Nature vs. Nurture

Age old debate... and the answer is some of both.... but how does that help us solve the problem?

Matt and I had Nathan's kindergarten conference today. First thing she said was, "He's feeling his oats today." Great. We get into his portfolio. Everything academic looks good. He pretty much knows everything he's supposed to know. Letters, sounds, sight words, writing, math... all good and on track. She was very impressed with the sentences that he writes as well as the pictures that go with them. He did very well in his science section and she said his tree and leaf drawings were the best she had seen.

Then we got to the social development. Listens attentively, stays on task, displays self control, works well independently, adjusts to new situations, demonstrates responsibilty, displays organization, obeys school classroom rules. All these things were needs improvement. In the motor development area he got needs improvement for colors neatly and cuts accurately. To me all these fall under the same category, getting him to do something that he doesn't necessarily think is fun or interesting. She said his specials teachers all have said at one point or another that he's been disruptive but not enough to give him a needs improvement for anything. She believes that all these things are an issue of age. She does not believe he has an attention deficit disorder because he CAN focus and concentrate when he wants to, he just chooses not to. She believes that he's started to get more antsy in the classroom lately because it has been more sitting in chairs and focusing on work instead of being able to pick and choose what he wants to do. She said he is the perfect definition of a child who should go to transition, physically and mentally he's developing well, he just needs time to mature.

She said he is a delight and all the teachers love him. Everyone who sees him comments on his Opie likeness. He makes her smile and laugh everyday. She said he goes to the bathroom like 4 times an afternoon and sings loudly at the top of his lungs while he's in there. When she tries to tell him that everyone can hear him in the room, he says "well stop listening!"

My dilemna is how do we handle this as parents? How do we help him to correct his behavior, knowing that part of it is developmental and he's just not mature enough yet. What level of consequences does he get? Mild to severe? Listening, focus, self control, responsibility and organization are very important life skills but seem much harder to teach than say letters and numbers. Part of aquiring these skills is innate (nature) and part of it is learned (nurture) but how much of each? We do try to have consistent consequences but what sort of consequence do you give for listens attentively? I try to have him stand still and look at me when I'm talking to him but I can see in his head that he's thinking of a million other things. How do we get him to focus on what's in front of him instead of the pictures in his head? His teacher said, she has seen him sitting quietly right in front of her, looking at her, but he's not there. How worried should we be at 5 and if we don't worry enough now and take action, will it be worse or better at 7, 10, or 16? What sort of "action" will actually work instead of making all of us more frustrated?

Part of me feels like this is like every other developmental milestone we have come across with him... at some point he'll just get it all at once. He's different than nicholas in that way.... he doesn't even attempt something until he can do it. There's not much in the way of practicing with him. It's either there or it's not. One day he was laying around, the next he was turning over. There was no scooting on the belly, there was just crawling one day, then walking. There was no long drawn out potty training for him. He refused to even try it until he was three and then in a few days he was done. I have no idea how or when he learned his letters because one day I just realized he knew them all. Totally different than Nicholas. His internalizing everything and seeing it as pictures in his head IS his way of learning. Just because we can't see the learning process doesn't mean he's not learning. So in some ways, I want to trust that this focus and maturity will come on him all at once because he's been processing it internally all along. On the other hand, I feel like I should be doing something though seeing as my only job now is to raise these children. But how do we teach if he's not ready to learn?

This parenting business is hard and there are too many manuals. :)