Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Our backstory, with a side of possible denial.

Hello,

I have been reading posts here for about a year, and thought it time to introduce my daughter and myself, so that I may participate more fully in the future without getting myself bogged down each time in backstory. This has stopped me from commenting before (rueful smile). It is also a relief to talk at length about her anywhere, so thank you for that. I have already benefited enormously from reading the experiences of others, particularly when it comes to cleaving the cognitive dissonance of gifted denial (which I struggle with, hence this post, hence the familiar twinge I feel even mentioning it).

From birth, DD appeared to be what the Internet told us was an ordinary "High Needs" baby. She required constant holding, was a poor sleeper, was easily overstimulated, had sensory issues with certain qualities of sound, etc. She was usually early on her fine motor and cognitive milestones, but average to slow on her gross motor (with the exception of holding her head up at birth). She called me "Mama" with intense eye contact at around eight months, which I dismissed as unlikely for some reason, and said "Mama baba" (bottle) at twelve months, but aside from that spoke little to none except for the usual and normal babbling and gesturing, with a limited discernible spoken vocabulary, until she was two. We brought it up with the pediatrician, suspecting a delay, but she was unconcerned, as our daughter clearly understood us well enough.

Fast forward to her second birthday, I was sitting home alone with her in my lap, drawing pictures for her, trying to teach her how to hold the stylus correctly, when she pointed to a scribble I'd made and said, "Two!". Well, there was a two of sorts in there, so on a whim I drew a one and she said, "One!" She then proceeded to reveal fluency in number and letter recognition (numbers up to ten and capital letters, in any order). I suspect she taught herself from a talking play-table I'd given her four months before and which she'd spent a lot of time on, but she's always had toy iPads and smartphones etc, so I have no way of knowing when she learned this stuff because she just didn't talk. I had always limited her TV exposure to virtually none, she has no in-house siblings and she'd never been babysat by anyone but myself or her father, and while it's true I'd read to her from infancy, we'd never done anything with numbers, or even remotely like formal "educating", as it had never occurred to me.

Within weeks, her language exploded. Strangers started commenting on her speech thinking she was 4-5. She would scream out letters she saw on signage and trucks as we drove, and demanded we "play letters" in the car, so I quizzed her on the sounds they made, not knowing what else to do. She learned those after hearing them once. She figured out the concept of right and left on her own, could draw with intense focus for hours (four hours at twenty-four months, for example). She started writing letters and numbers, but would quit in frustration very quickly because she couldn't hold the crayon well. So I got Starfall for her and the iPad became hers. She started sight-reading three-letter words, so I showed her how to sound them out, (trying to feed the beast), but she showed frustration there as well, so I dropped it. She could enumerate higher and higher, up to twenty, consistently. She knew all the basic colors and shapes. She would say startling things like, "The house is a rectangle!" (it is) or "My glass is a cylinder!" or "My pea is a sphere!" I read books to her every night before bed, sometimes 10 or more at her demand. One night she sounded out "cat" successfully and acted startled, like the word leapt out at her, then refused to have anything more to do with it. This was all before 2.5 years.

Things then seemed to slow, or else we've just adapted, or it's less obvious. She continues to make startling connections between things, and she has a remarkable memory, to the point that she's a trustworthy source of information (we've fact-checked her). She has no interest in learning to read, but loves to be read to, and likes to identify the first sound in a word, or to name lists of words that all start with the same sound, spontaneously and while she's eating lunch, for example. She is unfortunately intensely fascinated with the tv now, which is hard because she's so sensitive to any hint of tension (and what plot has none?!) that even preschool cartoons sometimes cause her to recoil and cover her ears or hide. She's starting to tell time using the clock on the wall (very roughly, but on her own), and she plays around with basic single-digit addition and subtraction.

She's finally comfortable enough to be left with a group of age peers for brief periods, though she gravitates toward the teacher. This is a big relief for me, because up until now she would have nothing to do with other little kids, though I tried play groups and the park. She was scared of them coming into her space, and the grabbing and screaming. She never went through that stage herself, for some reason. She would gravitate toward kids years older than her, who of course ignored her.

In spite of the above, there are seemingly long periods of calm where I almost forget and consider ordinary preschool arrangements, for example, until I see their curriculum.

What prompted my post is a nightmare she had recently of she and I trapped in a fire "getting burned". She said it "got us", and was clearly deeply troubled. I don't know where she got the concept of fire even being dangerous, or of (evidently) death. There was a lot of detail too, "many many" cars and trucks on fire, a gravel road on fire. Her Daddy who "wouldn't help us because he was at his work". I'm not sure how she can even conceive of some of this stuff, and I'm worried about the existential depression I've read about on here. She said the fire "burned everything". I hate the thought of her being so profoundly afraid so young.

This is just a smidgen of it all, but I wanted to finally jump in more fully. I feel like Captain Obvious, but does it seem likely we belong here? I've read a lot that seems to indicate yes, but I need to ask the question. Thanks for reading.