Riley's Doing OK in My Book

Just a quick note about Riley's conference the other day.  According to his grades, he's actually doing fine.

The only thing he got an N (Needs Improvement) is his effort in Spelling.  But he still got an S- for his actual spelling grade.  So it's not as bad as the teacher made it sound.  I need to remember it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, what matters is our relationship and how he feels about school.  As long as he thinks it's worth trying, he'll improve everyday.  As long as I see forward progress, I'm happy for him and he can be proud of himself. 
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It's easier for Zeke because people could see his physical challenges right away and just accepted his social and mental challenges.  Now that Zeke's progressed so far, his teachers are great about acknowledging the challenges he's overcome and working together to keep moving him forward.  Riley looks like a perfectly normal, healthy little boy, so everyone seems to expect so much from him in such a short time.  But he has very poor impulse control.
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Riley's situation reminds me of feeding a baby.  I'd mix formual and give the baby a bottle and maybe some Cheerios to gum down.  By the time he was two, if I had a plate of meat and carrots, I'd cut the meat and maybe put it on the fork to help the little one learn to eat by himself.  Eventually, with enough patience and time, he can eat on his own. You wouldn't just fuss at him or his parents because he wasn't eating supper like an adult all by himself at the age of two.  It's kind of the same thing with Riley.  His chronological age is 8 but his emotional age is 4 (that's almost how long we've had him).  He keeps narrowing the gap, but the gap is still there and I can't and won't pretend that it's not.  Just because it can't be seen on the outside doesn't mean it's not there on the inside.
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It's not that I want to excuse all of his behaviors and let him act any way he wants for the rest of his life.  But I can see that he doesn't understand everything socially like his peers who have grown up in a stable family for 9 years.  We need to slowly teach him and guide him so that eventually he can do it on his own.  Yet the school seems to want him to be able to do it all by himself right away.  And it's not working.  All that happens is that I get a little boy in tears at night because he, and I quote from Riley, "want to be good but my brain keeps telling me to do bad things."  He wants so badly to be "good enough".  I have to reassure him almost every night that we're proud of him and love him no matter what.  Unfortunately, his world outside our home is made up of expectations of achievement right now.  We'll just have to keep teaching and praying and leave the rest up to God :)