Requisite parental bragging

Kindergarten is almost over for Scooter. Mostly I try not to think about that--that and how he's now 6 and will be starting a numbered grade in less than three weeks.

But really it's been a good year. He has learned so much. Not just the academic subjects, which he really has devoured, but his social improvements have also been impressive.

I watched him in gymnastics and marveled at how he easily accepts not being first in line and is not interrupting quite as much (still plenty of work to do there).

We went to his class play where he waited his turn and delivered his line loudly and without hesitation.

I attended an autism workshop and ran into some people from the district there. They invited me to lunch with them, and so I tagged along. As part of the introduction the two people who have met Scooter gave to the rest of the table, they beamed and pronounced me the mother of "a most delightful boy." One of them, his occupational therapist, and I chatted on the way back to the workshop, about Asperger's in general and a little about Scooter. She doesn't know that he'll end up qualifying for a diagnosis, but made it clear that they would make sure he received services as long as they could qualify him under any category. She thinks the school as a whole, not just the extra services, are a good fit for him and that he very well could improve to the point that he'll be fine on his own.

And then my mother-in-law reported to me a conversation she had with the teacher's assistant. They had gotten to the topic of first-grade preparedness. And the assistant mentioned that Scooter is definitely ready, at the top of the class academically. To which his grandmother, who has volunteered in the classroom and knows the kids pretty well, responded that there were probably a good number of kids in the class who were in a similar boat. Only two or three really, and Scooter's ahead of them.

Trillian and I have long said that our main reason for sending Scooter to school is to work on his social education, that we wouldn't care if he hadn't improved at all academically. (Mostly because we knew that the reading and all that would come along naturally without too much prodding. As it did.) But it doesn't mean that I don't absolutely light up with pride over this.