Upside down, inside out and just plain discombobulated

We had our parent/teacher conference today with Andrew's preschool teacher. Mrs. Polly. I have to admit I was a little nervous. School has been easy for Sydney and so her conferences continue to be uneventful. She enjoys school and is good at it. I tend to think of her as a Cadillac on cruise control. She's happy to go, does her work, gets good grades and completes her homework without much encouragement.

Andrew goes to school willingly, most days, but prefers being home slaying imaginary dragons with his swords. And sitting him down to practice repetitive tasks such as writing is far worse than pulling teeth. I have decided that this is the marked difference between girls and boys.

Going into the conference we knew his writing had improved but was still in need of a lot of work. At the beginning of the year he would write his name backwards and upside down. But as time went on he seemed to move past that.

Friday he came home from school eager to show me his "U" book. "Look mom. Look at my U book. Didn't I do a good job writing my name?"




At first glance my immediate thought was "No. I've seen you do better." But then I took a closer look.



Then I held it up to the bathroom mirror.


And realized it was the perfect mirror image.

We discussed this with his teacher. She is not really sure why, or how for that matter, he does this but she suspects he may outgrow it.

Then she showed us his assessment test scores and some of the papers that went along with it. One of the tasks he was asked to do was to draw a picture of a boy or a girl. She wrote his name at the top of the paper and placed it in front of him.

He drew a boy AND a girl for good measure and drew them perfectly upside down.

He also had to complete a pattern.

And he did. Perfectly upside down. Notice his name? He has a pattern going alright.

We have decided he either has a very interesting gift or an undiagnosed learning disability. I tend to think he has a knack for looking at things from a different angle. :-)