As all other moms, I get very excited to see my children growing, learning and discovering life around them. My oldest son, Logan, is four and is now into his third week of PreK. Now, by no means do I think he is the perfect child, but I am really impressed very often by his thoughts and ideas. Today after school, we were all outside playing and he wanted me to fill his sand pail with water as I have done other afternoons when watering my flowers. He started putting different objects into it and deducing whether they sank or floated, which I thought was really cool! He said they did this experiment at school and he wanted to do it at home. The kid is really into science and nature so I knew that was something that would have made an impression on him at school.
However, this is not the end of the story. Tomorrow morning I am meeting with his teacher so she can tell me yet again that Logan has problems with his focus and attention skills. We do have concerns about some areas of Logan's development, but I also have concerns when a teacher wants to "label" a child at such a young age. I am not saying that we don't ever have problems with him listening at home but we do find ways to improve that by rewarding good choices, praise and sometimes strern words. I struggle with this situation because I, too, am an educator and I have had these same things to say about students I have worked with in the past.
Logan has so much potential and intelligence and I feel like he might be being asked to stiffle what creativity and excitement for learning already exists. I struggle as his mom because I don't want to be the "educator" who turned a blind eye to the problems her own son is having but I can't get past the fact that he is only four. And I also don't want to be the mom who stiffles the burning desire within my son to learn, discover and to soar. I want Logan to be accepted for who he is. This experience has certainly made me a better professional and hopefully mom.
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