Houston, we have a first grader!

The second half of the school year got extremely busy after Christmas break. Well, that and I had the winter blahs that made me want to do nothing all day long but complain about how cold it was, so I was too lazy to blog. I will try to catch up as succinctly as I can.

The last day of school for kindergarteners was this past Monday, June 3. They had their morning meeting, and then at 9:30 all the parents assembled to see the end of year kindergarten program. Over the past year, students learned a new poem weekly and kept a notebook with all of them in it. Each Friday's homework was to read/recite the poem for their parents. The program on the last day consisted of the children reciting selected poems that were central to the learning themes throughout the year: the first day of school, autumn leaves, Halloween and pumpkins, Thanksgiving, Christmas, winter and snow, Easter, etc. Our little performer always seems to get a big case of stage fright for these types of activities. He doesn't sing or talk, and only does about a fourth of the "choreography".

Nevertheless, it was a cute program to watch. Following that, the kindergarteners received their "diplomas" from their teachers and then had a short celebration in their classrooms.



I expected to be very emotional when we reached this milestone, but I was too excited for Justin. He's excited about summer and he's really anxious to be in first grade. I guess my emotions have been mostly internal, but mainly they consist of disbelief and amazement at how fast time really goes. It's quite stunning to think that 6 years ago at this time, I was pretty hugely pregnant and had no idea how my life was going to change. I spent that summer hot and swollen, putting together a nursery and feeling guilty for disrupting my cat's life by bringing a baby into it. Now, I'm sitting here at the kitchen table watching my guy play Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, pretending to record a video tutorial on how to play the game. He can read and solve basic math problems and loves to do science experiments. It's been a really incredible year (although I'm still really sorry for the cat).

And while I really started this blog to document Justin's experiences in kindergarten, what I think I value most about this year is the changes it has brought about in our family. Both of my kids absolutely love school and have made lots of friends. The fact that the school is religious in nature has introduced some frank discussions about God, and how we should live to be more like him. We definitely would not have had such conversations had the boys not attended St. Veronica. While I was raised going to church and Sunday school, we didn't have talks about God in our daily lives, so I really had no idea how to introduce God to my children. I mentioned in my first post the huge sense of relief that washed over me when we made our decision where Justin would attend kindergarten, and that feeling has returned again and again and again over the course of this year.

So while we've had our fair share of ups and downs in the behavior area, and sometimes struggling to get homework done before playing, this year has been quite a blessing for all of us. Justin has grown immensely on so many levels -- physically, spiritually, emotionally, and cognitively. I'm going to try to put off my anxiety about first grade until later in the summer. :)

A Diagnosis

I've been hesitant post this for several reasons, but I just need to put it in words and get it off my chest.

Justin's propensity to initiate trouble, his boundless supply of energy, and his ability to look through you when you're trying to talk to him have long been sources of concern for his father and me. At his 5 year well visit, 10 days before kindergarten started, Justin was in rare form, seemingly bouncing off walls in the examining room and making it nearly impossible for the doctor to take a good look at him or for she and I to have any type of dialogue. She mentioned at that visit, "I won't be surprised if you are back here for help after school starts." We had hoped that a change of scenery -- from preschool to kindergarten -- would help and that he'd slow down a little as he grew older, but that obviously proved not to be the case. The entire month of October was an endless stream of red on the behavior chart at school, and nothing we tried got through to him. We tried taking away toys, privileges, etc., but he just honestly didn't seem to care what the consequences were and continued on a path that looked like it could only get worse. We felt like we needed to address it and rein it in now, so that he doesn't struggle more than necessary in school in the future.

I love Justin's pediatrician and while we had mentioned our concerns about his behavior for a few years prior to this, she had been resistant to do anything with respect to testing for learning disorders or behavior problems before he was school age. The rationale from care providers, among other reasons, is that it's difficult to tell the difference between normal toddler/preschooler behavior and what's not normal in a child so young. I can appreciate this, but when you're a parent seeking some guidance, it's tough to be told "we need to wait a few years" before doing anything. My biggest struggle was knowing in my gut that we had a problem, and not wanting to wait until Justin had been in school for a few years before doing anything about it. Why have your child needlessly suffer trouble if you know you need help?

Fortunately, the school setting afforded us the opportunity to test for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), which I had long felt was the root cause of Justin's behavior. The pediatrician's office uses the Vanderbilt Assessment Scale to evaluate behaviors for an ADHD diagnosis. Forms are completed by both parents and teachers that interact with the child on a regular basis, and then they are scored. Justin's scores showed a definitive conclusion that he does indeed have ADHD, specifically the combined inattentive/hyperactive type.

After the doctor's office scored the forms, my husband and I had a conference with his physician. It was really honestly such a relief to finally know what we are dealing with, but it's very overwhelming. Although there are many options for treatment, it's tough to realize that the school years will be an uphill road for your child. Choosing medication as a form of treatment isn't as easy as it sounds......there are side effects to be considered, some of which aren't known, and there is constant monitoring and evaluating taking place because the entire time a child is taking medicine, they are growing and changing and nothing stays the "same" like it would in an adult. Behavior therapy -- for both the parents and the kid -- is always recommended in conjunction with any decision to medicate. Some families are successful in treating the disorder with behavior therapy alone, but in children with the type of ADHD that Justin has, its success rate is low. It's really hard to decide what to do. The diagnosis itself has a stigma attached to it (at least in my opinion), and the decision on how a family chooses to manage it is very personal.

Justin's doctor recommended the combination approach of medication and behavioral therapy. We started him on his medicine during the Thanksgiving break from school, since it afforded us several days to observe his behavior and any adverse reactions that he might have. for the first few days, he honestly was a completely different child. I would almost use the word "subdued" to describe him, and believe me when I say that's never been in my vocabulary when describing my oldest son. It definitely affected his appetite -- he wasn't and isn't the least bit interested in eating anything. It's a struggle to get food in him at all. After 4 or 5 days, he seemed to be getting used to being on the medication, and was more like himself, but a calmer version. It's kind of hard to describe the differences.

Unfortunately, we started all of this during the holiday season so we have not been able to sign up for behavioral therapy sessions yet. There are a couple of series through Children's Hospital that were recommended for us to attend, but the last session for 2012 ended at the end of November and they don't start up again till early March 2013. Hopefully, once we get started on that, we will have more tools in our arsenal that will help us handle things at home.

The best news, though, is that he's made a remarkable change for the better in school. After being on mostly yellow and red for the first 3 months of school, he was on blue for nearly the entire month of December. (For reference, every student starts out on green for the day. They have opportunities to move up to purple or blue, or down to yellow or red, based on behavior choices.) It was wonderful. We visited the doctor the first week in January to make sure there weren't any concerning physical side effects. Justin lost two pounds since his visit in August, and grew an inch. I honestly thought he'd have lost more weight, although I wish he hadn't lost any. We made the decision to keep him on the medicine at the same dosage and follow up in the summer unless something changed.

In the last 3 weeks, the behavior reports coming home from school have not been good. It's more of the same type of stuff we experienced at the beginning of the year. After 2.5 weeks of the reversal in behavior, I called the doctor. She is a great listener and she asked me several questions. She recommended that we tweak the dosage of his medication to see if it will help. I didn't honestly believe we'd be doing that only two months into his treatment, but he is growing fast so it's entirely likely that he needs a different dosage. I'm still so conflicted about the medication, though. The whole situation is so utterly frustrating and to be honest, we feel really helpless. No amount of talking to Justin and asking him why he doesn't listen, why he doesn't follow directions, etc., yields any useful information. It makes me sigh heavily, and sometimes I just want to bury my head in the sand and imagine that we won't have years of this struggle. It makes me sad for Justin, because he's just so darn smart and ornery, but he can't focus and I'm worried that he won't be able to achieve his full potential.

Justin's teacher has been very supportive and helpful as we've gone through this process. She has worked really hard with him this year, and I think that's really to her credit. He can be positively unlovable some days when he is at his most energetic and, for lack of a better term, hyper. She's handled him extremely well and has found creative ways to help him get his work done. I'm really happy about that aspect of it, because we wouldn't be successful in trying to treat him if we couldn't partner with his teachers.

So that's it -- the diagnosis. I don't talk to people about it much, because I'm a little embarrassed, I guess. I know that this is nothing that we, as parents, have caused or could have avoided -- but the way he acts sometimes garners some stares from people who don't know us, from people who see me frustrated and chastising him for the 117th time in a restaurant or store, etc. I just really hope that as Justin gets older, he will naturally calm down a little bit (after all, he is only 5) and start listening. I'm worried about first grade, where they sit in desks and are required to be even more quiet and attentive than in kindergarten. Lord grant me strength to be the advocate and support that he really needs.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

In my excitement to post about the holidays, I overlooked posting about Parent-Teacher conferences. All grades, from preschool on up, have them. Given Justin's troubles in the fall, I was anxiously awaiting conferences as an opportunity to see how he's been progressing and talk to his teacher face to face as an in-person "barometer" of his academic and social performance.

I don't really know what I was expecting but truthfully, I was really disappointed in the whole deal. My first gripe is that I thought it was too difficult to sign up for a conference slot. Signup sheets were posted after all of the masses in the church the weekend before the conferences were scheduled, and that was the ONLY way to sign up. I was more than a little irritated about it -- the fact that the school accepts out-of-parish students means that they have families that don't belong to or attend the church. We are one of those families. Also, the school calendar that was published at the beginning of the year included the date of conferences on it, so the date was planned well in advance. Yet, parents were not able to sign up until the Saturday and Sunday immediately before the Thursday conference date. In this period of time when families' schedules book up due to working parents, extra curricular activities, juggling multiple children, and needing to arrange for child care, three days is not really enough time in advance for scheduling such an important event.

Finally, the conferences themselves were really kind of an anti-climactic non-event when all was said and done. I'd expect that in preschool, really, but we did get good, useful feedback from Tyler's teacher. The kindergarten conference included some examples of Justin's work throughout the year so that we could see for ourselves how he's changed and improved, but we didn't get much additional written or verbal feedback from his teacher outside of that. A checklist had come home about a week before the conferences that showed the various things that the kindergarten students are evaluated on, with checkmarks next to the items that the child can do satisfactorily, left blank if they need improvement. I guess that was really the barometer of his progress more than the conference itself, because I just didn't feel like we learned anything about him.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too hard on Justin's teacher. She is really a nice person and I think she handles him pretty well. He really likes her and I do feel like he's doing well in school. Maybe my years in the corporate world and suffering annual performance reviews have caused me to expect more in the way of communication than I should, especially at the kindergarten level. But the flurry of notes and negative feedback we received regarding Justin's behavior struggles early in the year did not really come up during the conferences, nor was there much opportunity for it. However, today's kindergarteners have full schedules and it's the foundation for 12 more years of school, so I guess I hoped there would be more "meat" to meeting with the teacher. I suppose I can always request a conference if I feel the need for one. We didn't receive any negative feedback about either of our boys. But if I'm being honest, I was pretty let down by the whole thing.

Holiday parties and celebrations

I really should have posted sooner, because now that it's January 3, it seems silly to be talking about Halloween. But I don't want to overlook the fun that the kids have had in school since my last post.

Tyler's preschool class had a Halloween party, which was really cute. All the kids got to take their costumes to school and wear them for the party. There were a couple of different crafts they got to do at the party as well as play a game and have some snacks. There are only 7 kids in Tyler's class, so it's a fun little size to do things like this. He got to paint a pumpkin, and play Halloween bingo, but his favorite part was the goody bag :)






The rest of the school, from kindergarten on up, gets to participate in a Halloween parade in costume. Justin loved it. Some of the costumes were so creative! Despite warnings that no masks or costumes with violent themes were to be worn, there were plenty of those too. The Halloween party followed the parade. Justin had a really good time, and it was nice that the kids had these celebrations at school since Halloween was a rainy and cold affair that no one particularly enjoyed at all!









Only a few short weeks later, the Christmas celebrations were in full swing. The school has a large variety of things going on during the Christmas season, from fund raising to outreach to just plain celebrating. There were opportunities to buy treats ($1 each) to send to friends, the PTO sold gift cards (no need to go to Kroger!), food donations were collected for St. Vincent de Paul and local food pantries, and on and on. The higher grades participate in a Christmas program, but the kindergarten has their own. The theme was "Breakfast in Bethlehem". The kindergarten classes did a re-enactment of the First Christmas, which had to be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Following that was the class Christmas party. Tyler's preschool class had a Christmas party on their last day before the winter break. They made ornaments and played "Reindeer, Reindeer, Santa" - the Christmas variation of Duck, Duck, Goose. :)












The PTO also hosts "Santa's Workshop". They purchase all kinds of little items and adult volunteers set up a little "store" for preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students to shop for the special people in their lives. Every item costs $1.00 and the volunteers help the children "shop". We provided a list of people for them to buy gifts for, and both boys had a blast picking out presents for the special people in their lives. Justin was so excited about his purchases, he wanted us to open our gifts the day that he brought them home! I thought this was such a neat activity for the kids and they really enjoyed being able to buy things that THEY picked out.

What really hit home for me later, in the midst of all of our celebrations, was that we were watching the Christmas story as told by sweet, innocent kindergarteners at the precise moments that the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings were occurring in Connecticut. We are very blessed indeed and I cherished each moment with my kids that much more this season.