Over the past week we’ve had conferences for both Abby and Hannah and have gotten back all three girls’ school photos. Becca’s preschool class doesn’t do fall conferences, so we won’t sit down with her teacher until spring.

I thought I was all prepared for conferences. We had a babysitter, courtesy of our 12-year-old niece who was staying with us all week and was dying for a chance to watch the girls. I had dinner planned out and was ready to start preparations for cooking it with plenty of time left afterward to make it to our first conference (Abby’s) at 6:15pm. Ron even had ended up with the day off so he was going to be able to come to conferences too – not always a common thing with his work schedule. Everything was falling into place.

Until I looked at the calendar, just to verify the 6:15 and 6:45 start times of the girls’ conferences – and was left staring at the times I’d written there, wondering if I was mis-reading something.

5:15 and 5:45 pm. Five o’clock – not six o’clock.

At this point it was 5:20 pm and all of the careful preparations went right out the window. I yelled to Ron that we had to leave NOW, told the girls they’d be making their own dinners (something Abby loves to do anyway) with D’s (our niece’s) help, threw on my coat and shoes and we were off to see if there was any way we could still get in to see Abby’s teacher. We just made it there in time for Hannah’s conference (phew!). And then ended up waiting around for 45 minutes afterward until Abby’s teacher was done with his – he’d pretty much been able to move everyone up a slot and then put us last – after another last-minute addition. I was extremely apologetic (not to mention embarrassed), but he was fine. I got the impression that this wasn’t the first time a parent had misjudged the time their conference started. Which makes me feel slightly less guilty about the whole thing. Just slightly though.

In any case, once we were seated in front of the girls’ teachers, everything went extremely well. Here’s a (not so) quick rundown of how each of them are doing:

Hannah is transitioning very well into first grade and being at school all day. Her teacher has no worries about how she’s handling things and remarked upon how helpful and sweet Hannah is. She’s reading (well) above her grade level and her math skills are advanced for her age as well. The teacher’s only concern is making sure as Hannah gets into the higher grades when school gets “less fun” and more challenging (once she’s not already knowing how to do most of what’s being taught), that she still enjoys school as much as she does now.

We talked about making sure that Hannah knows where and how (and when) she’s able to get onto the classroom’s computer to take Advanced Reader (AR) tests – they don’t usually start them with the whole class until January, but Hannah’s been reading AR books for months and took a few tests at the library last summer, so she’s definitely ready. And that was pretty much it – except for one question that I’d asked Hannah’s previous teacher and wanted to compare answers with her current one. You see, at home Hannah is often quite – dramatic (as I’ve mentioned here from time to time), and has been known to throw major fits when things don’t exactly go her way. Apparently at school she’s a different child however, because this year’s teacher answered exactly the same way as last year’s – in basically total disbelief that Hannah ever acts that way, because at school she’s agreeable, helpful and never has any issues or meltdowns.

Which made me kind of wish that her teacher had come with us down for picture re-takes a few weeks ago (Hannah had missed the original picture day because of being sick) – when Hannah threw a complete fit about wearing the sweater I’d brought for her to put on (having entirely forgotten that morning that it was picture re-take day and not having paid any attention to what she wore to school), was in tears about not wanting to wear the purple headband I’d brought and refusing to get her photo taken whatsoever. We had to let several other kids go ahead of us just so I could get her calmed down, and it took bribery (yes, I resorted to that in the interest of getting at least a halfway decent photo – or any photo for that matter) to finally do the trick. As you can see from the final result – she did fine once we made it through the hysterics.  Sigh…

Abby’s teacher was the one I was extremely curious to talk to – given all of her well-documented issues with ADHD and Asperger’s. We had started her on a (very) low dose of Adderall at the end of the summer, but after it came time to refill and up the dose, I noticed that at home she seemed to be doing just fine without the medication. Not wanting to medicate her unless it’s absolutely necessary, I held off with the refill and then asked her teacher if he’d noticed a difference over the past month or so.

The answer there was an emphatic yes. As in past years, her teacher has no concerns whatsoever with her academics – but where she’s struggling yet again is in the areas of focus, organization, and being able to keep track of her things and follow-along with the lessons like she needs to. The fact that the teacher holds the kids extremely accountable for their actions does help – to a point. But it’s his (and our) opinion that a lot of what Abby’s doing (or not doing) are things beyond her conscious control – that she simply is unable to ‘help it’. This fits exactly into what my own thoughts are – and we came out of the conference having come to a few decisions. First is that I’ve already filled the prescription and Abby started back on the (higher dose of) Adderall yesterday. We’ll touch base with the teacher again in a few weeks to see if that’s helping at school. And – oddly enough, Ron came out of the conference determined to talk to his own doctor about possibly going on ADD medication himself. We’ve remarked for years that Abby is ‘just like him’ – and he’s always had his own struggles with focus at work. It’s better in this job, but he’s noticed his caffeine intake increasing like crazy over the past year – which makes sense if he also suffers from ADHD, because the most common medications for it are stimulants, like caffeine. So we’ll see what comes of that. But back to Abby – she is now using the assignment sheets that were optional at the beginning of the year – but are now mandatory for some students who need them, like her. The teacher checks the sheet and initials it at the end of the day to make sure she’s gotten the assignments down correctly, and I sign the sheet when she’s done with her homework to make sure everything’s done. And part of her nightly checklist is to verify that the homework folder is where it should be (in her backpack). Getting said homework from backpack into the classroom and from there where it needs to go to be turned in is a bit more problematic – and apparently has been costing her quite a bit in fines at school when she constantly has to run out to the hallway to retrieve items from her backpack. But that’s part of the whole learning and personal responsibility experience. At some point, she has to be the one who’s responsible for her own work.

In general I feel very good about how conferences went and glad to have somewhat of a game plan where Abby’s concerned. I am quite curious as to how Becca’s doing in preschool – from what I can tell when I drop her off and pick her up she seems fine, and the conversations with her teacher are telling me that she may be a similar case to Hannah – where she’s almost a different child at school than she is at home. She does appear to be somewhat shy (which we knew) especially in large groups, and preschool is making a noticeable difference there. But she’s not attached to any particular kid to the point of ‘making friends’ or even mentioning anyone in her class by name. I guess that’ll probably come though.