The Twinkies

These are the end of the year summary reports from the kids’ school.

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F

Social Behaviors: F greets everyone with a warm smile. She is gentle with others. She usually engages in solitary play but has recently been engaging more with others in parallel play.

Language: F is using more words to express her needs. She asks for help or more of something at the snack table or gives the names of different objects. We encourage her to converse and acknowledge everything she says.

Grace & Courtesies: F is learning to share and take turns. We encourage her to use her manners at the snack table, “please”, “may I”, “please pass the” and “excuse me.” She sits nicely for snack and music time.

Fine Motor Skills: F is learning to manipulate many of the materials in the classroom. She has mastered the velcro frames, zipper frame and beading. She loves to paint and paste.

Gross Motor Skills: F has been practicing carrying trays with objects and pitchers and buckets of water. She is spilling less as her movements have become more controlled and balanced.

Self Care/Toileting: F has become more independent in her ability to dress, undress and use the toilet. She does not often initiate using the toilet but will sometimes urinate while sitting on the toilet when reminded.

Care of the Environment / Practical Life: F enjoys watering the plants, germinating seeds, cleaning the tables with the sponge, cleaning her shoes and polishing wood. She likes to prepare her own snack. She sometimes makes the flower arrangements for the snack table.

Work Cycle: F chooses her own work and stays busy all morning. She has been sitting and concentrating for longer periods of time. She brings her own work to a table and sits with it but we sometimes have to remind her to clean up.

F’s Plan: We are happy to have F return to YCC in the fall. We will encourage her to help the newer students. We will continue to introduce activities that require longer sequences of tasks and greater fine motor dexterity. We look forward to spending more time with our cheerful friend F.

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J

Social Behaviors: J comes in every day with lots of energy and stays energized all morning. He usually becomes self-absorbed in what he is doing. He often takes an interest in what another child is doing and cannot see what the big deal is when he grabs it to take a closer look and the child gets upset. If only everyone was as understanding and accommodating as his sister.

Language: J usually uses single words to express himself. We encourage him to ask for help when he needs it and use words to express what he wants.

Grace & Courtesies: J is learning to bring his work to a table and sit with it and put his work away.

Fine Motor Skills: J has been practicing slicing bananas for snack, spreading apple butter on bagels, opening containers and doing puzzles.

Gross Motor Skills: J likes to keep moving. He also loves to throw anything that has the slightest curved edge. We try to discourage him and say things like, “J, we throw balls outside and in the gym…that’s not a ball.” He hears us but…”

Self Care/Toileting: J has become better at dressing and undressing himself. He does not yet recognize the need to use the toilet.

Care of the Environment / Practical Life: J likes to water the plants, clean the chalkboard and mop up spills. He enjoys any kind of food preparation activity. J sets up his place setting himself but often needs encouragement to clean it up.

Work Cycle: J chooses his own work and usually brings it to a table. He can sit and focus for a short time but usually needs to get up and move.

J’s Plan: We look forward to having J return to YCC in the fall. His energy and passion are admirable. We hope he gets to throw to his heart’s content this summer. We also hope he is encouraged to use the toilet and wear underwear as much as possible.

I survived the Mommy Wars over breastfeeding, managing to be both a fraud who supplemented and a freak who is nursing toddler twins. There aren’t many areas in life I’ve achieved both fraudhood and freakdom. I survived the working vs. stay-at-home debates utilizing the aggressively nutty choice of trying to start my own business in a totally new field for me. But the educational arms race may do me in.

When I was interviewing to teach at private schools one administrator warned me that parents, upon enrolling their child in that particular school’s kindergarten, sometimes asked if this would increase their child’s chance of getting into Yale. Seriously. I attended a workshop on brain development at my kids’ school because I am the kind of dork who finds child development interesting and several parents asked questions that boiled down to “tell me that spending all this money on tuition will make my kid smarter/more successful/more likely to get into Yale.”

Everyone thinks her kids are gifted. Spend time on parenting boards and almost every single child seems to be ahead of the curve. Women whose kids are well within the bounds of normal developmental milestones get worked into a tizzy because someone else’s kid is counting to ten in three languages by one. Everyone has to be gifted. If your kid isn’t gifted he must be plain old dumb because those appear to be the only choices. You have to have a gifted kid who is super duper smart, so smart he makes you worried in that braggy kind of “whatever am I going to do - junior is playing Mozart again” way or you may as well give up. Not reading Tolstoy at 2? You’re doomed to a life digging ditches in Albania.

How do you determine giftedness at 1.5 anyway? Who smears paste in her hair with the most grace? Who eats, or doesn’t eat, the fingerpaints?

We’re in an educational arms race towards a time when all children are gifted and we are already scurrying about like madwomen trying to grab onto whatever advantage we can scrape up to get our kids into the very bestest colleges no matter what. It’s insane. And you have to consciously fight to not get sucked into it. Flashcards, DVDs, they are out there, taunting you with the possibility that if you just used this product your kid might be counting in Urdu too.

Mine of course, already does. Or maybe it’s Gaelic. It’s hard to tell what with all the fingerpaints in her mouth.

F is getting very talky. Last night she said “circle”. Most of the time I can’t understand her but when she repeats words back to me or context makes it obvious I realize that she is talking English with a very heavy baby accent but English nonetheless.

One poop forward and two poops back on the potty training. We were doing some bare butt time yesterday afternoon and J was standing on a chair watching workers put a fence up in our backyard when I saw he had a big chunk of poop hanging out. I cleaned that up and tried to convince him to sit on the potty. Not interested. F sat down to show him and he hovered over the potty for about .3 seconds then moved on. OK. Then he pooped on the floor. A substantial poop. And stepped in it. And tracked it around.

It’s the glamour of motherhood that really appeals to me.

Afterwards I decided that I wanted him to have SOMETHING about his middle as he stood at the glass storm door and looked out at the world but he was very clear that he didn’t want pants. So I put him in a skirt. I can add “James, put your skirt back on” to the list of things I never thought I would say. No, there are no photos.

I just finished reading a terrifying book on marketing to children, Consuming Kids, that has really solidified my “no media” stance. I recommend it. I keep meaning to write a whole post updating my no media position and I’m sure I’ll get around to it sometime. You know, like before they graduate from college with degrees in communication.

I never know what to call the kids’ morning program. Is it school? Day care? 12 hours a week is a pretty dreadful day care because you certainly couldn’t get a job that would slot into that time but it feels silly to call what 1 1/2 year olds do “school.” They are learning things, however. F is now very good at putting her own coat on and this morning I watched her pull her own boots off, pull her socks off and then tuck each sock into a boot. They carry their bowls of snack to their little table and sit to eat. OK, so it isn’t “my kid can read at 7 months!!!” It’s age appropriate developmental stuff. I mean, I think they are brilliant of course but I’m not bullying them into being performing oddballs. That would take far too much energy.

They turned 21 months yesterday. It’s getting time to plan their second birthday party. I was thinking something like this. Or maybe just (gluten free) cupcakes and a wading pool in the backyard.

Summary: F put her own coat on without any help this morning. Plus, I whine about former students.

When I was a teacher I often ended up talking to parents about their children in conferences. I remember one where I met with a charming woman to talk about why her child was failing my class. Actually, I knew why he was failing; he didn’t do any homework at all, didn’t make up failed exams, never studied and didn’t do the dumb artsy projects I had to add to the curriculum as per the school to help out struggling students. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help himself. She told what she considered to be a cute anecdote to give me a better “feel” for her child. When he was in kindergarten and it got cold enough to need to put on coats for the first time to go outside and play rather than put on his own coat he stood there with his arms out waiting for the teacher to dress him. He had never put on his own coat at 5 years of age.

I was horrified though I think I managed to hide it.

The Cobb School teaches the toddlers to put on their own coats because, of course, one major goal of Montessori is to help the child develop independence. They lay the coats in front of them and show them how to put their arms into the sleeves and whip it over their heads. This morning I was helping J put on his coat to go to school. When I turned around F had put her own on without any help!

Though I am fairly sure I will horrify J and F’s teachers in many many ways over the years I can cross this one off the list.

So week 3 of school has come and gone without a hitch except for the nap disruption. (Yes, it is nap time right now and, yes, J is not happy about that.) F doesn’t even make a pretense of saying goodbye to me in the morning, she just plunges into the classroom. J still wants me to say goodbye but then he trots off happily and starts his day.

They have started with the potty training. When J and F get there in the morning the Directress and her assistants sit them down and help them take off their outside shoes, socks and pants. I send them to school in cotton underwear with cloth diaper covers over them so next they remove the diaper covers. Then each child pulls down the underwear, goes to the bathroom which has a toddler sized flush toilet and sits on the toilet. The bag of “clothes to wash and return” at the end of each day has several wet pairs of underwear per child so they are on their way. The school puts them in pull-ups for the trip home and then I keep them in cloth diapers during the afternoon.