Counting to 10 at twenty months old. Parents please chime in... (1 Viewer)

[Drew Bethel]

Leila, that's one of the best posts that I've ever read on HTF. You are indeed..."gifted".

 

[Holadem]

Yup. My 4 y/o learnt to count, spell and write little stuff a while a go, much earlier than I ever did. WTF?

--
H

 

[Lew Crippen]

Great post Leila. Garrett, not to disagree exactly, but to amplify, music (including violin) is an area where gifted children excel. While not everyone who is gifted is a Mozart, many, perhaps most outstanding musicians demonstrated their talent at an early age.

This should not be surprising, as music and math are quite related.

Also the ability to speak multiple languages at an early age is usually (not always) just being in an environement where multiple languages are spoken on a routine basis.

 

[george kaplan]

Good signs? I think you misunderstand what gifted means. Gifted is most commonly just being in the top 2% of one's peer group. Far fewer than 2% of 4 year olds are doing division, or 2nd graders are doing algebra and geometry. Those would be more signs of child prodigies, not gifted kids. If you had to do division by 4 to get into a GT program, those programs would be empty.

You'd probably list writing symphonies by age 6 as a good sign that someone was musically gifted. Mozart wasn't just gifted, he was a child prodigy. Every musician in an professional orchestra is exceedingly gifted, but very few of them were doing what Mozart did as a child.

 

[Shawn C]

My son will be 3 in July and he still amazes me. My son has known his ABC's and his numbers since he was 2. He has known all of his colors for quite a while and can usually tell me what the color of anything is. Silver is a problem, though..lol

He started counting things on his own about 2 months ago. He counts things that he sees while in the car... "1 2 3 motorycles! 1 2 bulldozers!"

He knows where all of HIS dvd's are in the storage rack. They are all mixed up but he knows which ones are "his". He recognizes the art of the sides of the cases.

He was pretty funny last week at the McDonald's play land. He likes to walk UP the slide to get to the good stuff up top. You have to take your shoes off in there. He kept sliding down on the way up until he realized that his socks were keeping him from getting any traction. He got down and took his socks off to make it up.

He saw the Incredibles when it first came out and once more on DVD. About two months ago, he started associating the characters on the show with our family. According to him, I'm Mr. Incredible, Mommy is Elastigirl and he's Dash.

 

[Joe Szott]

Bust out the fingerpaints Micheal. I've passed along my love of reading to my kids, but I'm useless when it comes to art. Some of the best fun I've had with them though is making something "fun", like a collage of clippings that they like (ie - Spongebob, Spiderman) or drawing pictures.

That's some of the best stuff right there, suck it up.


PS - LMAO at the "Mall of America" comment guys, too funny...

 

[Drew Bethel]

My 12 month old daughter had a moment of brilliance the other day. We have at least a couple dozen books that we read to her every day and yesterday my wife was just hanging around and said "rocket in my pocket". My daughter was playing around with something and stopped whatever she was doing, walked over to her toy basket and pulled/dumped out three books until she found the rocket in my pocket book. She then brought that book over to my wife for her to read. We were both shocked...:p)

 

[george kaplan]

My son is very good at math, and other things. But his real area of prodigiousness is watching movies. He sat quietly, ate popcorn, and enjoyed all of Monsters, Inc., in the movie theater, when he was 16 months old.

 

[Kevin T]

haha. maybe he could learn you something good too. in my experiences, everyones child is a genius according to them.

kevin t

 

[Leila Dougan]

Thanks Drew and Lew!



It's definitely admirable to want to give your daughter guidance and opportunities. We all are motivated by different things, as I'm sure you know, so in order to try to motivate your daughter to learn, you'll need to figure out what makes her tick. Personally, I'm not entirely sure that motivation can be taught, though.

My brother, for instance, just isn't motivated by much. It's darn near impossible to get him to do something he doesn't want to do, including learning. While the other kids in kindergarden were eager to clean out their cubbies to get a gold star by their name, my brother just didn't care. And all the standard things that usually motivate kids, like the threat of missing recess or getting in trouble for bad grades or even repeating a grade, never motivated him. And now that he's older, money does not motivate him so he feels no need for a job. Heck, even being hungry doesn't motivate him and as long as he can get something to eat every few days, he's okay with it. He'd much rather do without, than do something he doesn't want to do. Thankfully he's always been a pretty good kid as far as not getting into trouble, because most of the standard discipline techniques revolve around motivation (ie, to not have toys taken away, to not be grounded, etc) and they just wouldn't work.

Now, I think my brother is an extreme case so in no way do I think his lack of motivation is normal. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's downright abnormal. Whatever it is about him, I think he was born that way. My parents really tried hard and it was evident that no matter what they did, he would not change. It's a sad case, really, because he's an adult now and responsible for his own decisions. There isn't anything left for us to do, so we've all stopped trying.

Anyway, to answer your question...yes, my brother had the same opportunities I did. He tried most of them once and then decided he didn't like them. Like the summer camp, he went one year and really didn't like it. My parents offered to send him the next several summers and he declined each time. In school the teachers wanted him to take honors , classes, but he'd always request to be part of the regular classes. I think his big problem he is unable to cope with structure. My family had a tradition where every Sunday we'd all to the public library and spend the afternoon there. This was before they all had computers, so there was no choice but to find something to read. He always find something interesting to learn about, so he did enjoy that kind of learning to some degree. The other thing that he liked was actually going and seeing what he was interested in. During one family vacation we saw the Statue of Liberty and Empire State building, and during another we saw old Pueblo ruins here in the Southwest. We've attended air shows because he was interested in military aircraft, went to San Diego to learn about oceanography, and visited several canyons and caverns to learn about geology. I should also add that we didn't go on vacation because of him, or even choose the destination because of him, but my parents would ask us what we were interested in seeing and if it was feasible, we'd do it (we have family in New Jersey so touring NYC was no problem, for example).

Anyway, I'd say my brother was given just as much attention as I was, maybe even more (to try to provide extra encouragement). My parents knew I'd do well even with little attention, so they weren't so concerned about me. But we are 6 years apart and were always at different stages in our lives, which I think made it easier on my parents. While I was busy hanging out with friends as a teenager, my parents could give him a lot of attention. And since I moved out of the house when he was 11, he was pretty much treated as an only child after that. I know he was not lost in the shuffle (no other siblings) but maybe suffered from too much attention? I have no idea.

Again, do the best you can with your daughter. Watch her and follow her cues. After all, if you've done all you can and she does not turn out as you had hoped, at least you know you've given it your all and there's no reason to have guilt or "woulda, shoulda, couldas".

 

[Micheal]

Thanks Leila.

I'm really not sure what to think of this? I don't think I would give my daughter the responsibility of making these choices. I'm really unsure as to what age you are talking about here. I know that as far as summer camp goes that she will end up going to a camp of her choice, but she will have to go. It's better than sitting around the house playing videogames and it will only be for a couple of weeks out of the entire summer. (Once she's a little older of course.)

Same goes with the choice of classes. She will be put into the classes that are best suited to graduate her towards University/College. The only way that she will be a part of the regular classes is if she can't handle the more advanced courses. Time will tell. Of course once she heads into High School I will let her choose courses that she is interested in.

I'm coming off sounding a little strict here. I'm really not that strict.

It sounds like your parents did everything they could. Sometimes people are just destined to turn out a certain way.

 

[Bob Turnbull]

With apparently a bit of a thing for Hayley Mills... Or is that Lindsay Lohan?

George, I've been meaning to ask for some time about the films your son watches. I'm really amazed at some of the ones you list ("Alexander Nevsky"?). My little guy is the same age and we're slowly working up to older films, but I don't think he'd be quite as fully engaged in some of the films your guy watches. Does he really follow the full plot lines, etc.?

By the way, what does he think of Cries And Whispers?

Anyway, just wanted to say I think that's terribly cool.

 

[Leila Dougan]

Well here I was talking about high school. The school we attended let students choose their classes and parents really didn't have much of a say. So of course we encouraged him to take the honors classes, but then he'd change his schedule the first day of school. But that was because he couldn't handle the advanced classes. I don't mean intellectually, because he was plenty smart for them, but he was so unmotivated that he'd never do the homework and end up failing the class. In fact he did this in the regular classes too, but he was able to make up for him (mostly) by aceing the tests. So zeros for homework and perfect scores on tests gave him an C or D average and he passed the class. He figured that was good enough and that's how he managed to graduate. The couple of honors classes he did decide to take, the teachers kicked him out because he obviously wasn't living up to his potential and then the school just stuck him in the lowest level classes they offered. Again, all of this had nothing to do with his intelligence, but more his personality and lack of motivation.

The elementary and middle schools we attended did not have an advanced track, so he didn't have any choice there. But he had the same problems as far as turning in assignments, even after spending 5 hours doing it the night before! And after years of my parents talking to the teachers every evening to find out the assignments, holding his hand through completing them, and walking him to class the next morning to make sure he turned it in, they kinda gave up. An 8th grader should be able to remember to hand in an assignment and not have mom walk them to class to remind them. But like I said, that was years of them working with teachers, the principles, school counselors, you name it -- it just seemed like a lost cause. There's probably something else going on with him that's making him like this, but nobody has yet to come up with anything. He's been tested from everything from ADD to Asperger's to Bipolar and everyone just says nothing is wrong with him but immaturity. Who knows.

Ah well, I really didn't intend for your thread to become this massive discussion about my brother. I only brought him up to highlight the fact that sometimes, no matter what you do, a person is going to turn out how they're going to turn out and that every child is different. You just never know.

I do agree with your general plan about how summers will be, what classes she will take, etc. I'm not suggesting at all that you throw your plans to the wind and just let her do her own thing. I was just saying that despite those well-intentioned plans, things don't always turn out as one might expect. And if it's any comfort, I have my own daughter (7 weeks old) so I'll be dealing with many of these issues myself soon enough. My ground rules will be much like yours, which I think are not overly strict but not terribly lax either.

 

[george kaplan]

Well I'm going to chime in with an opposition point-of-view.

Childhood is short. Most of the year, you spend most of your daylight hours in school, or doing homework.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with children taking (the ever-shrinking) summer off.

Many's the summer of my youth when I didn't go to summer school, or go to some camp. I slept in, read fun books, went to the beach, played baseball with my friends, etc.

And it didn't do any harm to my academic or professional career. I had a Ph.D. at 26, and make a good living.

But, man, do I miss being able to take summers off and just kick back. Oh well, 25 years or so til retirement.

 

[Kevin M]

I thought it but you said it, it's true that most "good" parents think that their child is special or exceptional more so than other kids....it's all part of being a parent..(And even if they aren't exceptional then loving them and teaching them as best you can is enough, more than some children get, I'm sorry to say.)

 

[Holadem]

Arrgh, rant mode on:

I agree, but that was not my point at all. I responded to George who said that much more is expected of kids nowadays, implying much more is thought to them as an earlier age. I was agreeing, citing my daughter as an example of a child who has learnt a lot more at her age than I did, regardless of her intelligence (which I never qualified), because that's what they teach them nowadays.

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine: I go out of my way to avoid foistering her "deeds" on other people.

Why? Because frankly parents who do so annoy the hell out of me. I know parents who can't ever shut the fuck up about their offspring's latest accomplishement, believing that for some bizarre reason, everyone is just dying to hear about it as much as they are dying to tell it, blissfully unaware of the fact that 1- they sound like every other bumbling parent who thinks their kid is special by some objective standard and 2- we don't care.

My daughter says and does things that feel me with a wonder nothing has ever come close to. I however don't feel the need to delight any and everyone who would listen with tales of her latest exploits.

Now Michael I hope you don't take offense to this, your initial post has a clearly different purpose from "look at me, my kid is special". You already seem to believe I have a hard on for you so a disclaimer is in order...

It's the "hey you know what Charlie did the other day? Blah blah blah... isn't he amazing? He really is!" stuff that I find annoying.

--
H

 

[Micheal]

Disclaimer accepted.
No problem H, I agree with your post.

Leila, sorry to pry.
Thanks for the explanation. You've cleared everything up for me, quite extensively I might add. I appreciate it.

George, I don't see a problem with having your child do something constructive for a couple of weeks out of the summer. Kids are spending LESS time in the classroom these days as it is.

 

[Carl Miller]

My son at that age was behind where your daughter is. He was in the bottom half of his class from kindergarten all the way through 7th grade. Suddenly, something kicked in. We don't know how or why, but he's an A student going into 10th grade next school year.

He voiced his desire not to go into the honors classes which his teachers recommended, and we let him stay put. He gets so much homework to do as it is, we decided he didn't need an hour more of homework each day and that he'd be better off spending that hour doing something else.

My daughter was about in line with yours at that age, and now has to work hard to just be an average student.

I think it's great you're thinking about all this stuff, and you should because you'll be prepared to make these decisions if or when they need to be made. But I think it's too early to say which way this is going to go.

 

[JeremySt]

I was the opposite. I was reading and writing before I began kindergarten. I was into reading full novels in 3rd grade, but I think thats where I peaked.

In junior high school I was average, but it could have been purely because I was a little more into social status than academic advancement. I got my bearings back by 11th grade, and finished high school with really good grades.

 

[Nathan Eddy]

Seems like there's a lot of good advice here. I think that "gifted" is loaded term that we all confuse with our own expectations and experiences. After all, it is a relative term used to compare someone to the mythical "average." (Is anybody really average or normal?)

The plain fact is that some people are better at some things than others, and hardly anyone is better at EVERYTHING. Different societies place more importance on some skills over others. In the end, it will be your personality more than your intelligence that ensures your success. People with "average" intelligence but with strong work ethic/motivation will achieve more than highly intelligent people with no focus or ambition, who coast on their abilities and never try hard because things come easily to them.

Instilling values in your children (not necessarily religious, just "respect yourself, respect others, and work hard") is much more important than how early they read or count or take algebra.