Parent/teacher conferences

It’s that time again. Sam is already being evaluated, practice for the rest of his life I suppose. The daycare Sam attends does parent/teacher conferences every six months and as part of the process, they put together a written evaluation for inclusion in his permanent record. Sam’s most recent evaluation included the word “precocious” at least three times.

For some reason the word has a rather negative connation for me in kind of a “too big for your britches” way. People seem to use it interchangeably with insolence. At any rate, I looked it up and according to whichever on-line dictionary I’m neglecting to attribute this to, the definition is as follows:

Main Entry: pre·co·cious Pronunciation: pri-'kO-sh&sFunction: adjectiveEtymology: Latin praecoc-, praecox early ripening, precocious, from prae- + coquere to cook
1 : exceptionally early in development or occurrence
2 : exhibiting mature qualities at an unusually early age

Now, do I choose to be offended and take it as the misused term or do I take it at face value and choose to believe that Sam is #2, no, not as in poo but as in the second definition listed here?

Yeah, yeah. I’ll take it the good way.

I already know that Sam is very active and doesn’t like to listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear. I was surprised to read is that he is described as a leader in his class although that may actually mean instigator in this case.

I asked the teacher about the possibility that Sam should have been moved ahead to the next “class” because one of the other teachers had mentioned that Sam was ready to move up months ago. He (yes, he, there is a male teacher in this daycare center and I have to admit that my gender stereotype is such that I’ve always wondered why he’s there but I do my best to get past it because hey, it’s a job and he seems to do it well) told me that they’d talked to the director about moving him up but she didn’t want to do it since the kids would be switching classes soon anyway. I think Sam’s bored with the stuff in his current room. He’s also one of the oldest kids in the room, is the biggest kid in there, and he’s one of only three boys in a class of about 15. And hey, he’s precocious. He’ll be moving up to the next group in August so I’m not going to pursue it now but I think if we’re in a similar situation 6 months from now I’ll force the issue with the director. A bored Sam definitely has the ability to make everyone around him miserable so I expect it might make their lives easier too. And maybe I wouldn’t be hearing “I don’t want to go to school today. I want to stay home by myself.” so often.