It has been an exhausting week. We had CALF last weekend, which is always fun, but so much work to organize and keep going. I joke to my friends that it's like herding cats, getting everyone from one location to the other. It doesn't help when two of the cats wander off on occasion. Overall, though, I think the kids enjoyed themselves. Elijah told me today that he doesn't really like CALF except for the book readings, the crafts, the balloon man, the cookie decorating, and the ventriloquist. So...basically he doesn't like that it's two long days of walking around. Not sure that I blame him on that front.
Monday after Austin got home from work, Eden and I hit the road for Dallas. We met my sister in Fort Worth for dinner, then went to the hotel to sleep.
Eden had an appointment with a pediatric psychologist to assess her development, since the questionnaire I filled out last month indicated some delays. Since next year's school stuff is a little crazy, we wanted to get her assessed early so we could work on whatever we need to over the summer and to help us make a decision about where we're sending her in the all.
Eden blew the doctor away. She actually stopped during one of the tests, where Eden was copying patterns using blocks, and told me she was impressed with how well Eden was doing. She does these tests all the time, so that's saying something.
Later, she was asking Eden to tell her similarities between two things (flowers and trees are: plants; triangle and square are: shapes; etc) and when she said "Mommys and sisters are:" Eden responded enthusiastically with "Humans!" Not quite what the doctor was looking for, but acceptable.
I spent nearly the entire two and a half hours filling out more questionnaires. Some of them asked about Eden's self confidence and self esteem, how she interacts with children her age, etc. I only had a scale of 1-4 and on the first two, Eden needs about a 14. (Even Asher said she needed about a 40 on those.) When it comes to other kids, my experience is she does pretty well, though she definitely takes the lead. She's opinionated and bossy, just like her mom and Oma. Except we prefer to be called decisive leaders.
I don't have the written out results, but basically, Eden is at the top of all the scales. She's got excellent reasoning skills and the overall IQ that came back was 131.
The doctor asked what we have planned for school this fall and I told her we weren't really sure, it depended on what she told us, if she thought Eden was ready for pre-school. She laughed and said if it were her, she'd send Eden to Kindergarten.
She thinks Eden is definitely capable of the work in Kindergarten, the only issue might be the socializing with older kids and her emotional maturity, since she won't be 5 until January. The concern with just doing pre-k in the fall is that she would get bored and become disruptive, like Asher was in Kindergarten (and really, I think he was a bit like that his last year in MDO, but I can't remember).
I've talked to the boys' headmistress and she's on board with putting Eden in kindergarten this fall. We'll keep an eye on her behavior and if she seems to be having some issues, we'll adjust, just like the plan with the boys. The pre-k and kindergarten kids will be doing stuff together in the afternoons and separate in the mornings, so she'll get time with kids her own age no matter what. To help her get ready, we've ordered a Brain Quest PreK to Kindergarten workbook to work through with her this summer.
So that minor bombshell (we knew she was smart, but come on) after a weekend of CALF and the drive to and from DFW have me exhausted and ready to sleep almost at a moment's notice. Next week looks to be fairly quiet so I can rest up from the crazy of this week.
The doctor wants us to have another evaluation done in about 3 years to see where Eden is after a couple of years of school. They won't ask us to do it, since she's not putting us down for follow ups, so we have to remember to check in about that in three years. Sure. Sounds like a thing I can do. Not like I have anything else to remember. (I really need a sarcasm font.) Austin put it in Cozi, and I'll put it in a couple of other places and hopefully in three years, we'll have another positive assessment.
I joke that Dad picked out my kids for me, but I think he definitely had some say in these super smart little weirdos in my house. He was kind of a super smart weirdo himself.
