Edmund

Edmund is our youngest. He's Mr Happy-Go-Lucky, never met a stranger, the world is a wonderful place. He's full of energy and enthusiasm and he can't sit still to save his life.

His birthday falls a few weeks after the school age cutoff, so he started kindergarten as the oldest kid in the class. And the biggest. He's always wanted to do everything that Peter does, so he was also far advanced academically. I worried about the start of kindergarten, because I knew he'd be bored and I was afraid he'd be a discipline problem because of it. He was already comfortably reading 2nd and 3rd grade level books before kindergarten started and he could do simple addition problems in his head.

The first week of Kindergarten, I got a call from his teacher. "Just wanted to talk about what I'm seeing with Edmund." Oh, no, I thought, Already? what's he done? What's going on? "I've got nothing in this classroom that's going to challenge him in reading, so I need your permission to do some 1st grade testing with him." Oh. OK.

Ultimately, she worked with him so carefully and so hard that he was ready to jump over 1st grade and start 2nd grade a year early. The assessment they do to decide if this is a good move for a child looks at their social, physical and emotional development levels as well as their academics. He got a 20 out of 24 on it, and the teacher who did it pointed out that it wasn't possible for him to get all points because some of them are based on your SAT scores.

Beginning foster care has been the hardest challenge for him, I think. He's gone from being the baby, although I frequently forget just how young he really is, to being a stand-in "big brother" for kids who may or may not want one.