A Beautiful Mind can also be a Dirty Mind

I love Jammy's teacher. She is a warm nurturing soul who realizes that kindergarten can be stressful and scary, full of unrealistic expectations -- unless a teacher is willing and able to provide lots of reassurance and praise. For the parents, that is.

Last week she was bursting to tell me about the Really Great Thing Jammy had done in class. Apparently, the class had recently completed an activity where they had to sort out all the animals in the Chinese zodiac (rat, ox, tiger, horse, rooster, monkey, dog, pig, rabbit, dragon, snake, goat) into two groups. Each kid could use any criteria they wanted to define the groups. All the other kids used the kind of criteria that you'd expect from 5 and 6 year olds: Big/Small, Feathers/No feathers, Two feet/Four feet, that sort of thing.

Jammy's sorting criteria?
1) Poops fertilizer
2) Does not poop fertilizer

And this is why I love Jammy's teacher. She must have known that Alfie and I would immediately be impressed by the awesome lateral thinking displayed by our son, leaving us convinced that the workings of his mind go far beyond any normal boy (I didn't even realize he knew what fertilizer was!). I'm sure she has a story like that for every parent in her class, but we lapped up the proof of his brilliance just the same. It's not like we've been worried that he'd fail kindergarten or anything, but given that his older sister entered kindergarten already reading at the second grade level while he's still struggling to sound out consonant blends, her little anecdote was a great reminder that everyone's mind works in different ways and everyone is good at something. Thanks, Mrs. D, for telling us that lovely story, and in effect, telling us Your son is doing great. He'll be just fine.