Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion They like to keep you on your toes, huh...

OH I love using negative numbers. I just have him work a few problems so that I know he knows the standard algorithm, and them let him use his method assuming it's sound and will always give the correct answer.

Spent all of today (until now) unplugged which is very unusual for me. But nice. Just catching up on this thread... and a lot of good points!

Interestingly, DS today, unprompted says "Dad, remember when we didn't do math for a long, long time? Well, Biology came into my brain, and Math went away. But now, Math is coming home."

That didn't stop some 30-off minutes of "Biology" questions later in the day, but he is showing interest in math again.

JB

Interesting that you had a similar experience. We're still trying to figure out our little guy. When we first started to notice that he might be gifted, he seemed to learn things at an unbelievable rate (age 4 3/4 to 5 1/4). He'd go really deep on a given subject... what appeared to be very "vertical" interests. He still does that to a degree but now we do notice that he goes a lot more broad on his interests. More "horizontal" learning if you will.

It's interesting to think that this might be age related. He's got the mechanics of reading and math down, but there is so much more to learn about life sciences, geography, or history that he's been digging into those topics lately. Didn't think about that.

JB

My DS5 is currently on a self announced brain vacation this summer. He has done minimal reading and no formal math. On our drive home this morning from camping he asked me to explain what a sales/food tax was and how to calculate the sales/food tax on various amounts of money...this was something we had discussed last winter in great depth--at his request. Although he told me that he couldn't remember how to do it, it actually took much less time and explanation for him to exclaim, "Oh, I get it now".

I am not worried that anything he learned and forgot from this past year will not be quickly relearned when his interest peaks again.

BTW, I have always had this weird tendency to recognize the flags of various nations, and I had wondered why. It's not a perfect skill, but I get more right than I should given that I had no memory of ever studying flags. Why would I, right?

One day, when I was an adult with kids of my own, I ID'd some random flag on TV when I was with my mom and I said something like, "It's so weird. Why do I know that?"

She replied, "Probably because when you were a young child--4? 5? 6?--you memorized all the flags of the world for fun. You were obsessed with it for a while there."

Aha! Until she told me that, I had no conscious memory of the flag obsession. Once she told me, I could vaguely remember the plastic placemat I had that had all the flags on it. Oh yeah...

The moral of the story: those odd obsessions do stick with you in some form or another, even into adulthood!

Long term/short term memory is a fascinating subject to study, imo. ...more later, I've got to get back to work.

Hey Kriston,

I have this weird and totally useless ability to listen to someone talking and determine what state/country they are from. Usually down to the state/province/region.


Some people are "accentless" like news reporters, but I can do this quite often.

Who knows what I was doing at 4/5...

Love that! I had great fun trying to ID the accents when I lived in England for a semester. At first my British friends all sounded alike, but by the time I left, I knew the difference between a Manchester accent and a Birmingham one, and so on, even when they'd been "poshed up" for Oxbridge consumption. It was pretty cool. But--use it or lose it!--it's gone now.

Are you a very aural person, 'Neato? I'm wondering about your skill and how it connects to the rest of you. It's a very interesting talent to have!

I don't know, based on my school history it's hard to believe I am!