June

On the eighth of June Venus passed before the sun. It was our best chance to see it because it will not happen again until 2012 (not very visible from the Netherlands) and after that it's 2117...

This month was also my introduction to the "avondvierdaagse" a (fairly recent) Dutch tradition whereby schoolchildren and their parents go on a 5 mile walk together every evening for four days. I did all four days (Marjolein chickened out with various excuses) so I accompanied Matthijs on the walk. Traditionally you take a half-lemon wrapped in a hankerchief to suck and sing various raucous songs. It was a very ethnic experience. Matthijs had no problem with the walk and undoubtedly did 15 plus kilometers each evening because he kept running back and forth and hither and yon. He also spent three of the walks holding hands with a girl from his class... Definately a Disney moment. The last walk was not a loop like the others but a triumphal procession into the center of town with all the other schools to be clapped by the multitude. Of course muggins had parked his car way back at the starting place so we had a ten mile trudge that time...

Daniel had a school party that week and the whole school got decked out in an Indian theme. Marjolein's sowing madness has not abated and she made highly complicated Indian suits for both boys.

The party was a blast. Lots and lots of activities: sausage roasting, pony rides, bouncy castle and simulated kayak rides. There was even a cardboard cow that you could milk (did Indians keep cows???) lemonade out of. Most ingenious. They cunningly assigned each eighth-grader two little ones, which gave the big ones and excuse to join in with everything and made the little ones act as grown-up as possible for the benefit of their "minder".

That day was also national Street-Play DayD so there were also lots of street-games organised with music and of course a surprising number of indians...

The school (still on theme) organised and Indian musical for the infants and Daniel's class cheerfully mangled various "Indian songs" and banged drums and stuff. Falco thought it was wonderful and toddled off to join in.

There is a large portrait of Marjolein and her sister hanging in her library. Marjo explained to Matthijs that her father had drawn it and adding an "educational message" carried on to explain that though her father could draw well she herself could not: everyone is good at different things. To comfort her Matthijs proceded to tell her all the things she WAS good at: washing and cooking etc. Naturally I was rolling on the floor by then and Matthijs began to suspect that his compliment was not working as expected so he dug the hole deeper by saying "and you are good at tidying too Mama and very good at losing your temper!". Definately a useful educational message for sombody...

Marjolein is also good at extracting splinters from the children because our wooden floor was very worn (and ugly). Not wanting to shell out for a new floor we decided to sand it down and revarnish it ourselves. Garnering useful tips from friends and collegues we were told "never again", "we had to pay someone to come and fix the mess we made" and (usefully) "do not ever stand still while the sander it running for it will then dig a bottomless pit in your floorboards". Great confidence-building stuff for the man who takes a week preparing for the ordeal of putting up a shelf.

Not wanting to impregnate the children with poisonous varnish fumes Marjolein managed to distiribute them to her mother, sister and friends (and they are STILL friends, wonders never cease). So we had the weekend to ourselves and buckled down to two days of very, very hard work. I approached the mighty industrial sander positively vibrating with paranoia, but the advice about not standing still and some detailed study of the workings of the beast paid off. The result was better than we had dared to hope and we now have a wonderfully smooth, splinter-free and even pretty floor with four good coats of varnish on it. We even managed to go our for a meal together: richly deserved I felt.

Looking round the smooth and empty room we decided not to put back part of the furniture (Marjo sold it on www.marktplaats.nl) and to paint the walls while they were unencumbered. Thus Daniels mural disappeared under two coats of light cream and we did the plinths and hung up picture rails.

We are whacked, but the room looks MUCH better now. It is also a lesson to us to keep the furnishings down to an absolute minimum.

Matthijs camped out with his scout troop for the first time in a beautiful bit of forest. He still does not seem to mind being the only boy but was cross because the girls kept on shining their torches around at bedtime, naturally he would never do such a thing. Hmmm. When we went to collect him we were treated to a circus show in which Matthijs had the part of a lion tamer with a fairly docile little chinese girl as the lion.

It's not really summer yet but it has been fine enough for some nice long walks by the sea. While most people were clad in jackets against the bracing sea breeze our boys stripped down to the skivvies and went dancing around in the surf. We would not have let them strip off, but the alternative was keeping them in clothes that were rapidly getting soaked. They had a whale of a time and did not get so much as a sniffle for the experience.

This month I took Matthijs down to Nijmegen to be tested at the CBO: the centre for research into gifted children. We had decided to do this some time before because though he was much happier at the new school he was showing the first signs of being bored and behaving erratically and he was not performing above average. The reason we wanted him to be tested was to determine once and for all if he was a smart child who the other school had taught to under-perform or an ordinary child who should be allowed to progress at the same pace as his peers. We were concerned that we might be suffering from "proud parent disease" and imagining our child was brilliant. On the other hand, if he was under-performing he would be happier if the school gave him more advanced material and pushed him for better results. We particularly chose Nijmegen, which has a tremendous reputation in the Netherlands as any report from them would carry weight with the school: it would not be lightly dismissed.

It was rather strange driving all the way down there, just the two of us. We stayed at a little bed-and-breakfast and Matthijs rather nonplussed the owner with a tremendously complex story of how he was really a magician and he and his fellow magicians spent all their time protecting the world from several lovingly described and imaginatively named super-baddies. The next morning I took him in for the test, we had a lunch break together and then set off the home. I spent most of the day reading in nearest canteen, which, being naturally in the Psychology faculty filled up regularly with knots of earnestly discussing Shrinks-to-be. Conclusion: 90% of psychology students are female and they drink a lot of coffee. Matthijs thoroughly enjoyed the testing and gave the professor a great big hug at the end. She seemed also rather taken with him and was particularly struck by the fact that he remained alert, cheerful and interested even after five hours (lunch break not included) of testing.

The test results turned up after a few (tense) weeks. Matthijs is in many areas highly gifted: specifically verbal skills (no surprises there), spatial recognition and conceptual thinking. He scores were brought down somewhat by his tendency to draw conclusions too rapidly and thus miss essential details. He also got high marks in creativity. The researcher remarked that he lost some marks in a test where the child has to name as many members of a category as possible, because he already thinks in classifications. When asked to name a lot of animals he says "mammals" and then does not bother to say "dog, cat" etc. In other words, that particular test was too simple for his level of thinking...

The report also says that his behavioural problems are almost certainly due to his intelligence: i.e. he gets bored (and thus fractious/frustrated) very easily. His wellbeing is also strongly influenced by his environment. Their advice was:

Matthijs should be challenged with new material. He will probably exhibit bad behaviour if forced to work below his level or made to wait for other pupils.
He should work with similar children, who will mostly be older, also because this will strengthen his social skills.

We are going to make a copy of the report for school and hope that we can all come up with a good plan for getting him started in group 3...AFTER the holidays!

 

Daniel sings about indians,
Falco just does as he pleases.
.wmv file, 2.4 Mb

Matthijs gets caught up in music quite easily.
.wmv file, 1 Mb