Dear Rebecca,
My heart is warmed when I receive letters from parents who care so much about their children. Your son is fortunate to have you as a parent.
Some of the behavior you described is developmentally normative for your son's age. Nine year olds are "busy" physically and sometimes lack the ability to simultaneously carry out tasks/directives comprised of several components.
I was happy to hear you have a conference coming up with his teacher. In general, our children's teachers should be our collaborators, since they spend a good deal of their day working with and observing our children along with their peers. Hopefully, throughout your son's education, you will find most of his teachers to be your allies.
I would be very interested in hearing if your son's teacher is observing the same behavior as you and if so, the extent to which he/she is concerned.
At this point, the teacher may recommend keeping an eye on how often he gets distracted and as importantly, how that effects his ability to stay on task overall and be successful. If he/she recommends some testing, the good news is, there are many very competent educational psychologists in our area who specialize in this kind of evaluation.
Susan Harf
