Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Counting the Number of Letters

Regarding spelling, does your child see a word in terms of how many letters it contains in order to help them to account for each?

Our son spells well two years ahead of his grade level, and I have noticed he will sometimes say something like, "Okay, that's an eleven letter word..."; and then spell it out correctly.

I asked him if he sees words in terms of how many letters it contains and he said that if it's a hard word, he does.

DS is two years ahead of his grade in math and I was wondering if this is typical of "mathy" kids to help them in subjects other than math.

I do for shorter words, but not for something as long as eleven letters.

I did myself. But I was a English learner, not a native speaker.

Yes, I think of words that way, and also in terms of patterns of vowels and consonants.

I don't count numbers - but, I used to group letters inside a word into groups of 3 and memorize the spelling - I am very "mathy" and imagine of a lot of data as number patterns, graphs etc in order to visualize or remember them better.

(Now) DS5 started talking about how many letters words have before he even started writing at 3. I think, perhaps, it’s the lens through which some “mathy” kids process the world.

I used to do this as I fell asleep at night -- count the letters in words that came to mind. Not to help with spelling, but just, I think, from an interest in words standpoint.

Had forgotten all about that... I would count them on my fingers. This was probably around ages 8-12.

Would not say I am a "mathy" person, but I am a pattern recognition person.

That's the first thought that came to my mind, that he is demonstrating an interest in words.

I wonder whether he started doing this as a private challenge to himself out of boredom/lack of challenge in whatever it was that he was given. And that now he has developed a degree of automaticity with this where it is almost a reflex.