THAT Mom (Part 3)

This is  just an update that I should have written a couple of weeks ago but then the baby came early and I went into Boob, Poop, Love mode  (that’s the new Mom version of Eat, Pray, Love) and that messed up my blogging schedule.

Anyway, in my last blog entry on this subject, I talked to the principal of Nia’s new school and asked if we could possibly move Nia to a different classroom because I was concerned that the teacher was not interested in helping Nia succeed.

The answer we got a few days later was not ideal but it did bring closure to the issue. The principal said that he had thought about Nia’s situation and discussed it with her teacher and that they had decided to keep her in the same classroom. They felt that moving her again would make the transition longer and may not improve things. She was in a classroom where she already knew the teacher and her classmates and they wanted to make the best of it. I voiced my concern about the teacher’s commitment (or lack thereof) once again but the principal said he had discussed the situation with her and felt things were going to be OK.

So, Nia is staying in second grade, in the same classroom. She continues to say she’s happy about it, even though she has to put in extra effort. The teacher also seems to be trying to make things better. She reached out to me with specific things, with which we can help Nia and we have been working on those. The teacher has also been communicating Nia’s progress and saying that Nia is working hard and doing better than when she first moved to second grade in the beginning of January. A recent email exchange with the principle also seems to indicate that Nia is on track to finish second grade with her current class and move to third grade.

So, we are cautiously optimistic. Right now it looks like this may actually work. Not as smoothly as we had hoped but if Nia is learning, challenged and happy, we feel it’s a good thing.

Of course, the arrival of the baby has added some stress to the situation but that’s another topic altogether. We have been trying our best to communicate to Nia that even though we now have to share our time between her and the baby, she is still very much loved and an integral part of the family. She seems to get that most of the time but she’s been an only for seven years and it is sometimes hard for her to accept that she’s not the center of our little universe anymore. We just have to keep working on helping her feel loved and comfortable as a big sister – it’s work in progress...