Friday 25 July 2014

Point scoring

The Boy has a development check soon. To assist the health visitor with this, I have a form to fill in ahead of time.

It feels like sitting my masters exams again.

Some of it is easy.

"Does your child correctly name at least six body parts?"

"If you point to a picture of a ball or other similar object, can your child correctly name them?"

Well, that's alright.

But then we get to the following:

"If you give a simple instruction to the child, like "put the ball on the table" do they respond?"

Well, yes, but only if there's nothing else more interesting to do at the time

"If you draw a straight line will your child copy you?" 

I don't know. This question made me worry that I don't do enough drawing straight lines with the Boy, until I realised this was ludicrous.

"Can your child thread beads on a string?"

Well, generally we've discouraged any playing with beads in case he eats them.

One of the questions has a lump with what looks like one arm, one leg, and a face with two eyes but no other features. Your child is meant to identify this as "daddy", "man", "spaceman", or "monkey".

I tried this with the Boy. He looked baffled. He said "Eyes", and when I pushed him, "Peppa". I think he is as confused as I am as to why the NHS needs me to do this (must start reading Weber at bedtime, for both our sakes).

Does your child put objects back in the place where they're meant to be?

Well, sometimes. I struggle with this and I am 32. And define 'meant to be'. We recently found 3 DVDs wedged into the DVD player...

What sentences can your child say?

"No" is a complete sentence.