Child Behavior Checklist

Child Behavior Checklist

Childs full Name-

His name is Ian. Behind your labels is a little boy named Ian. He was named after his grandfather who never had a boy of his own. Dad brought a baseball glove and bat to the hospital when his first grandson, his namesake, was born. Ian. A Scottish name in honor of his maternal great-grandmother. “A no-nonsense name that you can’t mess around with”, she’d declared with satisfaction when I introduced her to my boy. Ian. Easy to print with only three letters which he appreciates more than I’d wish. Katherine and Abigail are smart and they’re better printers than me, so it’s o.k. that they have long names, he tells me. Ian.

Child’s Gender: Boy

I’m sure that’s challenging for you as this particular variety of child tends to be rather rambunctious. He loves snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, but his spirit of adventure works for him at home. Ian climbs trees, thinks he’s a real ninja, and can do a mean back flip from the couch. It helps him practice for competitive gymnastics. He’s fearless there, too. I know he wants to stand up while he is working. He tells me that you do the same thing sometimes. He doesn’t understand why everyone has to sit criss cross applesauce all the time when there are much more comfortable ways to sit. To learn. I don’t even scold him anymore for all the marks you give him for stretching, scratching and not sitting cross legged with his hands folded neatly in his lap. I know he forgets to switch his indoor and outdoor shoes, and I realize that we’ve gone through six milk cards so far this year. I know he forgets to bring in his homework folder in the morning but he never fails to kiss his mom and wish her the Best Morning Ever! Did you know that?

Please list the sports, hobbies, and organizations your child participates in.

Hockey. He’s quite the player. Too bad we frown on competition at schools now. I’ve never seen the child more motivated as when there’s actually something he cares about on the line. Watching him racing through the drills with skill and confidence almost makes one forget that he is incapable of following multi-step directions. Well, at school, anyway. Where it counts.

Figure Skating- Spinning, jumping, speeding fast. He excels at that. He didn’t want to join at first. It’s for girls, he’d whined. His father convinced him it would improve his hockey skills. He lied and told him that’s how Sidney Crosby started. We put black slip covers over the white figure skates to lessen his humiliation over wearing girl skates . His sisters take lessons, too, but they lack the competitive edge and the desire to push their physical limits that is innate to Ian. The ice is the only place he feels superior to Katherine and Abby. It is a pleasure to watch his practiced precision as he skates in fluid motions, his body writing smooth letters across the icy surface.

Please list any chores your child has.

That’s easy. Ian is my most helpful, considerate child. Always has been, in fact. Ian thinks of others first. When he was a small baby, he would remove his pacifier from his tiny mouth and try to put it in my own. Giving comfort. That’s Ian. He sets the table while his sisters hide in the t.v room and he sticks around to chat while I wash up the dishes. Ian wants to please. When the girls do something wrong, they want to know what trouble they are in, what privilege they have lost. Ian only wants to know how to make it better, how to erase the hurt. All the things he does to help us, well, he never calls them chores. Homework is his chore.

Performance in Academic subjects.

Ian struggles in language arts sometimes. He is improving upon his understanding of reading comprehension strategies, though. You think he doesn’t like to read, but that’s not entirely true. You wish he’d read across a wider selection of genres. But, you see, Ian has begun to make some important connections in his reading. He has made the connection between reading and writing, and he predicts that you will make him fill out that goddamned writing log every single time he reads. That’s why he writes down “Brady, Brady” every time. He knows how to print it very well and it fits on the little line you have prescribed. He infers that it will be easy to make a personal connection to this text although he questions why he always has to make one. Sometimes I just like the book and I don’t know why, Mommy. Is that o.k.? Next steps for Ian will include determining importance.

What concerns you most about your child.

Where to start? I am concerned that Ian doesn’t want to go to school anymore. I am concerned that Ian does not have authentic learning opportunities that engage and inspire him. Ian questions why he has to stay in at recess everyday when his friends go out to play. You tell him he had to get his work finished by recess. Why, he asks me? Nothing else happened after recess, he could have finished it then. What do you do with all his work, anyway he wonders? Do you put all the papers in the recycling bin? He never sees them again, so he’s not sure. It’s like a mystery, he says. Where do all the papers go? And when will you ever learn?
Last week, Ian won a young readers contest in the newspaper. His sisters sure were pissed that he won. The girls had their neatly printed entries done the first night they heard of the contest which called for students to write about their favorite book. Ian barely got his in, just under the wire. The prize of free tickets to the Mooseheads game finally enticed him to get writing. I sent it to school with him this morning so you could show it to the class. It is in his homework folder pressed between the unhappy faced note outlining his most recent infractions, and the work you sent home because Ian wasn’t focused in class. We worked on it last night, by the way, after hockey practice and my Masters course, so he might be a little tired today.
You say his is finally starting to make some gains. I am concerned about what he is losing along the way, like his self-confidence and his individuality. You feel like you’ve started to reach him, to break through, you say. I know you’ve broken his spirit the way one breaks an untamed stallion. You say you are so excited because this psycho-educational testing is going to tell us so much about Ian. I am most concerned that there won’t be an abundance of support to accompany the labels you are hoping to affix. To Ian.