Hello all, I'm new here. My DS is 3.5 and I think he's likely to be gifted though we haven't done any formal testing. His most unusual gift is his memory and obsession with cars, which combined into an ability to identify the make and model of the vast majority of cars in parking lots and our neighborhood shortly after he turned 2 (based on the headlights and taillights as far as we can tell). He remembers the cars that all our relatives and friends drive. He's still obsessed with cars and we read library books about cars, tell bedtime stories about cars, use hot wheel cars while we paint and play play dough and of course play LOTS of games that involve cars. The other day he even gave me a decent explanation of how batteries and spark plugs in an engine work to cause combustion and make cylinders move in an engine. In terms of strict academics, he also learned to identify his shapes and colors pretty early and knows his letters and letter sounds and is sorta trying to sound out words, and can count pretty well and understand a few simple math concepts also. His verbal skills have always been ahead of the curve according to checklists and he remembers things from a very long time ago with good detail. He has a mild secondary interest in rocks and planets.
He currently attends preschool 2 days a week and seems to be enjoying it and having a good time. His teacher picked up on the car thing on day 1 (hard to miss) and has lately been telling me how smart he is and that he has an engineer's mind. I think school has been great for him and he's been expanding the type of imaginary games he wants to play in the past few weeks which is wonderful and a welcome change for me (Daddy loves cars too and has fed the current obsession but I'm over playing parking lot and junkyard every day). He also mostly says nice things about his friends at school.
My social concerns are actually more when he's not in school. I've noticed that at playdates and social outings when there is a group of children, he seems to drift to the outside of the group and doesn't really want to join in or stay with the other kids. He doesn't have conflict with anyone, he just doesn't really seem to need or want to stay plugged in with the group. In one on one playdates he seems to enjoy the other kid's company a lot more.
I guess my biggest question is whether anyone else had a kid who was similar and whether the lack of socializing in a group is a sign of something I should be concerned about or maybe just a sign that he's a bit of an introvert and independent thinker. I'm also wondering if anyone else's children sustained an obsession for a long long time and how that's played out in the future (we're at about 1.5 years of sustained interest in the cars).
