I was "bossy" in grade school and now all the people who hated my bossiness in school are constantly asking for my advice about anything close to or in my area of expertise.
Bossy in grade school isn't all that unusual of a phase that any kid might go through, just as being anxious over starting kindergarten or refusing to eat anything with a crust on it or having to sleep with a night light on or being shy when you have to talk to an adult are all typical kid behavior. However, if a teacher such as the preschool teachers here, who spend their days with young children, are seeing something that they feel warrants an evaluation, I think it's important to listen. Our oldest ds is so danged obviously intelligent that we spent several years discounting teacher feedback on things they were seeing as being perfectionism or shyness etc. Eventually he couldn't cope anymore, we were forced into an eval and we found out he had a learning disability. When our oldest dd was in her first preschool we were always being called in to talk about behavioral concerns and at one point the head of the school recommended a hearing evaluation based on dd's behavior. Instead of listening carefully to what was said, trying to get to the root of it, we made the assumption that it was a personality clash with a teacher and we dealt with the situation by switching preschools. DD's behavior *did* improve once she was in an entirely different setting - but then a few years later, in early elementary, she was struggling like crazy to learn to read, and we ultimately found out she had a severe vision challenge. It wasn't what the first preschool staff guessed it to be, but they were spot on that *something* wasn't typical with her behavior.
polarbear
