The Mark of Pete-o

We're getting some work done in the office in our bedroom. This work involves some nice bright paint. Peter got his hands on one of the paintbrushes and left his mark on a white wall. I wasn't there when it happened, but I took a picture of the Zorro-like "P" on the wall. He already knows how to write his name, so I think he would have written out his entire name if my wife hadn't stopped him.

Speaking of my kids, Micheal is due to start kindergarten in September, but the school system isn't quite sure what to do with him. It's clear to everyone that he'd be completely bored by the kindergarten curriculum, so they are thinking of having him skip kindergarten and start 1st grade in September ( He can probably already read/write at a 2nd grade level and he probably knows more math than some high school kids. He know almost all the elementary school stuff, plus square roots, cube roots, squaring, cubing, various powers of numbers, negative numbers, some algebra, and even some stuff about imaginary numbers ( Sure, any kid could memorize that "i is the square root of -1", but a few days after I taught him about imaginary numbers he announced that "the cube root if -i is i" ). A few days ago he announced out of the blue that "A squared + B squared = C squared". I don't know where he heard that ( probably on YouTube ), but I figured that I might as well explain Pythagorean's Theorem to him ( he already knows what a right angle is ). So I showed him how to do the calculations for a 3-4-5 right triangle, and then showed him a 5-12-13 triangle ( but I labeled the "13" side as "C" ). He immediately wrote out the equation "25 + 144" and about 30 seconds later told me that C was 13. ). However, as far as his social development goes, he's probably more like a 4-year old than a 5-year old. He's actually still considered to be on the Autism spectrum and the diagnosis is probably accurate. So, at this point, the school is not sure what to do. Kindergarten will probably be good for developing his social skills, but he'd be so bored by the academic stuff that he might not want to pay attention to his teachers most of the time. Even if the school does recommend 1st grade, I would imagine the final decision would be up to Ruth and me. We're still not sure what we'd like to do. I'm more concerned about his social development than anything, but it's not clear to me that sitting in a classroom bored all day will be good for his social development. Even if he goes to the 1st grade class, he's still going to be bored a lot.