Boy Wonder

Oscar started Pre-K back in September, and he’s thriving there. We just had our second parent-teacher conference, and in their report on his progress, his teachers described him as “a creative beacon in our classroom community.”

“His artistic talents are evident in Oscar’s play planning and make believe play,” they wrote. “Oscar prefers play choices that provide an opportunity to draw freely.”


Oscar's school, which is a sweet little community school wedged into a big old public school building with two other schools, uses a curriculum called Tools of the Mind, and it calls for a lot of highly-structured "make believe play" designed to foster self-regulation and problem solving through play. They've set up little play stations representing different kinds of restaurants -- Italian, Chinese, a deli, etc. -- and the kids have to pick one and be the customer or the waitron. Oscar likes to sit at the cafe and play the customer who draws pictures on the tablecloth after placing an order. Which limits the intended social interactions but is pretty ingenious loafing, if you ask me.

The report said he's "empathetic and understands how to self-regulate," and tells the story of how he helped one of his classmates who kept getting out of his seat during class. Oscar, it seems, told him: "You can think about things, but you can't do everything you think about." His teachers moved their seats next to each other, "and he was able to help the child remain calm and focused throughout the day."

He's also gotten really into making gifts for people of late. Ahead of a playdate with his friend Skyler, he made her a whole set of Scooby Doo puppets (she's a big Scooby Doo fan). Almost all his friends at school are girls, which probably has something to do with his communication skills, his verbalness, and with his tendency to live in his mind as much or more than his body.

So he's sweet and clever and, I think, a bit of a class clown, which is fine, since one of his teachers used to be a professional clown.


We passed another milestone a couple weeks back. Oscar has continued to take a ritual bottle in the morning, well past the 12-month cutoff mandated by his pediatrician. For awhile it bought us sleep in the morning, as he'd doze off drinking his milk. Yeah, we're horrible parents. And then, probably by age 2 or so, it ceased to net us any Zs but we couldn't bear to rip the band-aid off. Finally, a week or two ago, after he'd been forgetting about the bottle most days and barely touching it when he did have it, we said it was done and that was that. No complaint.

We have also, in recent weeks, begun reading chapter books at bedtime, starting with James and the Giant Peach, The Wizard of Oz, My Father's Dragon, The Dragons of Blueland and The Aardvark Who Wasn't Sure.

All he wants to do is draw. And have us tell him superhero stories. And act out superhero stories. For the moment, his world is pretty much Gotham City and the wider DC Comics Universe.