Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Dumbing down in Kindergarten?

Update on the Wii. He has a 7 yr. old friend who comes over every so often (his mom and I are great friends.). My DS and his friend were allowed to play Wii Mario all night one evening when a friend of ours was in the hospital and the dads were in charge. They made it through all 8 worlds, only to discover there is World 9, but frankly he is not as obsessed with it anymore. I never thought any good could come out of an entire evening (I mean HOURS) of Wii Mario.

The lying he did came with big consequences, but we got past it.

Hi Eleanor05 -
What about the classroom behavior, and your thoughts on a gradeskip?

I love that you were able to capitalize on Mario while he was interested.

I think the thing is that Intense Gifted kids do what they do Intensely. And of course, video games are designed to be absorbing.

Mario's 'Worlds' are a specific example of the general theme of 'Levels.' Boys who are drive to demonstrate their Mastery tend to get hooked by the idea of 'Leveling Up.' This has become a central metaphor at our house. Most games also involve a 'grand finale' battle at the end of each level with a character who is generically known as the 'Boss' of the level. More good grist for the Metaphor mill.

One thing that attracts my son to these activities is the clear validation he receives when he beats the Boss and Levels up. I try to look at the bigger picture of his live to see if he has other avenues to receive validation.

One would think that school would be very validating for a gifted child - and for optimally gifted kids it very often is, but.....many year that my son was in elementary school it was just the opposite. For my son, this was exacerbated by the nature of his giftedness - he was thinking abstractly very early. And that is just a 'time waster' for many busy, stressed Elementary School teachers. We parents find it wearying too, yes?


So Validation and Accreditation.

Sleep well,
a very sleepy grinity

My DD is in Kindergarten now and she told me that she was only allowed to borrow books from easy reader section. I wouldn't mind because she only borrowed one book per week from school, but she reads many chapter books at home. Some are 4th/5th grade level. She still enjoys reading picture books a lot though she started reading chapter books at 4. My DS8 has 8th grade reading level, sometimes he enjoyed picture books too. I don't mind they "dumb down" occasionally. That makes me feel they are just my little angels. I don't need them to grow up too fast.

Have your son select anything he wants to read. All you can do is providing tons of different topics and levels of books for him to choose. My son has never read a book higher than 6th level, but he is still getting progress.


LOL~LOL~LOL~ I just cannot stop laughing when I see this. My DS is OBSESSED to video games since 3 years old. When he was 3 and 4, he knew his hand-eye coordination was not good enough, he forced me to play. He read game guide when we were shopping at Target. He watched me play and told me where the secret entrance was and how to beat the boss. When he was in preschool, he was talking his made up video game to his teachers. At home he talked to me or any adult he met. He didn't want to discuss his game with kids because he said they couldn't understand him. Before he learned spelling, he drew lots of maps of his game levels and wrote LV.1 LV.2 LV.3...... Now he is in second grade and only shares his game ideas to me because he doesn't want anybody thinks he is weird. His Super Mario Cart Adventure has been our evening chat for months. Sometimes I told him I cannot focus on his talking because I have something to do. He said he doesn't mind as long as he got someone to talk to. Every Halloween I had to make costumes for him because usually I couldn't find video game character's costumes for kids.

The real video games (Nintendo Wii, DS, and computer) are still his favorite but I set limit for him. When he got his job done early, he got more play time. I cannot take video game away from our family because we parents love to play them too. At first I was worry about his GAME OBSESSION too but I figure out some kids are very into trains, cars, dinosaurs, Legos. They are the pretty similar situations. I don't think the Wii games dumbed him down but set restriction is necessary. My DS can play for hours if nobody stopped him. I talked to him it's not healthy to his eyes and body to play video games for a long time. Observe your DS one or two more months. Good luck for grade skipping.

I used to end up in similar circumstances when DS13 was 3 and 4. He would sit in my lap and 'demand' that I draw pictures. I don't know what's weirder -
a) that he would care
b) that I would do it
c) that I wouldn't really think much of it - it was just clear to me that that was what he wanted.
d) I had no idea that this was part of the whole gifted package.

Thanks for the reminder. Those were sweet times.
Grinity