I don’t.
Or, I should say, I have not up until this point.
We had parent teacher conferences for James at his high school today and all but one of his teachers expressed surprise that he was not with us, and in the case of two of his teachers, they expressed the strong opinion that he should have been in attendance with us to address some of the things that need addressing with them. They felt it would be good for him to hear.
(You know the conference might have issues when your son exclaims, “JUST REMEMBER THAT YOU LOVE ME AND THAT I AM YOUR FIRST BEGOTTEN SON, MOM!!!!!!!!!! Oh, man…this is going to suck.” as you are walking out the door to leave. It was a peach of a performance, y’all. Would bring a trear to your eye.)
Parent teacher conferences have never been on my list of awesome, if you want the truth.
My kids are very bright, smart, funny, kind and great kids, but like many families, we have some real struggles with other areas of school. Often I need to speak bluntly to the teacher about my children, and I need to be sure they are doing the same with me. And while some are of the mind that it is better for kids (over a certain age, of course) to hear that, I haven’t felt comfortable doing so before. I do address every issue and concern with them…I just prefer it to be at done at home with them after the conference.
Through the years of elementary and middle school, I saw a lot of families bringing their kids to conferences but I have never done it. For one, my parents NEVER took us with them, so a lot of it is just how I was raised. For another, James is my first child and it’s our first year of high school and I didn’t know bringing him was an expectation.
High school ticks differently, I guess.
Still, I wanted to have an extremely blunt conversation with his teachers about how James was fitting in with this challenging science and math heavy school with high expectation and it was a conversation I just didn’t feel like having in front of him. (For the record, everyone loves James. While he has some organization/time/attention issues (he is my kid after all), the work he completes is A or high B material, so everyone involved has confidence that he will be fine in the environment he is in.)
The conferences made me feel a lot better about things, I was able to say and express exactly what I needed and wanted to say. Even if I had known it was expected to take him to school, I think I still would have chosen to leave him home.
That may change in the future, but for now I’m good with my decision and have no regrets.
What about you? Do you take your kids to parent/teacher conferences or do you prefer it just be parents and teachers?
Stumble it!
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