busy list

[Guest guest]

Wow, I just looked away from this list for a couple of days . . . there were

something like 40 new posts!

Dana, Kathy H. and Joy--Thanks for the paper-wasting input. Dana you make

such good sense, and you are right of course that children this age do their

best to draw adults into their conflicts. I keep making the mistake of

thinking if *I* know this from personal experience then of course a

kindergarten teacher knows this, and has already exhausted her resources

before approaching me to solve a problem. I told her this morning that

since Kel is having a worsening episode (as she had noticed) that I didn't

think it was good timing to continue to make a special issue of the paper

problem right now. I reminded her it is a symptom of her disorder, rather

than Kel wanting special privileges over the other children. I told her

that even through this hard time, Kel continues to work to boss back OCD and

my hope was that the compulsion about paper would lessen soon.

Kathy, I'm touched that you held a family council about this! You mentioned

this problem is maybe straining the teacher's ability to cope in the

classroom and it might be reflected in how she treats Kel. This is always

my worry; I have too many teachers in the family to believe that they are

always able to (or even always wish to) put personal feelings aside in their

treatment of their students. Teachers of younger children are

exquisitely sensitive to the appearance of favoring one child over others in

the class. Steve's E & RP suggestion is a good one, Kel thought it sounded

intriguing, please thank him for his help and I'll post when we give it go.

I

especially liked his explanation of the value of fun E & RP work, there's

nothing like input from someone in the trenches, and believe it or not, it

had

never occured to me to try to make exposures fun.

Joy--I hadn't thought about the possibility that the type of paper might be

causing problems. You are right, we haven't used newsprint at home. I

bought

some this morning and I'm curious to see if this causes Kel the " both sides

of the paper " trouble her teacher has noticed.

Thanks,

Kathy R. in Indiana