Doesn't Play Well With Others

For those of you who don't know Chris very well, here's something you need to know about him: He doesn't really like people. Other than his two brothers he has one or two friends. AND HE LIKES IT THIS WAY. That's something to keep in mind as I tell you about our first Parent/Teacher Conference for Dutch yesterday (and the blog title refers to Chris, not Dutch).

Dutch started pre-school a couple of months ago. It's part of the Early Intervention Program. Before he even started school we worked out some goals for him for the school year. Here are the goals and the progress he's made so far, in order of his success.

• Dutch will match 7 shapes and 7 colors with 80% accuracy over 3 data probes. He has met this goal! He matches 8/8 shapes 87.5% of the time and 8/8 colors 100% of the time! His teacher, Gretchen, is going to continue to work with him on these, stepping up the difficulty so he can really master his shapes and colors.
• Dutch will attend to small/large group activities for 5 minutes 4/5 opportunities over 3 data probes. This one he is making "sufficient progress" on. He'll pay attention 67% of the time in small group (with a 7% refusal) and pays attention 80% of the time in large group (with a 20% refusal). There's still room to improve, of course, but I'm just glad he's able to focus this much!
• Dutch will follow classroom directions with no more than one prompt 4/5 opportunities over 3 data probes. Okay, so he's following directions 33% of the time, but he also refuses outright to do them 33% of the time, so that needs a lot more work. To be fair, this is something we struggle with at home so I'm sure he won't get it at school if he can't do it at home. Any suggestions to help with this?
• Dutch will demonstrate cooperative play with a peer for 3 minutes 4/5 opportunities over 3 data probes. This is something I've been worried about for awhile now. They send home a little piece of paper to tell me what he did that day and who he did it with. I noticed that Dutch would play by himself or next to other kids, but never with them. I was really surprised, however, when she told me he's doing this 0% of the time. They can get him to parallel play with other kids, but he never plays WITH them. I feel pretty guilty about this because Dutch has play-dates about once a month, if that. So, to help my sweetheart make friends (so he doesn't end up like his dad), I am going to try to make some friends with kids his age so he can learn how to play with someone else. (And when Chris and I discussed this he emphasized that they should be MY friends and not OUR friends.)

He also had some goals for his speech, but those are pretty specific and I don't want to bore you more than I already have. So we survived our first Parent/Teacher Conference and I felt very proud when they told me Dutch is the most polite kid in the class and he's always concerned when other kids are crying or unhappy. That's my boy!