I have been a lurker for several months and have posted a topic just once when I was feeling really uncertain how to handle a situation with my son. I've learned so much from reading through others' discussions, and I appreciate greatly the quality of the dialog that takes place here, and I have SO many more questions and thoughts I'd like to post, if you all have the patience! So I thought it might be helpful to start with an intro explaining how I ended up here.
My son is a bit over 4. When he was a baby we didn't notice any crazy-advanced milestones, like so many of the kids on here seem to have. He did smile and belly-laugh early (3 weeks and 8 weeks, respectively), but mostly he was pretty average with milestones. He seemed like a bright toddler who picked things up easily - could unlock and navigate the Ipad at 15 months, recognized most letters and numerals sometime around 2, colors and shapes a bit earlier...We were busy with his big sister (2 years older) and didn't teach him explicitly, but he probably picked up on what we were doing with her. I just thought, great, he's a bright baby and is benefitting from having a slightly older sibling.
When he was 2.5 he suddenly began to really surprise us. He developed the first of a series of intense interests, which he will pursue with great fervor. At that age, it was musical instruments/orchestras. He was especially fond of trombones. There was a very short video of an animated (but very realistic) brass band that he wanted to watch over and over. One night, while I was rocking him to sleep, he sleepily commented, "In the brass band, there are 4 trumpeters. And 2 tubas. And 3 French horns and 3 trombones. And 2 drums, and 1 conductor." I ran and checked after he went to sleep, and he was correct. The surprising part is that not all the instruments are shown in the same shot. So he was not only counting with one-to-one correspondence (which we hadn't realized he could do), but also had to do some addition to come up with the correct totals. That was when I started to think something was up with him. He also memorized every detail of any orchestral instrument you could think of, could recognize the mouthpiece of a trombone vs. a French horn at a glance, knew where each instrumental section would sit on the stage, etc. He would make random remarks at the dinner table, such as, "Trumpets have 3 piston valves, but piccolo trumpets have 4."
Since then he's continued to accelerate. He next went through a solar system stage, lasting about 8 months. At 3.5, he could tell you pretty much anything about the planets, dwarf planets, their moons, etc., and could read any related word by sight. He also surprised us one night by sitting down and drawing a to-scale diagram of the planets, in correct order from the sun, with notable features of each planet (as appropriate) such as rings/color, including all major moons, the Kuiper belt, dwarf planets, etc (verbally) labeled. He had shown very little interest in drawing prior to this and I couldn't believe he actually got the relative sizes so close to correct.
The next phase has been an online game (not geared to kids) called Letterpress. That's described in my other post, but in short, you make words out of a grid of 25 randomly presented letters. He has gotten very good over the past 7 months and can now take on adult players quite competently. He is just insanely fast at spotting words: In 10 seconds or less, he'll be able to spot and spell an 7-10 letter word on a brand new board. Neither of his parents can do this. He has also learned to read and write by playing, now approximately at a 2nd-3rd grade level for reading, but I'd guess higher for spelling. (Funny story: One of his teachers was giving him a few words to practice on the white board last week, and after he wrote out a few like "mineral" and "watermelon" correctly, she said "I'm flabbergasted!" Then (jokingly), "Hey, you can't spell "flabbergasted," can you?" And he did, correctly.)
Other notable things include learning to tell time on an analog clock around his 3rd birthday, read a calendar easily by 3.5, read and use maps and globes also by 3.5, a jigsaw puzzle phase (lost interest at around 60 piece puzzles when he was 3), and some intuitive early math abilities (such as calculating how many points each team has in hockey and how many points the other would need to catch up). Also understands MUCH more of baseball than I do, and will sit still and pay attention to an entire game. Also doing/understanding his kindergarten sister's math assignments, just for fun, when he was not yet 3.5.
Anyway, sorry this is so long - there are so many stories I'm not comfortable sharing with friends, and it feels good just to actually get to tell them! I've got to think this kid is out of the norm, but on the other hand, he wasn't a baby who started to talk at 6 months, read at 18 months, etc. I did try the online Ruf estimates a few months ago (before the reading fluency kicked in), and got an estimated Level 2-3 gifted answer. That would be awesome - maybe "optimal." But when he started clobbering me at Letterpress just after his 4th birthday, I started to think he might be more of an outlier than that. This scares me. What do you think?? Should I be concerned about meeting his educational needs (a move to a different state w/o a gifted mandate is in the offing, not sure whether to consider this factor), or just pleased he's a bright kid? I have so many more specific questions to share (including about his older sister - maybe 2E, or have I just been reading too much?), if it seems like this is the right place!
