This brings back memories of my son at 2.5, especially the bathtub. During the day it seemed like he soaked up all kinds of knowledge and while he was soaking in the bathtub, he played with what he had learned. He had been interested in letters since he was about 12 months old and by 2.5 he was making words out of those letters. He liked it when I spelled out words for him and he would point at the correct object every time I spelled out a word like soap, towel, bathtub, shampoo, ceiling, floor. He loved this game. When other kids found out that he coud do this, he got a lot of attention from them and he always liked entertaining people or making them laugh. By age 5, older kids were spelling out science words trying to find a word he couldn't identify not realizing that he read the science encyclopedia for fun.
He didn't play much with regular toys and wouldn't even try to do jigsaw puzzles, except on a computer game, and preferred playing and interacting with me, but part of the reason may be been his mild motor disability and sensory issues that were not diagnosed until he was nine. He had a long attention span for things he was interested in which was almost everything except sports--the opposite of most of the kids here. He was never impulsive. He would sit and think about things when other kids were playing and come up with all kinds of questions. My sister-in-law told me before he started Kindergarten that he needed to learn to stifle his curiousity so he would fit in. The Kindergarten teacher seemed to agree. We have homeschooled since he finished Kindergarten, which was hard for me at first because I enjoyed volunteering at the school and talking to the teachers and I felt so alone. I had to give it up for my son, but he is worth it.
We live in a small town and people do think a small child talking like an adult is kind of weird. Once, when I took him to get a haircut, I overheard a girl telling her friend that he was "scary" smart. Sometimes when my son talked to me at restaurants, it would get quiet at the tables around us and people would listen to him. Once, when he noticed that people had stopped talking and were watching him, he looked around and said loud enough that they were sure to hear him something like "Did someone call for prayer and I missed it?" Another time, a girl about two years older than him, in his acting class, overheard him talking to his friend about a computer game and he heard her say, "there he goes talking in another "geeky" language I don't understand. A few days later, she asked him a question and he answered the way he normally talks and then said "oh, sorry, that was probably too geeky for you to understand, and then repeated the gist of what he said in a slow, almost southern drawl using much simpler words to make his point. He knows that some people think he is weird because he is smart but he has fun with it. He senses that I feel uncomfortable at times when people watch us, but then he asks me "why do you care so much about what these people think?" or "if they think we are geeks, let's act really geeky and he'll start talking about spelling bees or physics using words that they have probably never heard even though they are much older than he is. He just has fun with it.
I think his sense of humor and joking about his differences is one reason he has so many friends. All of his friends are gifted, and most of them are older, but the doctor said this is okay because his mental age is higher that his chronological age.
So he has close friends, but I don't. I don't have anything in common with the people whose kids are in sports. I can't stand football and people talk about football a lot where I live, even in my own family. The only people I occasionally talk to are the parents of my son's friends. Two of them are teachers and they understand what it is like raising a gifted child, but my son is twice exceptional and I haven't met even one person with a twice exceptional child like mine. I think the isolation is one of the hardest things I have had to deal with, but like I said before, my son is worth it.
My son demonstrated how he manages to carry on a conversation with his cousins who are very, very into sports with no interest in academics. It went something like this: Cousin: I scored the most points today out of all the kids on the team. DS: Really? That's nice. I know you are really good at that. DS internal thoughts: "I wonder what will be on Mythbusters next. Hope it's not a rerun." Cousin: Yes, they threw the ball to me and I ran with it so fast nobody could catch me. DS: Oh, I know you can run a lot faster than I can. DS internal thoughts: I think I'll create a new character on my Sims 2 game, what should I name him?"
He knows that these cousins have no interest in what he is doing outside their common interest in video games, so he doesn't talk about his interests. It is like he can go into an act and he can fit in socially this way, but he said it is tiring and he feels much more comfortable with the gifted kids he has something in common with.
I found a lot of support on online gifted message boards like this one. I feel like some of the people here really understand.
