Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Making up own games

Was curious if this is a common trait among gifted children...my DS5 has had a knack for coming up with long and detailed games. The more convoluted the directions/steps - the happier he seems. He made up 2 new games this week and it just fascinates me in how in the world he comes up with his ideas. Sometimes they are so detailed that I have a hard time keeping up.

He made up a game where he used his special container of dice (he has a set of various sided dice that go up to large numbers - I think they were like D&D game dice)and a large box of popsicle sticks - He placed some sticks in a pile and he would roll the smallest denomination dice and the number it landed on, he counted out that many sticks - then it was my turn with that dice....then we would take the next sized dice (this one went up to 20), he placed 20 more sticks into the pile and we would do it again and would go through all 6 die that he has with us adding that many more sticks according to the number on the dice and rolling- the one with the largest number of sticks after the last dice roll wins....

then at the public pool today- he was having fun tracking his wet footprints on the sidewalk and was making shapes with the wet prints - he would get in the pool, ask me what shape I wanted "to order" (like he was in a drive thru window) and would get out and make that shape and would then ask for a certain amount of money to pretend that he got paid for making it - then it morphed into him asking me for the number of sides I wanted on my shape - so I would give him a number, he would tell me the name of the shape (decagon for 10, nonagon for 9...)and gleefully get out and leave a trail of wet prints and make a 9 sided shape and ask for $9.00...then he told me to make it harder by "doing plus and minus" so I would tell him can you make me a shape that is 10-7 and he would happily yell out - triangle, that will be $3.00. He was having a blast and we played this silly game for like an hour with him begging to make it harder - the life guards were probably trying to figure out what in the world my son was doing :-)

Anyone else have a child who loves to make up games?

I'd say for my two, yes the game invention never ends. I don't know about a gifted trait, but I've observed that their friends that are gifted jump right in without missing a beat. DD8 is very astute about who can "roll"(sorry Dottie's DS, I just can't help myself!) with these games and who can't and proceeds accordingly. DD5 hasn't been as able to pick up on the social cues yet and tries to engage everyone in these games, so it's really noticable when a child just stands there with a blank look on their face.
DD5 has always been more extreme in her creativity and drive to create these games than DD8. Not sure if it's temperment or what. But often if DD5 has to choose between playing with a child who doesn't participate in her elaborate game inventing processes, she chooses to simply play by herself as if the child isn't even there. This I hope she outgrows a little.
And it's not just that they play imaginative games, most little girls play teacher/pupil at some point. It's the extreme way they develop the roles and the extent to which they carry them out. I've snuck up on them and eavesdropped when DD8 is the teacher. She scares me! I wouldn't want to be a student in her classroom!

YES, YES, YES!!! And the more complex the better. I can hardly ever follow/remember all the instructions but he's usually very patient with me and walks me through it.

He's like Neato's duaghter, though, and can't pick up on when other kids can't follow the game or when it would be too complicated for them. For his 6th birthday, he wanted to have a chess party. I told him the other kids (ages 4 - 6) probably wouldn't want to play chess or even know how. He said he would teach them. Then, he set about creating a completely new version of chess to teach them after he had taught them the regular chess. I had to talk him out of it and he settled for a chess birthday cake and regular games for the party and then a chess afternoon later.

Mine has never been much into the imagination games, like school or stuffed animals or anything. His other games get qutie complex and it's as if his mind never stops once it gets started. He is so intense with it. And, his are much more manipulative - like the sticks and dice - as well. Or, very detailed and involved. Sometimes I hate to make him stop whatever he is doing and eat or leave or whatever I need him to do because watching him is so fascinating!

DS8 hasn't been too terribly big on made up games up to now, but just this spring he came up with a doozy... It started out kind of like all the battle games (Pokemon or Bakugan or whatever) as far as I can tell having never played myself (LOL) but first off, they never seem to play it as a card game, but rather as acting out parts and just yelling the "attacks" at each other (followed by long complicated negotiations of what effect it had and whether it was actually capable of that and how many points it spent/earned/whatever...) That one he can play with anyone apparently.

Then it morphed into a making-up-your-own-creature game with a slightly narrower audience, where not only could you battle with whatever creatures were already in the game in question but you could make up your own and their attacks and defenses... followed by long complicated negotiations of whether it was a fair arrangement, and getting into the idea of a "trump" and whether a too-powerful creature was unfair and/or no fun. And of course lots of random giggling over the naming of said creatures, and how they "evolve" into others.

THEN it morphed into something completely different and now there are only two kids who will tolerate playing it with him and one isn't really a fan... thankfully he recognizes that and can adapt... But this time instead of making up characters, it's all about making up the attacks, which have to be delivered in song. So DS is on a quest to collect "appropriate" songs that can be worked into battles. The friend he plays with has a huge repertoire from the "Queen" and "TV theme song" genres, which all make excellent attacks. DS's taste runs more to Weird Al and Tom Lehrer, which make for, well... hysterical eavesdropping. Lehrer's "Masochism Tango" makes your opponent attack himself (thank goodness for the other kid's parents having a sense of humor! LOL) His "Elements" song combines with one of his made-up Pokemons whose major power is "control over all the elements" to build a massive weapon of some kind. Chumba Wumba's "I Get Knocked Down" is a defensive move.

Somewhere in there he had a side-thing of the same kind of game but where your attacks had to be delivered in rhyming couplets (after Macbeth...) but that didn't last long... can't imagine why... LOL

Very cool, Erica! Doesn't it just make you wonder what they will be when they grow up? Inventor, diplomat, leader of the free world?

LOL!! Somehow I see him more in the Tom Lehrer line himself... The mathematician who finds fame by writing rude songs