This heap o skills is a pain in the assessment

I wonder: does every parent struggle to teach their children basic life skills? Do you go over the safety checklist everytime you walk into a grocery store or the hygiene rules every time you step into a restaurant? Did you have to teach them the steps involved in asking a friend to hang out or explain the necessity of utensils? Or do most children pick up these things themselves?

I remember K's developmental testing in Grade one. I learned that at his age, he should be able to dial a friend's phone number and recite his favourite TV program's channel number and showtime. I'd never thought to teach him. Isn't every parents reticent to show their six-year-old how to use a phone because they'll be prank calling NASA? Doesn't every parent use TV as a one-hour break from hyper-vigilance when they need it, and to heck with when the kid's favourite show is on?

I was upset that K's scores were low because of what seemed like random, unimportant skills - skills that reflected more on his mother's priorities than on his abilities. If we practiced phone dialing, I knew he'd learn it. I immediately made a list of all the tasks he couldn't do and set to teaching him, so he'd be ready the next time a WISC-IV or BASC or [insert acronym here] came along.

(The D-TORF was particularly infuriating: when you get to the third thing that the child can't do in that category, you stop, and that's their developmental age. If they can ride a bike with no hands and explain T-cell counts, but they've never made toast, they're developmental infants.)

Same thing on G's recent testing. She didn't give the psychologist complete enough answers for questions like "Why do we wear seat belts?", "How do you respond when a smaller child bullies you?", "What should you do if there's smoke coming from a neighbour's window?", and "What do you do if you find a wallet at the mall?" When I asked her the same questions, she gave me the answers I've given her in the past: "So we don't fly out the window." "Say 'Stop' and walk away." "Call 911." And what 9-year-old walks the malls by themselves and needs to know what to do with a lost wallet?

(She loved our Q and A, and begged me to ask her more so she could memorize the rules. I taught her my cell number, which based on how many times she called me from the kitchen last night, I may soon live to regret.)

Am I not teaching her enough detail? Am I not anticipating all the important questions? Or is the point that other kids just know this stuff without their parents drilling them, and she should too?

My children don't even ask for snacks when they're hungry or play dates when they're lonely; I have to set their nutritional calendar and social diet. Every thing my children learn, I have to teach explicitly with demonstration, repetition, and visual reminders. They arrived on our planet with their own language and culture, and they don't just assimilate through osmosis.

They "learn" how to do new tasks quickly, but actually doing them regularly without reminders or frustration comes painfully slowly. Since it takes three to twenty-four months for any new skill to stick, I have to pick my lessons carefully and patiently: do we introduce bed making or teeth brushing into the morning schedule first? Do we want to work on chewing with our mouths closed or holding our forks properly? Which should be the first to go: the nail biting or the nose picking?

(And, as an aside, if you see my kids doing something inappropriate/unusual/icky, you can safely assume that it's either: a) further down the list of lesson priorities, say, after "Don't hide under parked cars" and "Don't asperate rocks," or b) We've been working on it steady for 23 months, and any day now, they'll start doing it. In other words, rest up your judgment muscle for who should win the next Canadian Idol or Idiot or whatever reality show you like that I don't have time to watch.)

It's upsetting that the records of my children's potential are based on questions they could answer the week after the testing. Since the psychologists all use the same tests, and therefore there must be some consensus on what a child should know at a certain age, they really should release the list to parents. Send it to me every year on their birthday! Then I'd know for the next assessment whether it's the tidy bed or the worn toothbrush that will make them go down in the school division annuls as successes.