reading, writing, spelling, number work etc and didn't say one positive thing.

The thing that's made me cross the most is that she said because he doesn't always do what he's told to first time they've started keeping their requests to him very simple! He's easily distracted but he's not stupid! He was asking DH if your soul is stored in your DNA yesterday so he's definately not stupid!!

Okay, so he's not progressing as fast as the rest of the class but he's never in any trouble and is a bloody lovely kid (I know I'm biased but everyone else says so too!) and it would have been encouraging to hear that recognised.

Sorry, just needed to have a good moan!

I musr be lucky with DS's teacher. It was his second parents night this week and she said 'he's doing fine and ready for primary 2'. We also don't have reception so our pre-school nursery parents night were along the lines of 'this is what he does, here's his folder, these are our comments and did you get a glass of wine on the way in?'

Are English schools different from Scottish ones in that they seem to be under more pressure to perform at an early age. When DS goes in in the morning, the first 30 minutes is something called soft start where the play with jigsaws, draw, do imaginative play or construction.

gscrym - I don't think they're doing soft anything. He brought home a list of what they'd be studying at the start of term and it was stuff I didn't get to until junior school. Can anyone explain to me why a 6 year old needs to know about the paintings of Van Gogh? It seems like the government is trying to turn them out of the education system like the product of a sausage factory and damn anyone who doesn't like it!

When DD was in year 1 I once went out for a meal with most of the mums of the kids in her class a few days after parent evening. Parent evening was brought up and one of us mentioned that she was upset because the feedback had been so negative and the teacher had been so concerned to the point the mum thought teacher suspected child of having SN. Turned out the majority of the mums had had similar from the teacher!! My concern is that so many teachers in primary seem to have no understanding of the age group they teach and the wide range of behaviours well within the "norm". I think they are perhaps under so much pressure to get the children to conform there is no room for difference.

When we went to parents' evening this week, ds's teacher had been on the go all day, teaching and seeing parents and when we walked in at 7.20 she was apologising for being a bit behind schedule. As she had had no dinner yet I was surprised she could string a single sentence together, poor woman.

Yes it would have been better if your child's teacher could have thought of something positive to say, OP, but maybe she was knackered. Perhaps next time you could have questions up your sleeve such as "and what's the best thing he's achieved this term?" or "what do you think he enjoys most about school?"

Sorry, this is a long post - this topic is very close to my heart.

I used almost the same come-back as the earlier poster a couple of years ago. One day DS's class teacher watched with impatience as DS (then around 7) took his time to get changed to go home and turned to me and said "Mrs Edgware, I have never seen such a dopey child in my entire career" (yes, in front of lots of other parents and children. I managed to swallow and for once, come out with a response imeediately, not 2 hours later: "Mrs Class teacher, it would be SO nice to hear somethng positive about DS just this once". She looked so shocked and said: "Oh, Mrs Edgware, I DO have positive things to say about your son!". And lo and behold, come next meeting, she did. I truly think the old bat hadn't realised how negative she was being. I also think it helps not to have a row with the teachers, however furious you are.

Anyone notice the common theme here that it's a DS that's been the target of negative comments? In our experience, I'm sure it's to do with our DS being a boy and an August baby, to boot. We've had year after year of "your son is so dopey" and "was he premature, he's so slow and small for his age". Now he's in year 5 and top for maths, science, with a reading age of 14.5, the comments have slowly turned to being more positive. It helps that this year's teacher is not so dismissive of boys as in previous years. Boys ARE slower to develop than girls ESPECIALLY if they are a year younger than the so called 'high flyers' (yes, that's what our wonderful school calls them).

To be fair to the teacher, I also think that part of the "problem" is that he's dreaming about deep sea creatures, or the Orion moons or whatever esoteric conversation he's had with my husband (who's of that wonderfully scientific bent) and goes off into another world.