Katie and the Early Childhood Screening

Friday was the day! Katie was going to go to "school" for her early childhood screening.

I reminded her about it on Thursday (like I had done many times in the past few weeks) just to get her used to the idea and in the past, she had been very excited to go to "school" (that's what I called it). Unfortunately on Thursday she was not as thrilled about the idea.

Me: Katie... tomorrow you get to go to school to see a teacher and play games! It will be soooo fun!

Katie: I don't want to go.

Me: You have to go. We've got an appointment.

Katie: I don't want to go and play with the teacher. I don't want to go to school.

Me: Well, you have to go.

Katie: I tell the teacher I don't want to go to school.

Me: That's fine. Tomorrow we'll go and you can tell the teacher you don't want to go to school.

Whew, crises averted! I figured that teachers had to have pretty thick skin as a requirement of being a teacher so she wouldn't be crying in her coffee over Katie's words.

So off we went! I got off work early and packed up the kids and we got there right on time. I filled out paperwork while someone got her height and weight (I don't remember what the numbers are, I have to look at the paper we took home) and Katie cooperated the WHOLE time! She put her things down and cooperated so well and so quietly that I couldn't belive she was the same kid who threw a fit at the doctors office when they tried to do the exact same thing!

She could have been distracted by the other kids running around (I think it was day care pick up time so kids were leaving with parents and she was watching everything.)

Once that was done we went into another room and one of the testers had her build a tower with small blocks, write shapes she saw on a card, give names to four items (car, ball, button, something I can't remember), finish sentences (I loved it when she answered correctly that a window is made of glass), match cards up (like memory) and finally... take the eye test.

Everything was going great up to that point. I mean, I could tell she was getting a little huffy toward the end of the blocks/cards/shapes part but I thought we could make it.

Not so much. By the time we got to the eye test she was ready to rebel. She went along with the first part (covering her right eye and pointing to her card to match the letters she saw on the board) but when we got to her left eye... she kind of didn't want to do it anymore. I know because she told us. She said "I don't like school. I don't want to do this." That was a good indicator that we had reached the end of a toddlers patience with jumping through hoops.

So, we took a break and went to a different room for the hearing test. She got to listen first without the headphones on, then with. And she was supposed to move a block from the cup to the table whenever she heard a tone. She did great! Then she had to look at a small clown face on a stick that the nurse moved around. (Why a clown? I don't know. Don't get me started on clowns.) She did great at that too. Then... it was back to vision. The nurse finally got Katie to finish her left eye and then we went to the play area and her and Jake played. They had a great time! He was laughing and crawling and she was laughing about what he was doing. The nurse ran through some papers with me and then we were done.

When we left, Katie told me "Mommy, ask that lady if I can come back her sometime. Like tomorrow."

I thought that was a good sign... till later when we were in the car and she told me she didn't want to go to school anymore.

I figured it was time to fess up.


I had to tell her that it wasn't actually school school.


I had to tell her that it was just a pretend school


and that if she passed the test at the pretend school,


she would get to go to the real school where they play games and have story time and snack time and learn fun things.