Last night we went to Monsters school for his parent teacher conference. These are always interesting. They are set up to make you as a parent feel awkward and uncomfortable. The teacher always has the only full sized chair in the room and then puts you, the parent, in a child sized chair, at child sized table.
Mrs F started the conference off by telling me how wonderful my child is. How he is one of the most intelligent students she has ever had the pleasure of teaching. How he reads well above grade level and understands everything he reads how he is quick to pick up on even some of the most obscure concepts.
She also informed us that the GATE coordinator gave my son half of the GATE test before she had to go in for emergency surgery. Thus it will be the middle of next month before she is back and able to finish testing Monster.
Mrs F finished by telling us that Monster seems to have trouble sitting still and focusing on his work, that we need to work with him on being more attentive in class. She hinted that we might want to think about changing Monsters diet, or investigating his medical needs. Mrs F hinted very strongly that my child might have ADD or ADHD. I nodded and smiled and told her I would think it over, then walked away.
I will be the first to admit that Monster has high energy levels. He is an 8 year-old boy. He wants more than anything to go out and touch and take apart and run around and yell and climb. Schools in this area have limited opportunities for the kids to do this. They are allotted one 20 minute lunch, and that includes 10 minutes of playground time. That is it. There are no other recesses, no other opportunities for him to run and be a kid. 20 minutes in a six hour school day, is there any wonder that the kid gets antsy?
You add to that the fact that according to his teacher he is working well above grade level and understands even the hard concepts the first time through, and I seriously doubt that his "focus" issues have anything to do with ADD or ADHD. I would say boredom and lack of play time are probably the biggest contributors. I remember getting in trouble for talking and drawing and playing instead of listening to the teacher because the teacher was droning on about the same thing for the third or fourth time. To this day one of my pet peeves is people who repeat themselves.
I find myself sitting in meetings bored stiff, drawing, listing tasks, thinking of whether or not something would make a good blog. Yet they expect my 8 year-old to spend 6 hours completely focused and attentive? Get real.