Daigoro, as is fitting for the son of a gamer, is very interested in the board games and video games that daddy plays. Recently, Marli took it upon herself to educate Daigoro in the finer art of Chess, at which she is consistently able to wipe the floor with me.
For the record, I am not a great strategic thinker. I do think that I am a very good tactical thinker. Tactical thinking, while not a obstacle in chess, will almost always lose to strategic thinking.
Daigoro at this point is about six years old. He is asking to play chess. We're happy to oblige, of course, but we have to walk the fine line of presenting a challenge and not putting him off games altogether. Marli has adopted her father's strategy of never playing sub-optimally for a child's benefit. Unfortunately, this has the effect of putting Daigoro on one heck of a losing streak.
I've made clear to Daigoro that I'm willing to play at a variety of difficulty levels, like the difficulty levels in video games. Marli takes a different tack. As long as Daigoro continues to enjoy chess, I'm happy with either approach.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Catching Up...
Well, it's been a while.
The usual excuse for bloggers is lack of time, but we all know it's just plain laziness.
A lot of things happened in a year. I'll highlight the big ones.
Daigoro left JK and entered SK. He's thriving there - I'm very proud of his progress and his report cards (they have report cards for kindergarten?!) seem to reflect that he's a good influence in the classroom and a quick learner. He still has problems with being impatient with other kids and becoming frustrated with tasks he doesn't master quickly, but generally he's doing well.
Kenshin has advanced in many ways. Since the last entry, he's become much more interactive and willing to eat new foods, but he's still behind in several key developmental milestones.
He hasn't mastered washroom training, and he generally is communicative only as much as is necessary, rarely "volunteering" information other than parroting or combining known phrases. Late last year we had him tested for hearing (fine, or actually better than average) and then a couple of months ago we took him to a pediatrician specialist in development at Sick Kids Hospital. The specialist did a number of tests, many of which he completed quite well, but he also gave us a questionnaire which is typically used for autism spectrum disorder / Asperger syndrome diagnosis. We have suspected/feared this outcome for some time, beginning shortly after his delayed beginning of speech, but we were encouraged by spurts of development that have occurred since.
Last week we took him to a child development centre for speech analysis. He scored lower than average on many tests, but the analyst was reluctant to put too much weight on the scores because it was evident that Kenshin was performing poorly on some tests not because he couldn't answer the questions, but because it seemed he didn't want to.
The analyst feels that we should enroll him in a six-week, hour-per-week social/peer speech group to encourage better interactive behaviour. We remain hopeful that as we continue to focus on encouraging to speak and interact with us that we will continue to see the slow and sporadic improvement that we've seen over the past two years.
This past weekend we went out to a Thai restaurant as a family and we actually had a very nice sit-down meal, with no squirming, running about or behaviour issues. This was a really nice milestone - one worth remarking on.
I'm still chuckling at one of Daigoro's comment's on the food, which he was thoroughly enjoying.
"This is like a Heaven breakfast!"
Both of them are growing like weeds and we're constantly amazed at how big they look in bed or when we're carrying them around.
Daigoro is reading above his level and is very pleased with himself. We're proud of him too.
Last year Marli won an iPad in a contest and we've discovered that Kenshin is drawn to handheld electronics like nobody's business. He loves iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktops - anything that has buttons and a screen... or just buttons. He loves to fiddle and change things. He's managed to delete all of the photo's off my parents' digital photo frame, create new user profiles on our PS3, dial the Philippines on a relative's phone, and install new applications on my father's smart phone.
Just this past weekend, he's figured out that he can climb on our entertainment console to get up to the small box (he calls it "a bag") in which we store our remotes and PS3 controllers. When confronted, he says "I was not climbing!"
Another favourite recently is "I'm just..." as an abbreviation for "I'm just doing this." as a way to put you off asking him to do something. Similarly, he likes to say "I'm working." to indicate he's busy and shouldn't be interfered with.
The usual excuse for bloggers is lack of time, but we all know it's just plain laziness.
A lot of things happened in a year. I'll highlight the big ones.
Daigoro left JK and entered SK. He's thriving there - I'm very proud of his progress and his report cards (they have report cards for kindergarten?!) seem to reflect that he's a good influence in the classroom and a quick learner. He still has problems with being impatient with other kids and becoming frustrated with tasks he doesn't master quickly, but generally he's doing well.
Kenshin has advanced in many ways. Since the last entry, he's become much more interactive and willing to eat new foods, but he's still behind in several key developmental milestones.
He hasn't mastered washroom training, and he generally is communicative only as much as is necessary, rarely "volunteering" information other than parroting or combining known phrases. Late last year we had him tested for hearing (fine, or actually better than average) and then a couple of months ago we took him to a pediatrician specialist in development at Sick Kids Hospital. The specialist did a number of tests, many of which he completed quite well, but he also gave us a questionnaire which is typically used for autism spectrum disorder / Asperger syndrome diagnosis. We have suspected/feared this outcome for some time, beginning shortly after his delayed beginning of speech, but we were encouraged by spurts of development that have occurred since.
Last week we took him to a child development centre for speech analysis. He scored lower than average on many tests, but the analyst was reluctant to put too much weight on the scores because it was evident that Kenshin was performing poorly on some tests not because he couldn't answer the questions, but because it seemed he didn't want to.
The analyst feels that we should enroll him in a six-week, hour-per-week social/peer speech group to encourage better interactive behaviour. We remain hopeful that as we continue to focus on encouraging to speak and interact with us that we will continue to see the slow and sporadic improvement that we've seen over the past two years.
This past weekend we went out to a Thai restaurant as a family and we actually had a very nice sit-down meal, with no squirming, running about or behaviour issues. This was a really nice milestone - one worth remarking on.
I'm still chuckling at one of Daigoro's comment's on the food, which he was thoroughly enjoying.
"This is like a Heaven breakfast!"
Both of them are growing like weeds and we're constantly amazed at how big they look in bed or when we're carrying them around.
Daigoro is reading above his level and is very pleased with himself. We're proud of him too.
Last year Marli won an iPad in a contest and we've discovered that Kenshin is drawn to handheld electronics like nobody's business. He loves iPads, iPhones, laptops, desktops - anything that has buttons and a screen... or just buttons. He loves to fiddle and change things. He's managed to delete all of the photo's off my parents' digital photo frame, create new user profiles on our PS3, dial the Philippines on a relative's phone, and install new applications on my father's smart phone.
Just this past weekend, he's figured out that he can climb on our entertainment console to get up to the small box (he calls it "a bag") in which we store our remotes and PS3 controllers. When confronted, he says "I was not climbing!"
Another favourite recently is "I'm just..." as an abbreviation for "I'm just doing this." as a way to put you off asking him to do something. Similarly, he likes to say "I'm working." to indicate he's busy and shouldn't be interfered with.
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