Report Card

Little Squirt received his first report card of kindergarten today. Frankly, I’m disappointed. Where is the verbiage about his intelligence? His brilliance? His Harvard-bound smarts? Does his teacher have no discernment?? Perhaps I should share a few vignettes with her about his incredible resourcefulness. Oh, soooo many stories! The child is amazingly clever. How can she not see that??

Behavior: “Demonstrates improving behavior.” Improving. Improving? He’s gotten through the past 4 weeks without another Poopy Pants Incident and nary a toilet seat stuck on his head. I’ll say he’s improving! She doesn’t know the half of it.

Work Habits: “Needs some assistance.” Well, duh! My flirtatious little boy loves women! Why would he work independently when he could have his adored teacher help him to form his lower case letters? The male version of “the damsel in distress” sort of thing. He ain’t no fool!

Effort: “Average.” Average. Average?? Now that really bothered me because it made him sound so……. “average.” And “average” my boy is certainly not. Of course…..Little Squirt does only want to do what he loves to do. Things that he finds adventurous and breath-taking and spine-tingling. And seat work is definitely none of those things. Little Squirt has told me that seat work is “boring.” That he wants to “quit seat work.” That he likes recess and gym best of all. And “singing class.” So…… I suppose if he was doing something he vastly disliked, such as seat work, he might show minimal to average effort.

But still. He’s my baby and I know in my heart of hearts that he’s special. And today he drew me a picture with markers. It was a portrait of Moi with bright yellow hair, a blue dress and radiant ruby lipstick. And he wrote on it, “Mom,” without asking me how to spell. It was a darned good A+ Brilliant Adaptation of Me That Showed Greatly Improved Independent Effort of Excellent Proportions, if I do say so myself.