Over the last couple of weeks, the boys had their early childhood screenings with our local public school system. Our district screens every child before kindergarten, and prefers to do the screenings as soon after the 3rd birthday as possible. It was one of those things that are kind of interesting to watch with twins, as they each made their way separately through an identical process. O was very excited about the whole thing, and thought it was great fun. He hardly looked back as the teacher took him down the hall without me to be weighed, measured, and tested, though he was a little clingy afterward. His developmental assessment score was excellent, and his hearing and vision both very good. He’s slightly nearsighted, but many kids are at this age. He’s near the top of the charts for height. The evaluator clearly hit it off with him, and told me a bit about how the evaluation went. He answered most questions quickly and easily, but he sometimes had his own ideas about what he’d like to be doing. One test he refused outright within the allowed time, as he proceeded to tell the evaluator all about something related to the zoo, and then he asked for a book. He was, however, very polite and calm other than that, and sat in his chair the whole time (not a strength of his in general). He did very well in patterns and analogies, and knew his colors well. He does have a minor articulation issue with his speech, but doesn’t quite qualify for speech therapy at this point – we were given some information to help him work on that. He speaks freely and has good grammar and a huge vocabulary, but he isn’t always very easy to understand if you don’t know him. A week later, I took N in for the same evaluation. N has typically had a much more difficult time separating from his parents, so predictably, he was a bit nervous. In the waiting area, he kept telling me, “I will be sad when I go, Mama”. He had his bunny with him, and was doing that fretful thing that he does where he rubs his bunny with one finger and chews on his lower lip. But then – the teacher came out, and off he went with no trouble at all. Forty minutes later, he came back smiling. As we were walking back with the teacher, she said, “I had such a nice time with N – it was a really great ending to my day. He is so sweet and interesting, he just charmed the pants off me today!” His developmental assessment score was also excellent, and his hearing and vision both very good (his vision is actually 20/20 in both eyes – how, with his genes, that’s happening is beyond me, because literally every family member on both sides of the family needs glasses or contacts). He’s near the very top of the charts for height, an inch-and-a-half taller than O and four pounds lighter. When we went over his assessment, he actually got the exact same score as his brother. What was interesting is that they arrived at that same score through completely different strengths. N did very well at counting, answering “why” questions accurately, naming things, giving her the correct amount of blocks when asked, etc. She related something kind of funny to me: when she asked him where his eyes are, he blinked dramatically with a huge grin on his face, but she had to give him “zero”, because he didn’t point to them. His blinky faces have been cracking us up for a while now, actually. Then, in the second part of the test, she asked him why he has eyes. Again, he scored zero points because he didn’t answer in the way the test requires. His answer? Because God gave them to me.
The teacher then told me that I have remarkably calm and focused three-year olds – things which, while very nice for a parent to hear, were admittedly a little surprising too. It’s not that I thought they were holy terrors or anything, but our boys are pretty wiggly little guys. They’ve not exactly been the calmest, most compliant kids in their Early Childhood class, and they get pretty darn keyed up sometimes at home. Sitting still in their seats has not always been particularly easy for them compared to what I see of their peers (though I have lots of friends with girls, for some reason), and judging by last night’s dinner, still isn’t.
But even though I believe that the test they use is at best an imperfect tool, the screening did give me some insight into some things. First, the screeners have the right idea by getting the parents to wait behind. Clearly, they can get more cooperation out of a lot of kids without any power struggles nearby. Parents are usually their kids best teachers, especially at three, but kids will likely also cooperate and behave better for a stranger than a parent, especially during the limit-testing years. Second, I’ve been noticing for at least a year and a half (since the boys were about 18 months old) that they usually behave much better apart than together. The screening was a good example of that. They may grow out of that tendency, but if it still holds a year or two from now, we’ll definitely separate them for kindergarten for that reason alone. They also clearly have very different strengths, and I don’t want them to be compared all the time in such a fishbowl either.
I used to be more concerned about how school would go for N and O. I was a little worried that our boys would be up against the disadvantage that boys often have in the early grades (the disadvantages for girls often coming in the middle-and-high-school years) – being energetic and having more trouble sitting still and with fine motor skills than girls in general at the same age. N also doesn’t transition easily when he’s really focused on something. I’m not really concerned anymore, though –I think that even though they’re high-energy with strong wills, they do, and will do just fine. Even two months ago, sitting in church for the first part of the service and then going up for the children’s sermon was challenging for them both, and now they do just great as long as I take them one at a time (I alternate weeks). By age five, when they can’t go into the nursery anymore, they’ll probably do OK just looking at books or drawing. I think this will be an interesting year at home with O, because he’s much more interested in out-and-out limit-testing and drama than N is (I suspect that age three will be easier with N than age two was, but who knows), but I think preschool, if we ever get in, will be fine. I’m still not ready to describe them as “remarkably calm”, but I’m learning to have more faith that they’ll eventually grow out of their less desirable, age-appropriate tendencies while showing us more and more of the wonderful things that make them who they are.
For O, we see some of that in his “favorite book”.
He likes to look at the diagrams of how houses or toilets are put together, and where all the pipes go. He’s much less destructive than he was a few months ago, and now that he can ask complex questions, he can better meet his insatiable appetite for classifying everything and figuring out how things work in new ways.
His brain is indeed full of analogies – this is like that, but not quite like that. I think we should have named him Linnaeus. He's sweet and affectionate in between dramatic outburst and shows of will.
N is becoming more confident and secure, and he’s full of smiles and life. He counts everything, is starting to sound out letters and show interest in which words on the page correspond with the spoken word, and loves to rhyme, sing, and tap out rhythms. He is obsessed with books and language, and one of the best ways we have hit upon to get him to be a little more flexible in general is to let him (within reason) read his books at his leisure at bedtime. Sometimes he spends an hour sitting in his bed in a crack of daylight from the window, poring over a book about boats, or insects, or anything by Richard Scarry. He seems to get through the day a little better for having had that uninterrupted time to make sense of things for himself – a quality to which I can highly relate!
