The boy isn’t in school.  I’m told that early enrollment doesn’t mean that a ten-month old can buy a laptop and graph paper.  But he has already gotten his first marks.  They weren’t good, if you’re paying attention to the title of the post.

I should say that I think we struck it rich in finding our pediatrician.  In fact, it’s a practice full of good doctors.  We not only get the best pediatrician for the kid, but when we can’t get on her schedule, all of her colleagues are great substitutes. 

Everytime we go, they give us cheat sheets, printed in a color different from the previous visit.  I think we’re starting a file somewhere, tracking these appointments.  They tell their own stories, these cheat sheets, capturing everything from the boy’s weight, height, and head size to all kinds of helpful information, which mysteriously answers all the questions we’ve brought up with the doctor while at that visit.  I get the sense that these good people have had enough Q&As with parents that it’s easier to prepare the standard answers in advance.  To me, it’s great planning, and I’m not really sure why these sheets impress me so much.  Let me get to my real point though.

During the last checkup, the nine-month, we were given a test.  It was a booklet.  I didn’t really listen when Dawn and Doctor talked about the exam.  I needed the basics.  There was a test.  I know what that means.  I’ve taken a few.  The boy has homework.  Sit him at the table with a pencil and follow the instructions.  Don’t help him.  It’s a test. 

But my wife went over the test with Bryce.  The tasks took my back to my first class in psychology and that other one about learning and memory.  I thought about my favorite teacher at Wheaton, Scottie May who knows everything about how children learn.  I saw Bryce’s results on the counter and pinched myself when I saw the answers Dawn (or Bryce through Dawn) had chosen.  I wondered to myself when I saw a few circles how this would shake out.  Dawn mailed it in.

Now, we don’t get calls from the boy’s doctor.  Well, the office calls to remind us about appointments but that’s it.  So, when I came home and heard about the conversation my wife had with Dr. Hong, I was intrigued.  I went straight to the boy and asked him why he didn’t get a better grade.  Why is your doctor calling my house?  I asked it in my I’m-the-concerned-father-of-a-student voice.  Bryce was smiling, no doubt performing his own mental test of me at the moment. 

We talked about him looking for hidden phones, juggling my wallet, his mom’s cell and noisy bus with shapes cut out of the window.  I spoke about him banging something on a table or chair or a floor, about going under the bed for a remote control. 

Finding a hidden toy was one he was graded poorly on.  “He does that,” I told Dawn.  To which she explained that she hadn’t seen it.  In my mind I started thinking that I was  a better test-taker, that I should’ve completed the paperwork, that my son now had a record, of sorts. 

I was worried.  I texted his doctor and said I guess the kid wasn’t enrolling in Harvard anytime soon.  Then I hid the favorite toy.  And me and my wife saw him go after it.  Not to be quickly satisfied, we did it again.  He picked up the pillow and took the toy.  Then, I texted the redemptive message, my way of suggesting–like our pediatrician did when she returned this texted reply–“there’s always northwestern.”