Your Son’s Preschool Progress Report

Dear Amron,

Sunshine Academy Preschool is delighted to share with you the following progress report for your son, Max.

All in all, controlling for the toxic dose of testosterone coursing through his rabid little veins, your precious Max is perfectly healthy and developing normally.

He fits right in with the cackle of hyenas who joined the Tiger Room (Rawr!) last fall, and generally holds his own in the Lord of the Flies-inspired hierarchy established by his classmates.

Developmental assessments

Physical growth and motor development

Max’s fine motor skills have improved markedly since he joined the Tiger Room (Rawr!) last September. When attempting to stab his classmates with a pencil he consistently uses a perfect three-finger grasp. He can also draw rudimentary shapes such as rectangles and circles, which he excitedly combines because, according to him, they, “Look like my pee-nis!”

Sadly, Max’s teachers aren’t yet comfortable letting him use scissors, so that remains an area for future development.

In terms of gross motor skills, Max tirelessly runs, jumps, kicks, punches, and assaults his classmates and teachers. Leveraging his vivid imagination, Max also has a penchant for transforming classroom materials into makeshift melee weapons.

Representative fine motor skill: While standing to micturate, Max adroitly clasps his penis and says, “I’m bwasting the pee into the toy-e-lette with my pee-nis! Bwast! Bwast! Bwast bwast!”

Representative gross motor skill: From atop the art station, Max executed a primitive Five Star Frog Splash on his best friend, Nathan.

Social and personal development

Max has forged a tight-knit group of friends (all boys) who typically engage in group and dramatic play. They love to construct complex structures with wooden blocks or Magna-Tiles. In particular, Max enjoys building rocket ships because, according to him, they, “Look like my pee-nis!”

As is common at this age, Max often has difficulty sharing and requires a teacher to intervene and resolve conflicts. However, Max and Nathan recently invented a new game they call, “Who has the strongest penis?” It functions like a Bloodsport or Street Fighter-inspired tournament, where the winner claims first dibs on the hot toy of the day.

In general, Sunshine Academy strongly discourages our littles ones from making such unsafe choices, but in this case we were just gratified to watch these duncecaps display a modicum of creative problem-solving ability.

Representative social and personal development skill: Last week, when Max tapped out Robbie and secured access to our new Duplo set, he excitedly proclaimed, “I will rooool the werld — with my PEE-NIS!”

Cognitive and language development

Max demonstrates curiosity about his environment and asks lots of questions, which is why you should still hold out hope he could become a functional adult during his thirties.

Max especially loves reading, hearing, and telling stories. He contextualizes events from his day-to-day life, and draws parallels between the materials we discuss during circle time and the horrific realities of human existence. For example, recently Max commented upon the relationships between Goldilocks and British Colonialism as well as Curious George and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Since graduating to the Tiger Room (Rawr!) Max’s vocabulary has exploded! Last fall we surveyed Max’s language skills and determined he knew approximately three hundred words, more than half of which were the names of Marvel superheroes or Star Wars characters. 

Now he’s able to form semi-coherent sentences such as, “Darf Mawl has a light-sabwer, whytch looks like my pee-nis!”

Quantitative analysis remains a relative weakness for Max and an area for significant improvement. He can unreliably count to twenty, and tends to fixate on the number one, which he says is his favorite because, “I have won pee-nis!”

Representative cognitive and language development skill: Shockingly, Max solved a crude multiplication problem last week when he explained, “Spidahs have eight legs. If each leg has won pee-nis, the spidah has eightpee-nises!”

Emotional development

Max exhibits a strong independent streak and effortlessly expresses his individual wants, needs, and desires. He’s self-motivated but also comfortable asking his friends and teachers for assistance when needed.

Max possesses a wonderful sense of humor and displays a preternatural grasp of sarcasm. He’ll seemingly do anything to elicit a laugh, which — while fun — could foreshadow future emotional distress.

A strong understanding of adult humor and a knack for comedic timing will make Max superficially personable, but these attributes likely indicate underlying and unresolved generational trauma, such as:

1. deep-seated feelings of worthlessness and despair
2. unrequited longing for unconditional love
3. a smothering sense of pointlessness in a world clearly devoid of meaning

Therefore, as a blanket policy, we suggest all Sunshine Academy families pursue cognitive behavioral therapy as soon as possible.

Representative emotional development skill: After a spate of episodes where Max repeatedly asked his classmates to “Tickle my pee-nis,” we instituted a learning module focused on gentle, appropriate, and consensual touching.

Now, Max happily and confidently tells his friends, “My pee-nis is on my bawdy, so I tickle it my-selphtph.”

Growth areas

Max takes a very penis-centric view of the world, therefore we recommend exposing him to a variety of different books, podcasts, movies, TV shows, and documentaries, which will broaden his perspective and engender critical empathy skills.

Along these lines, please also ensure Max consumes age-appropriatecontent (e.g., not Carnage vs. Venom). This will teach him to process his BIG feelings and respond to upsetting stimuli in a safe, responsible manner (e.g., not threatening to chop anyone’s whole body off).

Ultimately, we’re pleased to report Max is developing into a fully-fledged little boy! And we’re very excited to watch him continue to grow and mature!

Most importantly, we’re thrilled Max will be matriculating to the Public School System this fall, where we’re certain he’ll find his place among those likeminded plebes and jackals.

Yours in early childhood education,

Sunshine Academy Preschool Management

P.S. On several occasions you’ve expressed concerns about Max’s pace of development — especially vis-à-vis his big sister Maria — and we understand and empathize with your concerns and frustrations.

That said, we can assure you there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your son.

He’s just a boy.