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Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 3
Junior Member
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OP
Junior Member
Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 3 |
Hi Everyone,
I have a 15 month old daughter, who is my first child. I know, try to hear me out before rolling your eyes at another person who thinks their baby is exceptional!
I will start with my main goal and then explain where she is at, and hopefully you can tell me how I can achieve balance with her. I am hoping to avoid any hothousing while making sure that she feels stimulated and challenged by her environment based on her interests. At this point I am just using my intuition as reaching out to many sources including my pediatrician has proved not very helpful.
At her 9 month appointment was the first time I thought something might be going on. If you asked her, she could tell you the sounds a dog, sheep, cow, and snake say. The nurses made comments about this, and I just thought it was cute. Fast forward to her first birthday, and I was making one of those chalkboard signs with a spot for their words. We along with her childcare provider started writing her words, and was surprised that she had over 100 words before she turned 1. This seemed cool to me, but I was encouraged by our child care provider to start looking into what is average.
As recommended on other posts I have read Dr. Ruf's levels of giftedness and have been astonished at what she can now do as compared to those who have tested gifted in the book.
What has me wondering what to do next is her love of letters and the alphabet. We put those foam letters in her bath and noticed that she knew quite a few of them at 14 months. I showed her all of them, out of order and at 14 months she could tell correctly say the name of every letter in the alphabet, as well as 5 numbers and 3 shapes.
She is now 15 months and can correctly identify all lower case and upper case letters of the alphabet, count to 10 (although sometimes she skips 5), identify the shape star, square, triangle, diamond, rectangle, moon. What is really interesting is that she looks for letters and shapes all over her environment. Signs in the airport, things printed on the wall at a restaurant, numbers on the curb, etc.
As a first time mom, it has been very strange to engage with other moms of kids the same age. Sometimes people ask me what classes/flashcards I have her doing, sometimes people ask why I don't just let her be a kid. It's really frustrating! I am a school counselor, so I definitely work with kids - but high school kids so my knowledge of early childhood education is mostly just from research and instinct. We do let her watch some videos with ABC's and numbers on them from youtube, but they are only a few minutes long. I truly think she just is very interested in letters and numbers - and sees it as a treat to go into her bath so she can visit her letters.
Here are the basics: Very empathetic - would cry when another baby cried from birth to today. Rolled over at 4 months Crawled at 5 months First word around 6 months - hard to tell because of babble. At 9 months could say 4 animal sounds... Walked at 9 months about 75 words at 11 months Over 300 words at 14 months Currently at 15 months - can identify all lower case and uppercase letters of the alphabet Knows about 6 shapes Knows about 4 colors (this is the one she is working on the most) Can count to 10 and identify numbers out of order up to 10. Flips around numbers and letters to make other things (9 to 6) etc. Says 3-4 word sentences such as "all done milk" and "oh no dropped it", "off sleep sack please" that kind of thing.
My question is this: should I be exposing her to the sounds that letters make and taking her to the next level of literacy since she already knows all the letters? Is that too much for someone her age, or am I just meeting her where she is at because of her interests? I'm not interested in being a tiger mom or hothousing her, but I want to find the balance of exposing her to the things she's interested in and also just letting her be and explore her world.
If it matters, she will be starting daycare next month at 3 days a week, and will be home 2 days a week. I do think she will get some exposure to early learning there, as well as learning how to be in a group, share, control your body etc. which I think are valuable.
On the weekends and days she is home we normally read, do puzzles, go to outings such as the library, swim lessons, playdates, we have a zoo membership which also has an aquarium, go to the park, etc. She gets a lot of child-centered interaction, I just want to be sure i'm not pushing her too hard.
My mom taught me to read early, and is pushing me to start teaching her - so that's part of where my question comes from.
Thanks so much for listening - this is a lonely business!
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Joined: Oct 2015
Posts: 228
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Joined: Oct 2015
Posts: 228 |
Welcome to the group!
You DD sounds gifted to me :-).
My DS7 was very interested in the alphabets about the same age as your DD did. All he was interested was alphabets. He learned all his alphabets from the kids shows and iPad apps teaching alphabets. He also learned phonics on his own. He even started drawing the alphabet in characters (like in the kids' videos) and bubble letters when he turned 3. What we did was to follow his interests. If he liked an app or toy that was related to alphabet or phonic, we let him have it. He was interested in geography mostly US and the World maps when he was 5. We provided resources for him to learn on those. We never pushed him to learn these. He just picked it up himself.
So I say just follow your DD's lead. I think the activities you are doing with her are great. You are already exposing her to different things. She'll ask for more if she's interested in something. You don't even need to ask :-)
It is definitely a challenge raising a gifted kid, and you've come to the perfect group for advice and suggestion.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,259 Likes: 8
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,259 Likes: 8 |
Welcome! I just want to be sure i'm not pushing her too hard. I would say no amount of pushing is ok. Pushing is a desire of others for the child to learn something. Follow the child's lead... s/he will let you know what s/he is curious about and interested in learning and doing. My mom taught me to read early, and is pushing me to start teaching her - so that's part of where my question comes from. Reading to your child, and pointing to the words as you go sounds great. If the child wants to, s/he can participate without prompting by holding the book, pointing to words or pictures, turning pages, asking questions, and/or saying words. Even little kids can be great at initiating, and this helps them develop a sense of internal locus of control, an important building block toward acknowledging responsibility for their choices and actions.
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Joined: Aug 2015
Posts: 82
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Joined: Aug 2015
Posts: 82 |
Sounds like you have a lovely little girl. Indigo's advice is also spot-on.
Formal teaching at this age isn't appropriate, but a love of books, words, and numbers is easy to foster.
Pointing to the words while reading is great advice, and that was sufficient for my youngest to pick up words as a two-year-old. Rhyming books are lovely for that age (Monkey Puzzle with "No, No, No!" was hugely popular here), as are conversation-type books (like Elephant and Piggie) that often use interesting effects to highlight words.
Clearly, what you're doing is working for your child, so you can ignore any naysayers (this skill will come in handy in the years to come).
Daycare indeed has a different focus, but I find play-based learning at preschool brilliant for my boys. Academics are a strength for these kids, so getting to work on other areas (fine motor for my oldest and social skills with agemates for the youngest) has proved tremendously useful, since non-academic skills are very important both in life and later schooling.
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Joined: May 2013
Posts: 2,157
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Joined: May 2013
Posts: 2,157 |
My biggest piece of advice is to avoid any academic based preschools. By the time she gets to age 3-4 it will be super boring for her and she will be way ahead of all the other kids. I can't tell you how annoying it will be when she gets to that age and you have no where to put her and they do the same things in school year after year after year. Kindergarten is a repeat of all the letter/number nonsense. Research options for early entrance to K or just skip it altogether. DD skipped K and it didn't matter in the slightest.
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Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 3
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OP
Junior Member
Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 3 |
Thank you all so much for taking the time to respond to me, and for the extremely useful advice! I think I will just tell my mom she doesn't need to be pushed to read right now We just enrolled her in a Reggio Emilia based children's center at our local children's museum. It's very art and play based, and they will move her around to different classes based on her needs. I work at an independent school that has a preschool program starting at age 3, so at that time she will come to school with me. They use the primary years program from the IB programme, and teach Spanish, learn to swim, and are happy to meet her needs wherever she is at. I work closely with the counselor for the preschool, and she has said that they have had kids like my daughter and outlined their plan for them. One more question - my daughter LOVES apps and videos having to do with letters, but I worry about screen time. I know the AAP have lifted the zero to 2 screen time ban, and many say it can be good for kids - but what are your limits with your gifted kids? She could watch them for hours if I let her. What do you think is a good limit? She does indeed learn a TON while watching. Thanks again, really appreciate your insights!
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Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 3
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OP
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Joined: Jul 2016
Posts: 3 |
This is incredibly helpful, thank you so much!
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Joined: May 2013
Posts: 2,157
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I would get normal toys as much as possible. If she loves letters, letter alphabet puzzles (that are not a choking hazard), leapfrog toys, board books, etc. Toys where she needs to use some fine motor skills other than using an index finger to point at things. DS loved the tupperware shape sorter that looks like a ball that opens in the middle when he was that age, or a month or two older. when schools tell you "we have other kids like that." I see that as a red flag. No, they do not have other kids that are reading fluently at age 3, and can do math computations, or it would be unlikely. When I told DS's preschool teachers he could read they were just like "that's nice" then about 5 months later they said "Did you know he could read? he read a picture book in the library out loud, do you have this book at home?" Trust me when I say that they don't get it. It's nice that they try to differentiate the instruction, though. But it's not like they are going to be able to send a 3 year old to a third grade class.
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Joined: Apr 2016
Posts: 57
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Ha!
This happened to us with DD's daycare. I mentioned to her teacher that she was starting to pick up some sight words at about 20 mos... and her teacher said "yeah, it's pretty normal for them to start identifying things on a page"... A few months later she was reading a counting book and DD counted backwards and her teacher mentioned that "she does that every time and it blows me away! did you know she cant count backwards?"
I just said that DD is running out of ways to surprise me.
I too would question an abundance of 3 yo that can read fluently, unless the program is a magnate for gifted kids, which is possible...
As far as your daughter, as others have said, follow her lead. Let her play on tablets/leap pads... I do with my daughter and I have seen her work out some motor issues and frustrations with it. Too much will be based on your child, though encourage a variety of things.
One of the things we did in our home is make sure that all the bottom shelves of book shelves had children's books. There are 6 book shelves in our house, one in her room, one in ours, and 4 others around... any room she goes into has reading material for her available and accessible. I don;t consider this pushing, as a request to read is one I get several hundred times a day.
I hate the idea that there is a prescribed amount of anything that is just right for a child. Parent the kid you have, not the one people think you do.
she sounds awesome.
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Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 77 Likes: 1
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my daughter LOVES apps and videos having to do with letters, but I worry about screen time. I know the AAP have lifted the zero to 2 screen time ban, and many say it can be good for kids - but what are your limits with your gifted kids? She could watch them for hours if I let her. What do you think is a good limit? She does indeed learn a TON while watching. Although a common misconception, AAP has not lifted the zero to 2 screen time ban. Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens. See it here: https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspxFurther, they recommend less than 2 hours a day of total screen time for children and teens. Children and teens should engage with entertainment media for no more than one or two hours per day, and that should be high-quality content. It is important for kids to spend time on outdoor play, reading, hobbies, and using their imaginations in free play. The consensus among researchers is that the best outcomes for children, especially young children, come from traditional, free form play. Think blocks (you can make anything!), dolls (you can pretend anything!), paper (you can make and pretend anything!), coloring (you can draw anything and then pretend any story!) combined with interacting with real people (they have feelings and won't always do what you want!). Additionally, IMO, there is good research based evidence that some children may be more vulnerable than others to negative impacts from environmental factors. Sadly, there is not currently any way to tell if a specific child will be impacted and the negative impacts may not be visible for years. I haven't seen research on it, but IMO, screen learning for small children may also delay learning how to learn from live human teachers. With my own DD and her friends, we saw that screen time had the most impact on what they weren't doing instead. No building imperfect doll houses out of bark, or having pretend picnics with fake food made out of dandelions, when you can sit in front of a screen and have someone else do all the heavy lifting of imagining the story for you. Also less reading, less lego building, less talking to real people, when the entertaining screen is so much easier. The kiddos with less screen time were much better at imagining a story and finding things to do.
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