Parent Teacher Interviews

I recently attended parent teacher interviews and I thought I’d jot down a few notes about the 3 turkeys at age 10, 8 and 5 while the thoughts are still fresh in my mind.

Sophie has an unfair advantage when it comes to dealing with a school environment. In recent years, as the two older kids have been assigned homework, she has demanded equal treatment. Nobody likes being left out, even if that treatment included dictées, preparing for oral presentations or memorizing their multiplication tables. As a result, Sophie is a pro at working autonomously on class assignments like colouring or counting while others in her class, usually boys, are busy pushing the limits of their teacher.

Nicholas is clever, now if he could only combine this cleverness with hard work instead of laziness then he might be able to avoid the same fate of his father. What can I say, the more he grows, the more I see him as a mini-me with all my strengths and unfortunately my weaknesses. Therefore, it was with a bit of disappointment but not much surprise that I found out that Turkey number 2 has been hiding homework from his parents. In recent weeks, when his mom asked him to study for dictées, he responded “What dictées?” when we asked him when his next assignments were due he told us “I don’t have any.” and when we asked him if he was doing any extra work at home to make up for the school he missed while he was away, he went for the trifecta and responded, “I’m all caught up.” He gets away with this stuff because he’s a quite and obedient boy in class who manages to stay under his rookie teacher’s radar just enough to not draw attention to his transgressions. The only flaw in his master plan was the parent teacher interview. When his mom found out the lengths he’s taken to avoid homework including the many lies he’s told us over the past couple of weeks I think it broke a little bit of her heart. She reacted by putting him through an extreme guilt trip and we punished him by taking away his 3 most favourite things in the world (TV, computer and video games). We’re on top of him now and I hope he takes this opportunity to develop the discipline and work ethic that he’ll need when this stuff we call life actually starts getting hard.

Juliette, in the past year, has blossomed into every Chinese mother’s ideal daughter by bringing home her first report card of straight As. She’s always been an A+ student for conduct but backing that up with actual grades has been a pleasant surprise for us. If you ask her why she’s doing so well in school this year (which I have) she’ll tell you it’s because her teacher from last year had given her the confidence through loud and vociferous encouragement in person and in writing. That being said, at 10, she’s continued exercising her social skills that she’ll need for high school by practicing put downs on her siblings. While I don’t condone this activity, it is expected and probably also necessary if she’s going to survive that part of life relatively unscathed. The interesting information I found out after meeting her teacher was that she’s also developing her adult socializing skills by practicing them on her teachers during the last 5 minutes of recess. The teacher thought that this was cute and a bit amusing and I couldn’t agree more.