The background (sorry, it's going to be long - the short version is in the title )
DS is 4 (will be 5 in March). His Kindergarten teacher wants to recommend that the "School Pyschology Service" make an assessment of him because she's concerned about his gross motor skills. The basis of her concern seems to be that he's stiff and cannot hop. Also he's not keen on sitting still.
- I'm not sure about the stiff bit, can't say that I'd noticed.
- I agree that he can't hop.
- I also agree that he's not great at sitting still when he's not engrossed in something. He can keep still (e.g. when I took him to the pantomime and cinema, when watching TV, when listening to a story, when eating) but he's not good at sitting still just because someone says he has to. I wasn't particularly concerned about that, although I can see it must be hugely irritating for the teacher in the group environment, but he is a 4 year boy after all!
However he can:-
- dress himself - underwear, socks, tights (we're in Switzerland - boys wear tights!), tops, trousers, velcro shoes, gloves
- eat and drink properly
- ride a pedal bike, without stabilisers
- run up and down stairs
- climb like a monkey
- balance on ropes
- kick a football
- catch a ball
- jump
- write his name and numbers (here reading and writing don't happen in the school system for a while yet)
- do the fiddly playmobil stuff that I hate
- solve problems really well
- respond to instructions
- build all sorts of stuff out of bits of junk
- do the imaginative play thing
I should of course say that all the above is stuff he can do when he wants to. If he doesn't want to do it, it won't be happening, but as I've said, he's a four year old boy.
And in the interests of balance I feel I should also add that this is the positive stuff - there's an equally long list of stuff he can't do involving patience, grumpiness, incessant talking and asking questions, daydreaming, faffing, nighttime bladder control. He does have some problems with pronounciation of some sounds and is having speech therapy to help with that (mainly seems to be about strengthening his mouth muscles).
So finally, the point of this waffle, am I missing something here? I understand that he's not perfect and that there are some things he can't do BUT given that they don't seem to be hindering him in any way whatsoever, is this really worth doing anything about? Or have I got it all wrong and hopping is a marker for some other more important skill?
(And from a societal point of view this kind of thing makes me quite cross actually. Whilst it's nice that they are concerned about my son and that there is help available when he needs, isn't it incredibly wasteful to be using resources on such a trvial matter? There are plenty of more useful things that they could spend that money on, but that's probably another topic)