One thing that I've noticed is that below a certain LOG, it's easier to know as a parent just what your child's "ceiling" is at any given time.
It's beyond that level (HG+, usually) that they seem to make quantum jumps and just acquire understanding (often with complete mastery) from seemingly out of nowhere. For example, we thought that DD "knew how to read" after we'd taught her decoding skills over a period of a few weeks when she was four. Three months later, she seemed to really be enjoying Clifford easy-readers and the Berenstain Bears, Golden books, etc. Fast-forward six months, though, and she was reading Magic Tree House books at a rate of several a day. Then about that time, our copy of Harry Potter 1 disappeared off the shelf-- she was excited about Christmas, couldn't sleep and needed fresh reading material, she later explained. She was definitely really reading it, and finished the entire book in less than a week. It wasn't even another month before she started reading the articles in Smithsonian and National Geographic.
We had no way of 'tracking' what her reading level was during that period of time-- only that at four, she was "not quite" reading, and at five, she had an adult level of reading comprehension.
I've heard of children who have done this with mathematics, too-- gone from simple counting to geometry or algebra within a very short period of time without any apparent instruction.
It's almost like a step/heaviside function, or a Bessel second degree function; there's a non-linear jump from one state to the other, rather than a steady increase in ability with time.
Those kinds of 'spooky' jumps only seem to happen with some LOG, and they are apparently so characteristic of EG/PG children that they are virtually diagnostic in and of themselves.
The reason I mention it at all, though, is that schools REALLY struggle to accommodate these kids, particularly those that don't 'show off' the skills to outsiders, but prefer to apply them with little fanfare. With this sort of child, it may be a constant struggle to maintain a merely tolerable educational fit.
My DD is one of that kind, and the only way you know when she's made one of these jumps is that she'll start treating the previously-appropriate-but-now-laughably-trivial tasks with all of the fervor one normally reserves for road kill. "Appropriate" materials are a moving target. One learns in a hurry that planning even a few months ahead is at best 'tentative.'
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 02/28/11 11:41 AM.
