Buggin'

We received a notice a while back from Annabelle and Daisy's preschool teacher that she was going to be performing an "assessment" on each of the kids. I'm still not exactly sure what the purpose of the assessment was - to assess kindergarten readiness? I'm thinking not, not so early in the preschool year anyway. So probably just to guage where they're at with general social and acacemic skills to see what their strengths and weaknesses are.

So we got the girls' assessment reports back today. Both were okay and contained some nice comments from the teacher about how well they play with other kids, follow directions (Annabelle?!), sit and listen when appropriate (again, Annabelle?!), etc.

I was actually a little nervous about opening the envelope containing Daisy's assessment. Who knows what I was going to find in light of her "issues" (phobias and speech). But all in all, it was very similar to Annabelle's and very positive . . . except . . . EXCEPT, the teacher wrote that Daisy can only count to 5 (!!) and she did not check the box on "I recognize my name." What?!? Now, I have to assume that her failure to check that box was an oversight - there's just no other explanation for it. Daisy most certainly knows her name, and often corrects me when I call her by one of her siblings' names (which happens about 48 times a day - I figure at this point, all their names are pretty interchangeable). Also, I asked Daisy to count for me after I looked at this assessment report and she counted all the way to 29 with no problem. So, what the hell?

It just has me thinking: firstly, an assessment is only as good as the person performing it. Also, what does an assessment really say about any person? Really? It only says what that person can do at that exact moment. It says nothing about who they are or what they're capable of outside of an "assessment" environment and out in the real world. And why does this bother me so much? Well, because it's my kid, first of all. And second of all, I know that we're going to be faced with countless assessments like this concerning Finn over the years to come, and it just hurts me somewhere inside that a child can supposedly be reduced to a written assessment like this that really gives a very one-dimensional portrayal of them - and yet, so much weight is given to these reports.