Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "Social necessities" beneficial or detrimental?

Learning social skills as a toddler is extremely important for all children. It is possibly even more important for a highly gifted child who may prefer the company of adults, and therefore not get as much exposure to other children, because children do need to learn to "fit in" with their age peers as well.

I have to agree with the other posters who suggested a "play based" environment. It sounds as if your son is learning a lot at home right now, so he doesn't need an academic curriculum at this point. He is going to continue learning- he doesn't need "homework" at this age unless he wants to do it. We had workbooks available for my twins at that age, but I let them choose whether or not to do them. One of them always liked to play "school" and would do them, the other didn't really do them at all.

They liked riding toys, play-dough, puzzles, blocks, books, duplo legos and playing outside at 2. Playing with bubbles and sidewalk chalk was their absolute favorite thing to do. One academic thing they absolutely loved at that age was looking at flash cards (not being drilled). We had flash cards with numbers, animals, letters, words, colors, shapes, etc. They really enjoyed looking at them and would ask if they didn't know what was on it. Again, it was entirely self directed by them, except for those occasions where I would take the cards with me for them to look at in a waiting room or on a plane, but I only took them with me because the twins enjoyed looking at them and the cards were very portable. .

At age 2, I also took my twins to music classes, gymnastic/playgroup classes, joined a playgroup with children their age, went to story time at the library, and also went to children's activities at the zoo and museums. They also went to a play based mother's day out program/preschool. At three, they took soccer lessons, swimming lessons, gymnastics and still went to playgroup and preschool.

There is plenty of time for your son to learn academics, but there are certain social skills that are easiest to learn as a toddler.