Confidence Builder

So we had our first Parent/Teacher Conference today at P's school.

Good news is his behavior is outstanding!

Bad news is his confidence is so low. :(

He is afraid to answer or do some things because he doesn't want to fail or disappoint the teacher so he chooses not to do them at all. His teacher will ask him something and his reply will be "I can't" or "I don't know" when we both know good and well that he knows. This was so hard for me to hear because at home he seems so smart and catches on to things so quickly. My heart is also heavy because I feel like my husband and I have passed this on to him because we were both shy when we were young. I remember in school being so afraid of answering with the wrong answer. I was painfully shy and I don't want my son going through those same feelings. I know this is just pre-school and he just started a month ago but like every mother I just want him to succeed and I hate that he has feels of insecurity. :(

Well, to help him feel more confident in the classroom I am going to be helping him a lot more at home. I bought a roll of lined/dotted paper at a teacher supply store along with handwriting paper with dotted lines. I have wrote his name on a strip of paper and let him choose several places that he would see it often. He choose beside his bed, on the wall in front of the toilet, and on the kitchen wall by where he usually eats at the table.

I also wrote out the alphabet with upper and lower case letters and taped on his wall above his bed. My goal is to have him recognizing and writing the top line of letters by Thanksgiving.

I had already been working on him saying the alphabet for a long time but I guess he gets stage fright in front of his classmates and teacher. I am hoping to get him much more confident by knowing at home he can do it and there should be no reason to get so nervous at school.

I am going to have a small tutoring session with him after school. I want to get a routine in place such as, get home from school, eat snack, then write name ten times and go over alphabet three times. I'm going to try to make it fun for him using puppets and colored markers. After the first week of him getting used to the routine I will make him a rewards chart. I will probably play around with it and see what works to motivate him. I will write a post on that when I get a set routine.