Outside of the clearly obvious benefits of motherhood, for me the most interesting thing about being a parent is watching a human being develop.  Thor’s growth and maturation process are fascinating to me, and I love when I get some insight as to what is actually going on inside his head.

 

We discussed and decided to have him tested for the Gifted & Talented program.  If he is GT, that should help alleviate the boredom issues we’re already seeing.  If he isn’t, eh, less homework.  I talked to him about it briefly, just to let him know that a test was coming up.  Apparently, they started the test yesterday.

 

I was talking to him before bed, last night, and he volunteered, “I got to go take a really cool test today.”  And from there, our conversation went something like this:

 

Me:  Oh, yeah?

T:  Yeah!  And it was really easy, but had a couple of hard questions.  I didn’t know how to do the hard questions, but I just thought about them and figured it out, and I got the right answers.  I did it.

Me:  Wow!  Tell me about the test.

T:  *hands a’flapping*  You know, it was…it was WAY more awesome than 1st Grade.  It had all kinds of cool questions about what belongs where, or what goes into what, or families and groups, and patterns.  I had to look at a picture, then fill in a circle with the right answer, and I got them all right.

Me:  Sounds like a good test.  How do you know you got all the answers right?

T:  Well, Mama, there was only one right answer for the questions, and that’s the one I picked. 

Me:  Did the teacher tell you they were the right answers?

T:  Mama.  I just know.  There was only one answer that was right for every one, and I just picked the right answer every time.  It was easy.

 

(So you know what I’m thinking, right?  “Oh, God, please don’t let this be overconfidence talking.  Because if this kid is 100% sure he got every answer right, and he thinks the right answers were clear as day and he is wrong?  That’s a whole other problem!”)

 

Me:  Okay.  Well, can you tell me more about it?

T:  It was awesome!  It was like a motorcycle and a car crashed into each other, only they both had shields up so they just bumped into each other and blew backwards and no one got hurt, but there was an awesome crash.  Like that!

Me:  Indeed!

 

I guess we’ll know results sometime in the nebulous future.  Meanwhile, I believe Thor is an above average thinker.  I am very pleased with his ability to reason, his level of curiousity about the universe (“Mama, can you tell me everything there is to know about particles?”  “Daddy, can you tell me everything there is to know about engines?”  “Grandma, can you tell me everything there is to know about fielding [in baseball.]” –All recent questions.) and the way he puts the diverse information together to make sense of it all. 

 

It does nag at me to think that a standardized test is about to categorize him as “gifted & talented” or “exceedingly average”, and will sort him through the system and base his future opportunities on how well he sorted dolphins from dogs in various swimming situations.  But at least he thought the test was fun.  As I recall, I walked out of my first GT test (at his age, even) thinking, “Well that was a big waste of my time.”