Great help from everyone - thanks!
If truth be told I wonder, too, whether part of my ambivalence stems from something like my lack of certainty about where he stands in the first place. (Wow, I'm all over the map, aren't I!) I mean, I've read a lot of these stories in Gross, Ruf, et. al., and it's so hard to know what's normal and what's not. I guess I don't think he's straight ND, but where other than that he stands is so hard to tell.
For example, in our case although DS reads, he doesn't read the encyclopedia or Harry Potter; he reads normal, little chapter books like Frog and Toad. And even with those he likes to have us around to help with the odd word or even to alternate pages. He has been making a lot of strides in the last few weeks, and his desire to read things all on his own has increased. But he still prefers to read books he's read before over unfamiliar ones.
Similarly, although he likes numbers, and can calculate with them pretty well, his ability to think fluidly with them seems limited. For example, he likes puzzles and we play little number games together pretty often. Recently, though, it became clear that although he knew that 9+9=18, sometimes when you ask him what half of 18 is he gets stumped. Or again, he has known the three-series since he was two, but still if you ask him what 8x3 is he sometimes just doesn't seem to get it. Other times he does. It's confusing. You think he knows something and then you think he doesn't, and it makes you wonder whether your sense of him was right in the first place. Argh!
Furthermore, when he decides he's done thinking about something, then he's completely done, and it doesn't seem to bother him to have left the problem hanging in mid-air. You hear about these kids who are driven by a problem, and I'm not sure how much he is. He is curious, he asks questions - a lot of questions, often weird questions - but then when you try to help him figure out the answer he sometimes loses interest. (Maybe this is asking too much of a 4 year old - I am used to teaching much older kids. But I can't tell.) I don't have much by way of comparison, but I do take him to a little kind of numeracy class once a week. Some of the other kids there seem to have a bit more stamina, and occasionally things seem to come a bit quicker for them; the other kids are all six months to a year older than he is, though, and maybe this makes a difference at his age. Yet another thing I don't have a very clear sense of.
Oh dear, I guess I'm just venting. Well, apologies. I suppose this is the reason that testing might be appropriate. Maybe it will help us to understand at least some things better.
BB
