Listen

Matt hit a milestone this afternoon (much to my chagrin). He had a note sent home from his teacher.

*sigh*

It basically said that Matt had some trouble listening and settling down today. I knew something was up when Matt ran out of school and shouted, "Mom! I wasn't a very good boy today, but please don't make me go to bed!" (Referring, I believe, to the time he was being a bit of a noodge at home and I made him take a nap because it was obvious he was WAY over-tired. But I digress...)

I went up to Miss P and asked her how Matt was. She said he had a rough day and that he was VERY active (I'm sure she was putting it politely here). Anyway, the funny part of this whole thing was that she said that when she was talking to him about it, he said, "Are you going to tell my mom? Because she's a nice lady and I don't want to make her sad."

Yep. Anyway, I made him say sorry to Miss P. and he told her that he'd try much harder to be a good listener on Tuesday. There are many good qualities in my son, but focusing on a task is not one of them. We're trying to work on that. I call it "practicing patience." I realize that he's four... but you can already tell that he's kind of on the flighty side (like his mom, I admit it, which is why it scares the dickins out of me) and he's very easily distracted. I don't know how many times I've heard from teachers or coaches or friends that Matt was "all over the place." Even though Jill is 18 months younger than him, it takes Matt twice as long to complete simple tasks like getting himself dressed or undressed, putting his shoes on, cleaning up his toys, etc, simply because he'll just wander off in the middle of something and get distracted.

Any tips on how to delicately deal with this would be greatly appreciated.