growing baby

Today Ilya and I went with Mateo to his first family conference at daycare.  We’d been really looking forward to the conference since it’s a chance to talk about Mateo (always a fun topic!) with some people who spend a good portion of his day with him–Mateo’s special friend, Jessica, and the site supervisor, Mary.  (At Hill and Dale each child is in a group of 6 kids assigned to one teacher–the special friend.  Mateo is in the Purple Dragonflies group led by Jessica.)

The family conference started out with Mary showing Mateo a little chair at low table with a snack, milk in a tiny metal pitcher, a small empty glass, and some toys.  Mary told Mateo this was a conference all about him and that he could ask questions or say anything he wanted to say.  I don’t know how much Mateo understood of that, but he definitely understood that it was snack time!  He sat down, poured his milk from the pitcher into the glass (without spilling a drop!) and got started on the munchies.  After that, Mateo just played with toys (both on the table and all around the room) while the rest of us talked about how Mateo’s doing at home and at school.

Jessica and Mary had so much to say that it’s impossible to repeat it all, but here are some highlights.  First of all, Mateo has hit all the milestones for his age-range in every category–social, fine motor, gross motor, etc.  On the age development scoring guide Jessica completed for Mateo, he got the best score possible.  So all is good with Mateo’s development.

In addition, Jessica filled us in on Mateo’s social life at school.  She says that he’s both good at working independently and also enjoys playing with the other kids.  She says when a kid cries, Mateo will come over and try to comfort the child by rubbing his back–even if Mateo was all the way on the other side of the play yard and had nothing to do with why the child was crying.

Jessica also said that Mateo enjoys looking at books and often takes a book up to the top of the loft to read there.  That is totally how I spent my  afterschool daycare hours–up in the loft reading.  It’s too adorable that Mateo enjoys that too!  Apparently the daycare has books everywhere–in the reading area, but also in the pretend areas and even outside.  That’s wonderful!

In terms of language, Jessica says that Mateo speaks Spanish at the lunch table and when Jessica or the other teachers talk to him in Spanish.  She says he’s also speaking English more, though his English isn’t always as easy to understand as his Spanish.

Jessica and Mary also talked about how we could address some difficulties we’re beginning to see with Mateo at home.  In the past few days, when he’s been frustrated, he’s started to throw whatever he’s frustrated with across the room–whether it’s food or toys.  They said at Hill n Dale, if a child throws something as an experiment (what happens if I throw this block?), they say, “it looks like you want to throw things–here, throw this ball because it’s safe to throw; the block isn’t safe”.  If the child throws something out of anger or frustration, then they take it away–and the next time they tell the child, “remember you couldn’t play with this yesterday because you threw it so today play with it like this”.

There’s so much more to say, but in the end it was a really enjoyable and useful conference.  We are delighted with Hill & Dale and Mateo loves it too–now he runs to school in the morning and he says a quick and happy goodbye when we leave.  Apparently other kids like Mateo, too: I happened to be talking to a different mom this morning and when she found out Mateo was my son, she said that her daughter talked about Mateo all the time at home and looked forward to seeing him at school!