Dylan

Dylan is so great.  Really.  He is wonderful lately.  That’s not to say that he’s perfect.  He’s not.  But he’s been so much happier lately.  The struggles I have with him are because he gets too wound up.  He’s a happy kid.  I can’t remember the last time he had a really rough day.

At Parent Teacher Conferences his teacher said he was doing great.  She says he is still a bit too social in class, but the whole class has problems with that, not just him.  On his report card he got all 3s.  Which is the highest you can get, meaning he meets the standards for everything they’ve learned so far.  The only area he didn’t get all highest marks were behavior.

But those 2s are not surprising to me.  Self-control?  Accepting responsibility?  Yes, I can see how he would not get high marks on those.  But that’s okay.  His teacher made a comment about how he can do his math problems with his eyes closed, or some other saying along those lines.  Meaning he knows his math.  He does soar through his homework problems rather quickly.

He just barely started taking tests for Accelerated Reading.  He actually really likes it.  He takes one almost every day.  And he passed every one of them, usually with perfect scores, until this last week he had one where he only got 2/5.  He was bummed and said that Mrs Davis told him he has to read each book twice now before he can test on them.  Then he brought home this test on a chapter book.  At least that’s what he told me.  I’m not sure what kind of book is was for sure, but it had 10 questions instead of 5 so it was certainly a longer book than he has been doing.  I am really proud that his comprehension is so great that he’s acing almost all his tests. 

He also told us that he took the STAR test again because he wanted to raise his reading level, and he did!  He said he can now borrow books up to 3.6, which gives him a bigger selection of the Goosebumps books so he was happy.  He also told us that Mrs Davis said he has the highest level in the class!  I’ll have to ask her about that next time I get a minute to chat with her.  I know there are a few good readers in the class, maybe they’re the same as him?  Or maybe he just tests better, I don’t know.

I was able to grab Mr Butikofer for a minute at Parent Teacher Conferences as well.  He is the school counselor.  Dylan meets with him every Friday and he looks forward to it.  Whenever we ask him what they talk about he says, “nothing.”  He told us he just colors and one day they spent the whole time trying to find a mouse that was loose in the school.  Ryan and I wondered what goes on with them and if they really do talk, but it’s so casual that Dylan doesn’t realize it.  Anyway, Dylan came home one Friday saying something about his class getting Random Donut Day and Kylee was like, “it’s not Random Donut Day.  That is Wednesdays.”  And Dylan shrugged and said, “all I know is I came back from Mr B’s office and there were donuts by the sink.”  Lol.  It was probably someone’s birthday or something.  But what was funny was Kylee, who goes, “YOU get to see Mr B??  EVERYBODY gets to see him!  Why don’t I ever get to see him?”  Good times.  I know her BFF Sydni sees him, and I don’t know why but I know her parents are divorced and it happened within the last two years so maybe that’s why.  Dylan responded saying, “you’re not a trouble maker.”  That made me sad that he thinks that he’s a trouble maker and that’s why he sees the counselor.  I told Dylan, “you’re not a trouble maker either.”  He said, “I was when I hit that girl.”  I guess that’s true, but I wanted to make sure he understood that he was a good kid.  I told him he makes bad choices sometimes when he gets angry, but he’s not a trouble maker and he’s not a bad kid.

So, I was able to talk to Mr B to see how he thinks things are going with Dylan.  The first thing he said when I introduced myself was, “I love your son!  He is so great.” Dylan usually wins people over once they get past him fighting with other kids… Mr B said, “he’s doing really well.  He seems a lot happier lately.”  To me, happiness was never the problem.  But I can see how that would be a focus for a counselor.  I told him I agreed, that he hasn’t had many blow-ups at home and I hadn’t heard anything about problems at school either.  Mr B said that he hasn’t heard things from the Duties on the playground, and before he used to hear about Dylan almost every day.  I had no idea that he was getting in trouble that often.  Nobody ever told me.  So I am really glad that he’s staying out of trouble. But Ryan and I have asked him what he does at recess and he tells us that he swings by himself.  He is such a social kid that we thought that was odd.  I mentioned that to Mr B and he said, “yes, he’s told me that.”  I explained that he had a little tiff with his friend and he was stubbornly refusing to move past it and insisting that they aren’t friends, but the only reason I knew about it was because the friend’s mother had texted me.  Dylan didn’t find it important enough to share with us, I guess.  Dylan told us the reason he plays alone was because his friends were always playing football and he didn’t want to play.  When I pushed harder (since he loved playing football in the Fall, so I didn’t know why he wouldn’t want to play) he said some kid tripped him and he didn’t want to play anymore.  Fair enough.  If kids are being mean, I don’t blame him.  But Mr B told me they had been talking about him playing alone.  He said it’s great that he is avoiding conflict, but he shouldn’t have to play by himself to do so.  He said they were talking about that currently.  So I gathered that they certainly are talking about a lot of things.  And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Dylan was a lot happier, and quite a bit more cooperative too.  Before I left he said again, “I really enjoy Dylan.  Thank you for sharing him with me.”  He’s a really nice guy.  And just in case you are wondering, the counselor’s office has windows and so does the door.  So he’s never alone with the kids behind closed doors.  I walk past his office whenever I go to Dylan’s class and I can see right in.  I know that’s something you have to think about these days, which is sad but better safe than sorry.

A few funny things about Dylan…  There are lots of funny things about Dylan.  Remember, this is a kid who loves to entertain other people and get smiles.  Though in this story, the smiles weren’t intentionally brought on by him.  Dylan usually showers in the kids bathroom and he loves to plug the drain and play in there.  One night Kylee called that shower so we told him he needed to shower in Mom and Dad’s big shower (he can’t plug the drain so he doesn’t like it as much).  But he went without a fight and we turned on the shower for him and left him to it.  He is plenty old enough to wash himself and get out when he’s done.  Well, after being alone in there for a little bit, he came out to the living room where Ryan was, and he was all upset and started chewing out Ryan saying, “why are you guys just leaving your sharp razors in there?”  He had a cut on his chin.  He had decided to play with a razor, who knows what was going through his mind.  Has he seen Ryan shave in the shower before and decide to try it out?  That’s what it looks like.  But the funny part was that he came out all mad at us and blaming us for leaving our razors there.  Of course it must be our fault that he got hurt.  Us laughing didn’t make him feel much better.  He was actually embarrassed about the cut asking if he still had to go to school the next day.  Too funny.  Dylan’s first shave.

With the warmer weather, we’ve been outside a bit.  Last year Sadie was learning to ride her bike and she did really well but she was a bit short so she had trouble starting and stopping.  I told her we would work on it again so I went out there with her and she’s tall enough now that it shouldn’t take too long for her to get the hang of it.  Anyway, Dylan used his reward points for piano lessons to buy a big bag of sixlets and he kept telling Sadie that he would give her some as a reward when she learned to ride her bike because “I remember how hard it is.”  Of course I’m thinking, “you remember how hard it is because it was barely a year ago that you learned.”  But it obviously stuck in his mind as a very difficult thing to learn.  And I thought it was really sweet that he wanted to help motivate her.  He told her quite a few times that he would give her a present because he remembers how hard it is.  And then he wrapped a pack of sixlets and wrote her a note for when she gets it.  Always so thoughtful.

Speaking of thoughtful, here is a picture of the card he made for his teacher a few days before Valentine’s Day, just because.  He picks out candy from his own stash to share with her.

And with Ryan out of town, he wrote a poem for him on a card as well.  He wanted to mail it, but I told him it would be better to just send a picture on the phone.

This is him with his “100 days of school” project.  This was right up his alley.  He created the perler bead “100” by himself and then I tied the string to it and he counted out 100 cheerios (technically they are Fruitiful O’s and not Cheerios, but whatever).

He is such a stud, and so much fun to be around lately.  I think Kylee has felt it too, that Dylan is receiving our praise more lately.  The other day she said, “you love him more than me.”  I couldn’t help but laugh at that along with her pitiful pout as she said it.  But the fact is that Dylan usually gets the brunt of our anger because he is usually the one causing whatever fight that is happening.  But lately we’ve been more frustrated with the girls.  It’s a nice change of pace, and I enjoy cuddling and reading with my boys.  Dylan is a pretty special kid.