I took Olivia to gymnastics last night and decided that it's time. It is time to ask her doctor about having her evaluated.
I don't even know if that is the right term...evaluated. I don't know who would do that sort of thing. But I expect that her doctor would know, and she's seeing him at the end of the month for her 3 year check-up. And I just need to know. Does my child have an attention or hyperactivity problem?
So, gymnastics. It has not been terribly productive, but it gives her an outlet to do something active in a group. Except that I think the group is a bit too big. In fact, anything over 4 or 5 kids at this point is too big for Olivia. The kids stand in line for their turn to practice this skill or that, and every other kid gets to go at least 1.5 times for every once that Olivia goes. This is because she's constantly distracted while in line. She'll watch the older girls or another class. She'll hop out of line to check out something that has caught her attention. She always returns to the end of the line and sometimes I wonder if she's ever going to make it to the front.
And also, yesterday, she came upstairs to the parents' observation loft FOUR different times. Once she said she was just checking on me. Another time she came up to tell me she tooted. And I have no idea why she ran off the floor the other two times. I have NO IDEA.
Yes, she's three (almost), and young kids are like that. But there are other kids in her class who are younger than she is and they have dramatically better attention skills than Olivia has.
The funny thing is that she's so strong and so skilled, and she can DO this gymnastics thing. If she had a personal trainer for 45 minutes every week, she'd be a tumbling whiz by this time next year. And it's like that with everything. She needs hands-on, one-on-one attention. But how do you accomplish that in real life? I'm just afraid that she'll end up in a kindergarten class of 15 or 20 kids in a few years and end up being the class troublemaker. I'd like to avoid that.
1 comment:
This sounds SO familiar! Ruby is 4 now and she gets better all the time. I used to be so worried about how she'd do in pre-school and now that she's there, she's doing super well. I am by no means an expert, but I think I'd just give it a little more time! Ruby's in gymnastics, too, and I definitely feel like her attention span isn't quite what many of the others' is, but she's making progress, each and every time. Hang in there! Your girl is such a doll.
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