Adventures in Christmas Programs

And audiologist exams, and vision screenings, and potty training, and....

Let's just say the boy's not been much in a cooperative mood lately.  He's been sick recently, which doesn't help matters, but he's been a royal uncooperative crank in the last month or so.

This is actually good news in some ways. I mean, it's a royal PITA in a lot of ways, but it's good news because he's no longer the passive, "good baby" that he used to be. He doesn't sit in the shopping cart or stroller and watch as the world goes by. He won't stare dully at you when you try to get him to make a choice.

He's decided he should be part of the world and interact with it, and express opinions. That opinion is usually "no." That's very typical for preschoolers. It's the first and easiest opinion to express.

But as I resign myself to caring for his Christmas program meltdown, and get frustrated that he won't wear headphones for a hearing screening or tell the nice clinician what's on the card on the room is full of all sorts of other things to see, I remind myself that this is a positive step. A frustrating and annoying step at times, but a positive step.

In other, somewhat related news, teaching to the test begins early. The preschool teacher and we agreed that we should start teaching him to point at specific objects when asked and to find the difference between a series of objects when asked. Why? Those are two skills commonly used in IQ tests. We're trying to give his baseline assessment for kindergarten as much of a boost as possible. We all agree that he belongs in a regular classroom, not in a resource room.

Chicago Tribune - Getting It Right

Alternative therapies are uncontrolled experiments. And uncontrolled experiments do nobody any good. 

It's a long article, but it's worth the read. Also see Science hijacked to support alternative therapies.