The Delcambres in Abu Dhabi

Well last night I woke up in my sleep with stomach cramps around my diaphragm region. I was dry heaving, sweating, chills, weak, etc. It put me to the ground in the fetal position. Over about an hour it let up and went away. The very same thing happened to me about a month ago. I thought I might had eaten something that upset my stomach. But it is funny how it happened twice now. I am beginning to wonder if it is my gallbladder. It is real common for women to develop gallbladder problems after they have babies. I am asking around to see about doctor recommendations and I am going to get it checked out. The rest of the day today I was tired and a little weak. I just hope I don't have another attack.

Well I think it was yesterday that I mentioned how Evelyn was monopolizing the "house" station in school. You can not imagine how it has been eating me up. Look, I am the first one to admit that my sweet little Evelyn is...well...you know...spoiled. And the good Lord above knows how hard I try to teach her the right things. We aren't all perfect right, but at least we try our best. It is so completely embarrassing to know that your child is causing problems. I was talking to Lance about the whole class situation and I have been making note about how things are run. Basically, Evelyn's teacher is running it like a Montessori program. The kids choose whatever they want to do. There is a definite lack of structure in this class. When I pick her up in the evenings, there are kids running all over the place and I have to hunt Evelyn down. Evelyn needs structure and boundaries; her teacher is not doing this. On top of it all, Evelyn has not brought home one thing since school has started to show what she is doing academically. No worksheets, etc. Oh, I take it back this week she brought home a small book that she made about the letter E. But that is it. If any of you know Evelyn you can understand that she needs to be in a structured environment.

Well as all of these thoughts are running through my head I meet another mom from Evelyn's class today. She has been completely outraged with the lack of teaching period in their class. As she said it, they are bored, and when they are bored they get bad. She (Violet) said her son comes home everyday talking about how other kids were bad. When I asked Evelyn today about what she did in class: do you sit at your tables and do worksheets or do you do whatever you want? Her reply- We do whatever we want to do mommy. Hum... Violet has been to the principle etc about this matter. Her son is academically advanced and is completely wasting his time in this class. The teacher sent out an email stating that she has evaluated each child and will divide them up into groups depending on their needs; then she will work with each group. Now how is she going to do that with 20 4 yr olds. And while she is with one group what are the others doing? Sounds like Montessori to me.

I called one of my friends tonight and her son is in other class in the same grade. They are doing way more than we are. She has worksheets that go home to work on writing his name. She even had a worksheet that went home over the Eid break to work on some pre writing. I haven't seen anything like that. Each class has pets as well and both of the other class rooms the kids take turns bringing home one of the pets (turtle, hamster). We don't do that. Our class bulletin board is supposed to have life size paper people for each child that they created. Out of the 20 we only have 3. The other class rooms have all kinds of things on their bulletin boards and you can clearly see that every child in their class did the projects. Not just the one's who wanted to do it.

I am pondering over what I should do about all of this. I don't want our time to be wasted. Plus I don't want Evelyn to have the wrong impression about what she does at school. I am afraid that she is not going to learn much as this rate and she will be in for a rude awakening next year. I definitely don't want to cause problems or burn bridges, so I have to handle this delicately. The first course of action is for Lance and I to have a conference with the teacher and try to better understand exactly what is going on in the class. I'll keep you posted.