Hello to all,
I wanted to ask for some personal stories about raising young and very bright children. My son is 13 months old, but please don't label me as a crazy stage mom before you hear me out!
I was psycho-educational tested both in the 6th and 10th grades after my younger brother was diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. I've always had trouble in school and my testing did reflect there were pretty good reasons! I tested exceptionally high on motor planning, 'reading' cause & effect and discriminating symbols. However my spelling and grammar is abysmal (something I am working very hard at). It really interests me that my son seems to excel in similar areas (obviously it's not possible to judge his spelling or grammar yet!).
Because of personal problems between my parents and a general lack of understanding of LDs I really didn't receive the support, I feel I needed, through school. I don't want my son to have the same experiences.
Thats really what I'm interested in hearing about, I would like to know from other parents, what they have done to encourage their gifted children, from such a young age. He's at home with mom right now and we have no plans to put him into daycare (their is another babe on the was so that doesn't make financial sense right now). However, should I try to get him into a play-group? Is that really going to be beneficial for him?
I want him to go to public school (I HATED private school) with some additional home learning opportunities; but I have no idea if that is what is going to be best for him.
I guess I'm just a little lost, I have experience raising kids being the oldest of 4, but as my parents did a poor job with both our gifts & disabilities (with the exception of my younger brother, who is doing fabulously now!) I just don't know what to do to encourage my son.
BTW my son, who is 13 months old, is already able to:
- Go up and down stairs confidently.
- Bring me a glass if he's thirsty, a bowl if he's hungry, or climb up for a cuddle if he's tired.
- Speak in 2 word sentence "Daddy outside"
- Run like the dickens!
- Follow simple commands "Not in your mouth" (which he could do from 7 months) "Don't touch, hot!" "The cat like it when you're Gentle"
- Sits and "reads" to himself, turning pages and speaking gibberish - this is one of his favourite activities and he's even pretending to read novels now
- Imitates everything he hears, he now has his own sounds for the cats, dog & trucks.
- He can copy anything you do after only seeing it once or twice. Yesterday I was showing him how to hit his play hammer on a piece of wood, after watching me for 20 second he was able to copy it exactly (now that is a simple example, but he knows what the door-handle does, pretends to knit and fold laundry, and has been doing these things for MONTHS).
- And figure this one out: he went to softball to watch his daddy all last year (obviously he couldn't possible remember) and at the first game this year, after watching for 20 minutes he picked up a stick and a rock and started hitting the rock with the stick off the bleachers... I was stunned to say the least!
So from the little information I've been able to glean from a very small pool of reputable resources, he is developing at a faster then average pace.
Thank you for any information you can offer. References to good books or website would be greatly appreciated.
