Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school meta-cognition?

Hi there- My 4 year old made an interesting observation yesterday- He was sitting quietly (odd for my exuberant extroverted spirited child), and said, "Mom- I can HEAR my thoughts in my head".
So, it seems he's now aware of that internal voice- that he is hearing the words when he's thinking.
Is that unusual? What age does metacognition start?

I don't know what age is typical for that, but it's pretty cool that he figured it out!

I thought it was pretty cool too!

I'd be interested to know too! DS (5) has been asking questions about this today, but I never really thought about it as metacognition!

Louise Porter talks about gifted kids having advanced meta cognition in her book.

Oh cool, I haven't got through that book yet, I'll have to now!

When my sister visited us July 4th weekend, my 5.5 year old son (who is eg/pg) told her that he heard voices in his head and asked if she did too. My sister, who has Asperger's, kind of panicked because she thought of one of our aunts, who has schizophrenia and exceptionally gifted (IQ 165). I told my sister not to worry about it; at the time I wondered if my son had advanced metacognition but I didn't want to go into a discussion with my sister about it.

Of course, if you start talking about this kind of stuff with family, neighbors, or people at your child's school, they may start looking at you funny and question it and wonder whether your child is a future candidate for mental illness. It's a bit awkward to talk about.

So now I say thank you very much for bringing this up. Our children have a gift - advanced metacognition.

I thought this was a "normal" 4 year old thing?

ETA: I hope that didn't come out wrong. Im sorry. My kids are all still young, so I am still figuring all of this out v

I don't know at what age thinking about thinking begins, so that's why I posted. It was just such a neat comment, and I really enjoy seeing introspection going on with my active little guy!

Fwiw, I'm not hearing these kind of comments from his same age peers/parents. So, I just don't know what the norm is!

I sort of intuitively introduced the concept of a 'little voice' that can come from the heart or the head to my son when he was very little (age 3?)to try and explain other people's behavior.

We talked about how the 'heart's voice' is the one to believe, and the 'head voice' could be tricky or right, but that one had to be skeptical. I don't have any guess about it DS really understood what I was saying, or if he just was playing along. I'd narrate how my 'head voice' was telling me to 'hurry hurry' and 'drive fast' if we were trying to get somewhere and we were late, but that my 'heart voice' reminded me to go 'steadily but safely' and not speed.

I had no idea at the time what giftedness was, but just wanted to treat DS 'how I would have liked to be treated.'

By age 5, DS was able to give me 'percentages' of how much any particular statement was about what his 'heart voice' was telling him and how much was due to various ego needs, such as wanting to be liked, wanting to look impressive,curiosity.

That was very helpful to be able to rely on his self-awareness while trying to decide 'yes' or 'no' to something.

((shrugs))
Grinity