With all tumult of a new September start, I thought it would be fun to start a new serial thread. This is meant to be along the lines of the quirky thread, but with more focus on the parent's perspective of this wonderful (and often exceedingly frustrating) journey we call parenting gifted children.

To kick things off...

1. The average per-visit cost for DS and I at the nearby museum is now under $0.75. You know you're a frequent visitor when all the security guards greet your child by name and are current on his pet interests. Bonus points if you know their names and their children's names.

2. Our standard greeting at the library is a hug. You know you spend too much time between the stacks when you:
- hear happy greetings of "babe" and "darling" when you arrive
- get a shoulder rub from a (sweet!) librarian after you heave a pile of 30 books up to the checkout station
- don't have to pay all your late fines (again, they're far too generous)
- have a list of customized book recommendations waiting for your DS when you arrive, unprompted

Come to think of it, our librarians are stellar! I should have them over for dinner to thank them!

3. You are a Jedi master at locating YouTube videos on topics of interest in under 10 seconds.

4. The last 4 books you read for pleasure are written by gifted educators.

5. You find yourself speaking to your DC's age peers and look completely socially inept because you have no idea how to relate to normative behaviour.

Let's hear some stories from the veterans.

- When you're known by sight and name by everyone in the school's administration office.

- When you mention in an email to another staff member that you're going to drop by the school one morning, and the assistant principal is standing at the front desk when you get there (it could have been just a coincidence, I suppose...).

- when you say to your 3 year old, "hey, bring me that box." and he retorts, "it's not a box, Mama, it's a BIN." yeeah.

- when your son memorizes 60+ digits of pi from a youtube video song, and runs around singing it at top speed...and you still only know maybe 5 digits?

- when you go to check and see if your kid's asleep, and find him in the bathroom with the light on, sitting on the closed toilet seat, reading a book. and you don't know whether you should be annoyed or impressed.

- As a special treat, your child asks to go to the library.

- After one month at a new school, you are known by the librarian, counselor, and curriculum director (along with the principal and teachers, of course).

• when the sarcasm and Liz Lemon-style eyerolls begin at age 2, rather than 10
• when your 2 y/o has a favourite word, and it is "antidisestablishmentarianism" (because it is a tongue-twister)
• when your 3 y/o goes on a school interview and brings her Hallowe'een costume as her "favourite object" to discuss. it is a Marathon of Hope t-shirt and she spends the entire interview talking about how her hero died of cancer.
• when your 5 y/o blows through 50% of a subject's curriculum in SIX DAYS. (@$#!)

this IS fun! i cannot wait to read more of these...

and i JUST realized something funny. the title of this thread is 'you know you're parenting a gifted child when...' and i just gave three examples from the time when that possibility hadn't even occurred to me yet.

-When a grammatical slip by you is instantly corrected by your 3 year old.

- When you bribe your 5 year old with books to NOT get up at 5 AM so he has have time to work on his 6500 word dinosaur facts book on the computer before school.

Good! I think we collectively needed this. (That's a great hero to have, BTW.)

Here's another for good measure...

- Magic tricks are passe. Your almost 2-year-old hacks the ever-popular severed thumb magic trick his grandfather showed him a minute ago and proceeds to try to trick Grandma.

or when you find yourself speaking to your DC's age peers the way you normally talk to your child and they give you the deer in the headlight look because they have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say! lol

YES! Exactly!

..you ask your 5yo to leave the book he's been reading in the car on kindergarten back-to-school night. (5 Children and It, by E. Nesbit.) "But why, mama? I was at a good part." "Just...can you leave it here so we don't lose it?"