"She just needs more repetition than most."

Today was Ashlynn's Spring parent/teacher conference.  I don't know what I expect really.  As much as most of the time is spent focusing on her strengths, all that hits me like a ton of bricks is what she ISN'T yet doing. My husband thought I was crazy.  He couldn't come to the meeting today, but read the paper tonight at dinner and told me he felt it was predominantly positive.  Look at all the things she's doing that she wasn't doing last year at this time.

True.

I guess I just hate listening to all the positives while holding my breath and waiting to hear the "but....." 

It sucks.  I just leave there feeling desperate, sad, and worried, no matter how many positives they managed to come up with.

Hearing all the buzz words I've used in meetings before, "needs more repetition than other children" "learns differently" "has a great attitude which is a huge asset"

I guess I should focus on the positive though.  Her strength was in pro-social behavior and she even gets in trouble now for talking too much!  Um, what?  Talking too much??  She didn't even talk to her peers last year in preschool so that is AWESOME.   Her language sample during sensory table was as follows:

I help you?
What doing?
I'm making a pizza to baby.
I like pink.
You have purple.
I sit here?
I play with Austin?
Blue goes right there, see?

As an SLP, this is awesome.  She's four years old and is using primarily 3-4 word sentences.  Still a little behind, but her sentence length is only a little under than what is expected for her age.  This is exciting.  Also, she was SO clueless about her colors last year.  It sounds like she's finally starting to retain them.

The report said "she is understood by most familiar people and strangers can usually understand her if she speaks slowly."  That is also great news!  I need to revel in all of this progress.  Can't I just remember when  I was freaked out she wasn't talking to anyone and all I wished for was that she would talk?  I know....I NEED to....it's just...then there is all the academic things she needs to know now.
She still needs more practice recognizing and naming the letters in her name. She can count to ten and count up to five objects accurately using 1:1 correspondence.

Okay, yay, that's awesome.....except I know by the end of preschool they need to know ALL their letter names and letter sounds, count to 20, and be able to write their name by the time they enter Kindergarten.  The teacher tried to encourage me by saying, "well, she does have one more year in preschool."  and then ended, "but summer is a critical time because a lot of kids do show some regression." 

Yes, yes that's true.  I hope next March at her Spring parent/teacher conference we will be on target.  In the meantime, I am officially off my sabbatical of only being Ashlynn's mom.  She needs me more than that.  I went out and bought a bunch of alphabet cards, foam letter puzzles, and a dry erase board.  I sorted the letters of her name into a bag, and we're going to practice putting them in order and naming them every day.  We're also going to go through the foam letters and name the letter and the sound daily.

I downloaded a kid weekly planner so that Ashlynn can learn the days of the week and each day we can talk about what she is going to do, and then at the end of the day we can talk about what she did. 

I printed out three picture sequence cards so she can practice putting them in order as well to encourage pre-reading and narrative abilities there too. 

I've been depressed today just thinking about all of our hard work ahead, but tonight when I was working with Ashlynn, she's not depressed at all.  She was thrilled to have 1:1 attention from her mama and just attacked it all with her positive attitude. 

So here's to a lot of work, but most importantly, a positive attitude to go with it.