Bragging Rights

I really hate it when parents brag excessively about their kids. On the other hand, this is Zoe's site, and by default this is my bragging platform, so hold onto your hats....

Before Zoe was born I signed up for visits from the local Parents as Teachers (PAT) chapter. For those unfamiliar with it, this is a service paid for by taxes generated for the public school system. The PAT person visits parents and children in their homes to ensure proper child development and school readiness and avoid learning delays and/or recognize and begin counteracting learning delays as soon as possible.

Last week the PAT lady came. She brought with her all her literature about what Zoe should be doing between the ages of 14 and 24 months. First she got out her plastic pretend picnic, which consisted of little plastic plates, silverware and food items. The point was to engage in a pretend play picnic. Zoe was able to enjoy pointing out the "apple" "banana" and "corn" without any prompting, then went on to describe the spoons as "purple," the dishes as "lellow," and the apple as "red." The PAT lady was a bit taken aback as she stated, "We don't start working on colors until at least 24 months."

Next, she got out her shape sorter. It had a circle, a square, and a triangle. Zoe has one of these of her own, which also has a star. She questioned if Zoe could figure out the shapes. Zoe squealed "Oh!" before getting to work. She then picked up the circle and announced "Blue circle!" before dropping it into the correct spot. Then she grabbed the square and announced "Green square!" and placed it correctly in the square opening. This continued until all the shapes were correctly deposited, at which point she began looking around. I presume she was trying to figure out where the stars were, as she can correctly label the "Lellow stars" and correctly deposit them into her own shape sorter. The PAT lady simply said, "Well, she's got that covered."

Next, the PAT lady said, "Is she beginning to label body parts?" I was thinking to myself, she's been doing that since at least 12 months of age, but I kept my mouth shut. I said to Zoe, "Where's your knees?" To which Zoe promptly uncurled her legs and straightened them out, tapped her knees one at a time, and matter-of-factly stated "Knees!" "Well..." the PAT lady said, "We are usually only beginning to work on eyes and nose and stuff like that at this point. The harder ones like knees and elbows and such come later." "Oh!" I said, (not wanting to disappoint her), "well, we can do those, too." And Zoe then correctly labeled her eyes, ears, and nose (and hair, head, eyebrows, teeth, tongue.......).

The PAT lady next questioned whether Zoe was beginning to imitate any animal sounds. "Oh, yes!" I said. And Zoe then was able to correctly name the following animal and make the corresponding animal sounds: "Cow: moo; Pig: oink; Horse, naaay; Duck: quack; Rooster: ooh ah ooh ah ooh; Cat: neow; Dog: woof woof; Sheep: baaaa; and Lion: roar!" I forgot to remind Zoe of the frog and the bird, to which she can attribute "croak" and "tweet tweet" respectively. Nevertheless, the PAT lady was more than satisfied, and even quite impressed. She left commenting that, although only 18 months old, Zoe appears to have met and exceeded the typical 24 month milestones.

We agreed to meet again in about 5 weeks so Zoe could impress the pants off her some more!