Parent teacher conferences...

Any parent will tell you there is a certain amount of dread you feel when you go to parent/teacher conferences, especially the first one of the year. No matter if your son/daughter is a brilliant student or not, there's always a little bit of doubt in my head thinking maybe the monster who battles with his/her younger sibling at home finally has reared their ugly head inside the North Intermediate School building. Maybe, just maybe, this conference will be more intervention than discussion as parenting experts are brought in to tell you you've done a horrible job raising the particular child in question.

Luckily, other than a few small tweaks to the study habits for the two put on display tonight, we came through unscathed and there were actually smiles exchanged with my kids' teachers.

I guess, judging from what we've heard through our kids, those reactions are to be expected, but there's always that lingering doubt that perhaps you might not be the parent you think you are and your nurturing and child-rearing ways might better serve in the development of young, terrorists-in-training.

Things went so well, in fact, we decided to do our part to boost the local economy and take all three of them out for dinner. My six-year old was more thrilled than his two older siblings who were up for scrutinity tonight, even though he rode their coattails all the way to the chicken finger kids meal at Patrick's on Third.

But, the little guy's turn is a coming. His first quarter of kindergarten seems to be going well and it doesn't appear that he has brought home any disparaging correspondence from his teacher telling us otherwise. His conference is set for the day before Thanksgiving.

I'm sure his conference, too, will go fine, but I prefer to take the ol' wait-and-see approach on that one so I'm not too surprised if the teacher greets us at the classroom door with an, "Ohhh, so your the one's responsibile for this little engine that won't."