Ah, good old parent-teacher day. I am willing to bet my entire life savings that absolutely no one enjoys attending these things. For the teachers, it means having to prepare a discussion about kids you hardly know anything about while at risk of being yelled at by a parent. For the parent, it means having the rose-coloured glasses we all have about our kids removed. For kids, it means potentially getting in trouble when you go home. I attended parent-teacher day three nights ago and discovered that my son is in fact the naughty kid in his class. Apparently, he’s loud, disruptive, scrunches up paper, will purposely give incorrect answers to questions and makes zero effort. I was embarrassed to find this out as I was worried how it reflected on me as a parent. I apologised for being responsible for the naughty kid in the class. She laughed it off and said ‘better the naughty kid than the bully kid.’ To be honest, she’s right. I’d be much more ashamed if my son was a bully and making other kids feel sad or hurt. Instead, he’s making the other kids laugh. Unfortunately, his attempts of making the kids laugh is disrupting their studies, and I agree this isn’t ideal.
His teacher informed me that he may need to visit a behavioural optometrist. As it turns out, when a kid feels they need to be the class clown, it is often the result of needing to compensate for the fact they’re struggling. Me and my son’s teacher have a theory that he might be struggling with his vision. A behavioural optometrist will be able to conduct thorough testing of my son’s vision to determine where he is struggling.
We’re planning to visit the highest-rated eye doctor in Brighton to assess my son’s eyes. Hopefully, after this assessment, we will be able to figure out what is wrong and be able to start taking appropriate actions. Once we can rule out whether or not his vision is the issue, we can start looking at the next steps.