The Conference

Over the course of the past week, I got to speak to the counselor on the phone. She made me feel really comfortable about the whole thing and told me not to worry too much. She reminded me of a couple of truths about Jackson...he's the middle child, he's a boy, he has to follow in Jordan's footsteps at school, our family has been through a lot. All of this is true and eased my mind somewhat.

We set up a conference with Jackson's teacher for Friday afternoon. The counselor sat in on it too. I feel really comfortable that Jackson's teacher knows him pretty well and is trying a variety of strategies with him to get the best out of him. Our school has sort of an alternative style in a lot of respects compared to other schools in our district...it is known as the "hippie" school. Some of the things they try in the classrooms crack me up. One of them is they have a cassette player with headphones that they rotate to different kids in the class. Most of the time the earphones are silent, but every once in a while a voice comes on that says "keep working." How weird is that? Apparently, they think it works. The other day, though, a kid yelled out "I am!" to the voice in his head. Hmmmm.

The long and short of it is, that Jackson does everything at a very fast pace. He doesn't sit still for very long, and he always needs to be doing something with his hands. The teacher suggested getting him one of those stress balls to bring to class to hold onto. She said he never sits down at his desk, his chair is always pushed under and he does his work standing up. We asked about ADD and neither the counselor nor his teacher think we need to test him for that but they are going to do a test where they evaluate how long he can stay on task. Not sure what that entails but I guess we'll find out.

What I really wanted was to go into the meeting and someone tell me "go home and do this, this, and this and everything will be okay." Of course, they didn't say that so I'm still left scratching my head a little. But at least I know there are caring people at school who are trying to help him succeed. That's really all I want.

On another note...today I got tickets for 4 of my girlfriends and their daughters to go see the Cheetah Girls and Hannah Montana when they come to Houston in March. The tickets went on sale this morning and I was so nervous because they're about the hottest tickets in town right now. This will be Jordan's first concert and she's so excited!