Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Existential Preschooler

At Christmas, he saw a "Santa" on a roof at someone's light display and turned and asked me, "Can a person buy a Santa Costume?"
When he was 21 months, he sat in his car seat dazing out the window with a sad face and said, "I not a baby anymore, I a big boy."
Today out of completely nowhere he asked me where the first person in the world came from.
He 100% gets that the earth is a speck in the universe. He gets space and loves it.
I have come to realize that I have existential depression at times myself, and I worry about this with him all the time. My earliest memory of these questions was about five, not three.
It's not that I ever want him to be typical. I love who he is. I just go through these moments of grief or something that I can't put into words when I see this beautiful toddler dipping his toes his philosophy 101. I never imagined I would pass on my skeptical gene times ten to my little person. I just don't feel equipped to be his parent sometimes.

My daughter sees reality with so much clarity, and it makes me sad sometimes. She just turned 3, and already understands so many things that are worldly. We do not hide things from her much, but so much she was not taught, but has just figured out upon inspection of the world around her. I often forget I am talking to a just turned 3 year old, until she has a temper tantrum, and then I remember, oh yeah she is 3.

It can be overwhelming parenting a child that has too much intensity, too little sleep requirement, and too deep of an understanding of the world around said child. I think my last post was on her preoccupation with death. That seems to have subsided. Right now we are struggling with the low sleep requirement more than anything, but a lot of the time when she doesn't want to sleep, she does want to ask deep questions.

Just chiming in to let you know you are not alone. My son is 4 and we have been having discussions on death and not wanting to grow up for well over a year. We just approach things with a somewhat objective cycle of life perspective, paying careful attention to his feelings.

For what it is worth, I think for these types of kids it has more to do with their incredible attention to detail, awareness of the world around them, and ability to make connections than it does with a parent's own existential worries.

Yes, we are deep in a phase of examining our place in the life cycle in our house with DS3. For the last few weeks, he has insisted on being treated as a baby. The tension between the analytical perceptiveness that allows our children to pick up on uncertainties and threats and their emotional tenderness creates a difficult balance.

I am normally careful about what to discuss with DD but I slipped and I told her that an astroid was passing near Earth soon. She looked completely horrified. Her way of coping was art therapy. She drew a series of pictures about an astroid that is loaded up with love and is going to softly land on a trampoline. There was also a picture of her catching a tiny astroid with a lasso (Applejack!). She knows these are childish fantasies and she knows exactly how destructive astroids are thanks to some videos she watched on the NASA site but drawing these concepts seems to help her cope with her anxiety.

I know what a blessing DD is to our lives and how fortunate we are to have a (mostly) happy and healthy child but sometimes, I feel like I never really got to raise a child I expected to raise.

it_is_2day, my DD had serious sleeping problems so I can sympathize. Those days were really hard and I'm still recovering.

There are some works by James Webb which may help parents prepare to talk their children through these things:
-SENG article, Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals
-article: Dabrowski's Theory and Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults
-book, Searching for Meaning

Unfortunately sleep deprivation is a monster. It changes people, and not for the better. Kids who seem to require little sleep may have parents who still require sleep!

Yes, there is a lot of innocent fun that families can enjoy (with throwback to earlier childhood) even as kids grow and become responsible adults.

This thread suddenly reminded me of a decision I made as a relatively young child maybe 10 or so. I decided to not pursue theoretical science or mathematics in favor of experimental sciences and mathematics. My logic at the time was a fear of spending my entire life in pursuit of a solution that either did not exist, or was too difficult to solve for my mind. To this day I still find that if my mind wanders too far into the unknown, I rush back to information that has a high probability of being true, so as to give myself a stronger foundation to stand on. Of course, sometimes I find myself doubting even the fundamental laws of physics, but do not allow myself to stay there for desire to not consider the possibility of the alternative, and to not waste too much of my limited time on this Earth doing what I decided not to do when I was around 10.

It is probably not healthy to make such an uninformed decision at such a young age, but I am not going to spend much time pondering that question.

My daughter would relate to that, its2day. She will often talk about getting freaked out and disturbed when thinking too deeply about the univese.

Honestly, spending so much time studying space with my son is a trigger for my existential depression. I have to guard against it, and I'm sure it's all part of why I'm in language arts. Anyway, he will ask about the world ending but luckily in a theoretical way so far. My daughter, on the other hand, has begun expressing a very "nothing gold can stay" sort of depression, and it is heartbreaking to see this in a seven year old.

Two words.

Quantum entanglement.