Grade 1 is not for sissies

Etienne and I went to our first Parent/Teacher meeting with Daniel’s teacher this evening.

I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to these things (besides being a little nervous that our child might be a serial killer) as the teachers over the years have pretty much always commented on how he only plays with his girl BFF, how friendly and affectionate he is and how bi-lingual he is. He battled a little with Afrikaans last year in the transition from an English to Afrikaans school and was sent for speech assessment. We then almost got bullied into speech therapy earlier this year which we politely declined, wanting to give his teacher a chance to get to know him first and make her own recommendation.

Thank goodness we did as his vocabulary is great and his speech has improved in leaps and bounds.

Daniel’s teacher is the also apparently the favourite Acrikaans teacher in his grade and some of the Moms were a little surprised that we cracked the nod last year (I see I didn’t blog about it, I’m such a wuss), a couple of them made me feel that I somehow didn’t work hard enough to get my child into the best class. Yes, I know, I sound oversensitive, but you had to be there. In my defense, I didn’t really know anyone, it was at a Friday afternoon birthday party I took leave for to attend with Daniel and there was no wine. I cannot really be held responsible. But I digress.

His teacher really enjoys our son and yes, a little bit of me thinks that she must say that to *all* the parents, but I’m willing to roll with it. She apparently has a system where there are little ‘warning sticks’ to show the kids when they are being disrespectful etc and all the sticks went missing. She eventually found them at Daniel’s desk. He apparently hid them because he didn’t want any of his classmates to bet into trouble, not because he was constantly getting into trouble. The little man wanted to help his friends, how sweet is that?

So all in all, our son is not a serial killer, doesn’t need speech therapy and is doing extremely well overall. And he made friends with some boys, but we could already tell by the new real boy play and some of his language. In fact, just the other day I thought he said ‘fuck’ under his breath and when I asked him what he had said he sheepishly confessed to ‘fart’. Not something he’ll hear in our house in a hurry.

We say poep anyway.