I know lots of you have had parent’s nights in the last week or so and I hope you’re all feeling as proud as I do after ours last night.
You might (but probably won’t) remember that when Master Frugal was in Reception at school he was behind the rest of his classmates with both his reading and his writing. It just didn’t seem to click with him like it did with his friends and as a result, his confidence suffered and it started to affect all aspects of his school work.
This continued until about halfway through Year 1 and no matter what I did, I couldn’t help him. I tried everything, even just letting him get on with it thinking that he would learn when he was ready but one day he came home saying he knew he was stupid and asked me why he couldn’t do things his other classmates could. My heart broke for him and after we’d had a talk, I went upstairs, shut myself in the bathroom and had a good cry.
I talked to his teacher (again) and she confirmed that he wasn’t improving as we’d hoped and he was over a year behind his peers in terms of his learning which was having a huge impact on his confidence. About a week after that, she contacted me and asked if I wanted to put him in a Reading Recovery program which involved one on one tuition for an hour every morning for a full term – at a cost of over £1000 to the school. It’s so expensive that the school could only offer it to one or two children a year and they’ve since had to stop the scheme completely.
That was a complete turning point in his little life, from there his confidence grew and grew as did his reading ability and within that term, he had almost completely caught up with his classmates. I cried at the next parents night when I was told this and ever since then, I’ve felt emotional every parent’s night when they tell me how well he’s doing.
Last night though, I got some quite unexpected news about his reading – he’s now in Year 3 and at seven years old, he had the reading ability of a nine and a half year old according to the assessments they’ve done in October. It’s not just his reading – he’s also ahead in spelling, writing and maths and his teacher says he excels in the science work they do as well.
As proud as I am of all of this, the main thing to me has always been that he’s happy and I’m so pleased to see his achievements at school are now beginning to show in all aspects of his life. He’s now much more confident in himself and he’s just a different, much happier little boy and he’s a pleasure to be around.
I feel quite emotional (although that could well be lack of sleep) and wanted to share this you all. I was so worried about him at one point but now look, he’s improved to this point!
(I may have only posted about Master Frugal but his big sister got a glowing report too and I’m so proud of her as well – she’s also done amazing as she always does.)
