Proud Parents

Emmie has had a lot of struggles this year with math and we've had MANY, MANY days of tears and her self confidence has absolutely plummeted. She has been so frustrated and she's super hard on herself when it comes to her grades. (As in she told me she didn't do so well on her reading test. I was sure she had bombed the test the way she was talking. Got home and pulled out the test. She made a 94.) We have spent a lot of time working with her on her math to build back up her confidence and decrease the MAJOR anxiety she's had. She often feels like she's not smart enough because she process things slowly (In general she moves at Emmie speed. Someone once described it to me as there are microwaves and there are crock pots. Emmie is a crock pot.) so things like flash cards and number sprints make her really anxious. We've worked hard at explaining that people's brains work differently but she just wasn't buying it from me.

So imagine our excitement then when we found out this week that Emmie was one of a handful of second graders at her school that qualified for the ALERT program!!! ALERT is our district's gifted and talented program. As a second grader you qualify based on standardized test scores. We are incredibly proud of her! We have always known she was smart but now SHE knows she's smart. Just in the few days that she has known she was in ALERT I have seen a change in her confidence and I love it! I have heard great things about the ALERT program and I'm excited about all the fun learning experiences she'll have in ALERT!

PS. Funny story...So I think we did figure out why she was having some of the learning difficulties that were especially concerning to us. She had been sitting in the back of the classroom. While we were at Disney we saw a LOT of seizures, especially in the mornings. I started getting concerned that she was having these seizures in school and that was why she was having so much trouble in math. Because math is the first thing they do in the morning. I talked with her teacher when we got back and she suggested moving her to the front of the class where she would have a better chance of catching any seizures that Emmie was having. So a few days after she moved Emmie to the front we were practicing spelling words in the car and Emmie said "Mom! Now that I sit in the front I can hear Mrs. Estes so much better!". I got home and checked to make sure her tubes were still in and they were but she had bunches of wax in her ears! So apparently part of her problem was she couldn't hear because of the wax in her ears! Ha!

PPS. Because I know someone will suggest this...I did ask her if she could see better now that she's in the front of the class and she said she could still see just the same. Hopefully that means she inherited Paul's perfect vision and not my horrible eyesight!