Not about the Cat

Kitteh2, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

The assessment was pretty fascinating. I was impressed, first off, that Brenden actually listened to the women who came by (one is a neighbor 2 doors down, by the way - that was amusing). The assessment involved many questions for us (us being me, Jon, and our babysitter) which ranged to how much fun my pregnancy was to Brenden's health to how he interacts with other kids (not aggressive, but not into sharing).

I can't remember all the tests - they were fairly comprehensive, but they included rattling several things where he couldn't see to see if he noticed, and seeing if he could color with a crayon in a certain direction if shown how. He was asked to match pictures of shapes to one another and he got a few of those (he aced the stacking, sorting, and shape matching). He started faltering when one of the testers set an array of objects in front of him (a brush, a cup, a shoe, a few other things) and asked him indirect questions about the objects like "Brenden, would you like something to drink?" (Brenden ignored the cup in front of him but ran to get his sippy cup). He got the "what do you put on your feet?" but missed the "would you like to fix your hair?" That's fairly advanced though.

He absolutely wouldn't answer questions about some mommy/daddy/baby dolls but I think he was losing interest at that point.

Most of the language questions they asked us, and we came up with about 10-12 words between us that he uses on a regular basis. He doesn't use pronouns, and he rarely forms compound sentences (beyond dada nana meow).

We'll find out what the results are Thursday. Have a happy 4th, y'all!

Oh, PS Helly and Alan, you are most likely right, he'd probably take to those words like a sponge to water. The last word I can think of that he learned was "poo poo!" (which he occasionally says while clutching the back of his diaper).