Hi everyone,
I've been lurking here for a while, but this is my first post. I have one child, a boy who recently turned three.
First, I don't know if he's gifted or not. It seems to me that he has a lot of traits that also show up in kids who have been identified as gifted, but of course I'm just a layperson - and obviously everyone thinks their kid is an amazing genius. So I try to be cautious about any assumptions I have about him. But I am feeling pretty wrung out and could use some insight from those who've been there.
My son is a sweet, funny boy who I also find pretty hard to cope with at times. I SAH with him. (I used to work at home, but recently quit. I just couldn't make it work any longer. Because of everything below.) He is just a very high-intensity person is so many ways:
*He needs constant input. He wants to talk to you all the time. And it isn't smalltalk, it's his weird theories, things he wants real attention paid to, questions he wants answered, etc.
*He can't really entertain himself. That is, he can - especially with sensory play - but he always invents a lot of interesting/destructive things to do if he isn't supervised. So he isn't really a kid who can be given a bunch of playdough and a work surface and then left alone. (Because of how you will come back to find that all your books now have sheets of playdough inside of them or something like that.)
*He's increasingly interested in being social, playing with friends, etc., but his language use outstrips his social development by quite a lot. So it seems to me that some of the time he is baffled by children his age, and other times he just doesn't know how to play with them. But he loves to play with adults. A lot of his play with adults revolves around talking-while-doing (which I assume is the appeal of grownup play partners?) - narrating the play, role-playing, and so on.
*I take him outside as much as I can, but he is prone to daring/horrifying feats, and he's pretty interested in leaving to go look at this interesting truck he just found. So outside is great, but like everything, requires fairly close supervision. (And we live in a dense urban area, so there are no backyards, and there's lots of traffic, etc.)
*He is simultaneously kind of emotionally restrained (people who don't know him well often describe him as "laid-back") and also explosive and intense within the family sphere.
*He is extremely persistent.
*He is very driven to do the things he's interested in. I don't know how else to describe this. If he wants to do something (take out the window screen, say) nothing my husband and I say or do will deter him.
*He is quite cautious in new spaces, and sensitive to sensory input. (And emotionally sensitive in general.) So my attempts to take him to things like group classes haven't really worked out.
*I think my husband and I often get tricked by our son's use of language. I notice how often we talk to him as though he were a reasonable adult (when really he's a toddler with a thesaurus implant). I think this often leads us to expect more of him, behaviorally, than is realistic for his stage of development. I'm interested in changing this dynamic, but I don't know how.
Like I said, I feel pretty lost. I am semi-introverted, and I need to spend quite a bit of time being quiet and inside my own mind to feel sane. But my son wants/needs constant contact, constant talk about how clouds work, and this is a special rescue truck he made out of cheese, and so on and so forth. He is funny and great and I love him, but I also find him so, so exhausting.
I feel like he is just not very much like the other kids his age we know, and the parents we know don't seem to be dealing with issues quite like this. But then I second-guess myself and think "Maybe every kid is exactly like this and I am just weak" (which is totally possible. I may be grasping at straws!)
Anyway, I am very interested in any reading recommendations, etc. I've been reading Raising Your Spirited Child, but find it only so-so in terms of helpfulness. Are there any books you can recommend specifically for parents of very young children of this type?
Thanks so much!
