Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Assigning numbers to nouns - is this weird?

So, I was taking DD6 back from swimming this morning - with 4 kids it's rare that she and I have much one on one time during the day. Anyway, she was looking out the window at the scenery and traffic and announced that many common objects she thinks of by their "number". So, 'car' is number 9, 'tree' is 4, her immediate family all have numbers and so on. She said that if she's doing boring maths in the class and sees the number 9 she automatically thinks of a car but if it's interesting maths she only sees the numbers.

Is this really weird? Or common for a gifted mathy kid?

It makes me a bit uncomfortable but I'm not sure why.

Hmmm. It sounds slightly like synesthesia to me, but I've never actually heard of a form of synesthesia where numbers were assigned to objects. For me, the numbers 1-12 have always had distinct genders, colors and personalities. That's a pretty well documented form of synesthesia. I always assumed I was that way because I was bored in math. But years later I found my mother was the same way and she is *terrible* at math and was never bored. She is, however, extremely intelligent in other areas.

For what it's worth, my synesthesia (as well as my brother's and my mother's) makes the family members who don't have it slightly uncomfortable as well, although they've learned to tune us out if we start debating whether 7 is male or female.

She's female and I refuse to budge on that.

Thanks Gina, that makes sense. Her big sister is synaesthetic with colours so it could well be DD6's own synaesthetic variant. It makes it seem a bit less odd as well, if I choose to think of it like that.

If 7 were female she'd be sort of angular and angry, surely?

I participated in an online assessment of synaesthetics through some university (sorry, but it's been a couple of decades). They commented that in addition to the common forms, there are a number of more obscure variants. For me, colors have odors (at least many of them do, not all) and this is a less common variant. Sounds like your DD also has a less common version (but such a fun one -- let me assure you, some colors really don't smell good!).

I've just seen this, that does sound potentially unpleasant. Imagine having to avoid some (smelly) colours during early pregnancy as well! Her big sister has colours for numbers, letters and the days of the week so I'm more comfortable with it being a synaesthetic variant rather than some highly odd weirdness.