Okay, my 4 year old just got sent home with a note from his Pre-K teacher.(the second one this month) It says "He is talking, running inside and not paying attention during instructions."

When I read him what the note said and then asked him about it he said that he did it so his teacher would pay attention to him. He also talked about how bored he is because she's teaching the alphabet. (he's known it for about 2 years now)

The thing that really gets me is that he knows better. He knows about good manners and being quiet so you can listen. And that makes it even easier for me to believe that he's just doing it for the attention.

I just don't know what to do. I don't want him to become such a troublemaker that his teacher doesn't have a chance to see how smart he is and I also don't want him to become so bored with school that he gives up on it entirely (like I kinda did). I'm thinking that I should probably have a meeting with his teacher but what would I say??? "Hi Mrs. Soandso, my son is being a pain because he finds your class boring..." - I don't think that's going to cut it...

At any rate, I'm open to whatever suggestions or advice anyone might have.

What about asking his teacher to give him some extra chores (like being a teacher's help) when shee sees that he starts feeling restless.

My youngest one has ADHD (I'm not saying that your does!), and that "extra work" has helped him a lot and he doesn't disturb his classmates either.

(I'm sorry, my English is not very good, I hope you understand what I mean )

I'm with pancra. I think telling the teacher that your son is bored should spark her to come up with ideas to help him get that bored energy out. If it doesn't, then shame on her! A teacher is supposed to engage her students, all of them, even the ones that don't fit neatly into their original lesson plan.

Your son deserves a learning environment that is stimulating to him. Heck, even I get antsy when school is boring, I can't imagine adding the energy of a Pre-K kid to that.


I hope you will talk to the teacher. be honest with her. Hope it goes well.

A conference with the teacher is a great idea. Just tell her you understand he is being a little disruptive and you are hoping to work with her to find a solution. Maybe she could give him some extra assignments.

I have a child with ADD who happens to have a high IQ. It's a terrible combination. Hopefully, yours is just really smart and bored.

Oh WOW, thanks y'all (((Pancra, LR and RR))) those are some great suggestions!!

I've wondered sometimes if he might be ADHD or ADD but my mother-in-law works for a school district testing kids with all kinds of special needs (she's the one who decides what programs they need) and I know she'd say something if she was concerned about him. When his gross motor skills were a little slow to develop she gave us several exercises to do with him and within a few weeks he'd caught back up.

The more I think about it, the more I believe him that he's just bored and wanting attention from her. I know I was a real pain in school simply because I was bored... it wasn't until high school that my english teacher caught on to me and started giving me copies of the books that the honors classes were reading, none of the other teachers could ever understand why I didn't seem to care and why I was so mad at them.

I'll try to get a conference set up for next week.

We suspected my son might have ADD early on, but I was really against medication. I feel like too many kids are labeled too easily. He was quite difficult to work with - homework and long assignments. Finally when he was in 3rd grade and it was taking us 5-6 hours to get him to do 10 spelling sentences at home, we talked to the pediatrician about it. He sent a form to the teacher that she rated for 3 days - things like being distracted, anxiety, anger, working attention, and stuff like that. You had to score something like 12 to be ADD and he was around 16. There was definite improvement once I agreed to start him on the meds. It was a very difficult decision for me.

He was premature and a set-up for ADD anyway. He also has asthma and those meds affect ability to concentrate sometimes.

A conference is a wonderful idea, but so is plain old-fashioned bribery. If Lillian makes it through the week with no sticks in her basket (last year it was apples that feel from the tree), I take her out for ice cream. Her teacher's told me that she's one of the top 4 students in her class and is really bored with some of the material that they're covering. One of the things that I suggested to the teacher would be to let Lillian help out some of the slower students, and it's made a real improvement - plus she gets more ice cream.

Cheri

Monday is parent-teacher conference day and I'm hoping that we can all reach some sort of understanding. We're going to ask if she can give him extra work or let him help other kids, just about anything will do.

I don't know, maybe I'm expecting too much from a Pre-K class. But he's just so bored... the teacher is teaching the parts of the body and counting to 10 and the alphabet... Taylor has known all of these things for a long time now and I'm starting to wonder why he's even going if he's not going to actually learn something new. When we met her at the orientation we'd told her that he was ready to learn how to read and she said that if he was ready he'd be reading by the end of the school year. I'm starting to wonder how that's possible when they're working on the letters C and D right now.

At this point if something doesn't change I'm seriously considering pulling him out of school and homeschooling him. Hubby's mom is going to talk to some Pre-K and Kindergarten teachers to get an overview of their curriculum and we're going to discuss it with the lady that does day care for us (she'd said he might have this problem) before the meeting on Monday to get some more opinions about it...


Soooo, does anyone have any views on homeschooling? Am I expecting too much from the school? What is the point of Pre-K anyway?


Oh Cheri, you've got no idea how much I wish he'd go for a bribe but for some reason he just doesn't. We had a heck of a time potty training because he didn't really want anything (except for us to stop asking if he needed to go). I think The Mother's Curse that my mom must've cast on me when I was young worked and I wound up with a kid as stubborn as I am

Good luck with your meeting!!!

I can't help you with homeschooling because we can't do that in Argentina although most of the time I believe my son would be much better at home.



So was my son! Funny the things you find out when it's too late, right?

That's for sure. LOL.


Girrl - I have a lot of friends that homeschool. Test scores nationwide show that homeschooled kids do better than public/private school kids in general. There are several sites that have home school cirriculum available - just type it into google and there you go.

Some school districts, even have a internet assisted home school program. For instance, in our district, you can home school, but supplement with the internet program. There is a limited number of openings available, but you get the best of both worlds. Might want to check and see if something like that is available.

As for me, I do NOT have the patience to deal with homeschooling with an ADD kid all day everyday. Would be the death of both of us.

Although, I do threaten him with it when he starts fooling around at school. Terrifies him - so he'll straighten out for a week or so.