Norah: Girl genius?

Well, not really. Just remarkably normal for her age, which is fine with us. I took her to the Mesa School District's special education screening on Wednesday, because Mia's pre-school teacher and speech therapist suggested that it's a good idea when your child hits 2½ to get her/him screened, even if you have no worries whatsoever. They check your kid's vision and hearing, at the very least.

So, three years after I took Mia to a rather redundant screening (we were fairly certain she qualified for special ed., what with the brain injury and all), I took Norah to another rather redundant screening (for the opposite reason). She was very well behaved, considering we were there for almost two hours and she had to jump through a lot of hoops. But all was well. Her vision is 20/20, and her hearing was fine. Then a teacher asked me a bunch of questions, and then she asked Norah a bunch of questions. The questions get harder and harder as they move up in age appropriateness, and she was nailing a couple of ones for 4/5-year-olds. Of course, she was getting a lot of those wrong, too, but she got a few! She had a fun time with some of the games they made her play, too.

She also experienced some other kids. While we were waiting, we sat in a play room. Many of the kids in there were boys, and they acted, well, like boys. They were chasing each other around, wrestling toys away from each other, and basically acting like ruffians. Hey, no problem with that. Norah stood there, watching with amusement, and said, "Boys silly." I agreed. I also told her to keep thinking that way. It will take her far!

So she blew away the testing. They have a score for each test (there are five of them), below which the child qualifies for special education. She was far above those scores in every category, which we expected. I was just happy to get confirmation.

So she doesn't qualify for special ed. Shocking! It was good to get her checked, and we're still trying to decide if we're going to send her to pre-school for a few days a week in the autumn. We think she'll enjoy it. Maybe we should just send her to college instead, because she's such a genius!