Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Recommendation for family activities

Hi everyone. I was wondering if anyone had experience with extremely bright ones (ages 4 or 5) in the family that don't do well with average evening family activities.

Let me try to clarify if I can! As a family, we try hard in the evenings and weekends to have family time by encouraging family games, crafts, puzzles, mind puzzles etc. My ds wants to participate but immediately thinks it's better to follow his own rules and make up his own way of doing things. It's very frustrating and no matter what we do it ends up with him just going off and doing his own thing which is usually just playing on the computer by himself.

He bores easily with repetitive games or activities and wants to "spice" things up but he's 4 and it usually ends up being nonsense and only fun for him. Unfortunately he is a little young yet for building models or doing anything too intricate and we seem to be stuck in a sort of limbo. The last thing we as a family want to do is see him spend too much time by himself on a computer but it always seems to be what he prefers.

Any advice for a struggling family on how to bring us together for group activities without boring our child that seems to be rapidly becoming smarter than his parents!!

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Truckee_Mom

Do you have other children besides him? If so what are their ages?

DS was very much like what you describe at 4 years of age, but because he is an only child, we mostly were able to follow his lead. It would have been harder had we needed to accomodate other kids' needs and developmental levels.

Hi acs - thanks for the quick reply. He is our only child so it is easy to allow him to take the lead on play. But we also don't want him to be "king" (so to speak) all the time and dictate how we play everything. It's also painful to us to play his nonsense games all the time! Sure would be fun to actually do some fun things together and not just weird 4-year old games!

Truckee_Mom

My own experience was that 4 was just a really hard age. It is certainly the age that I found most trying (and the age that DH and I decided that there really would not be any more children). DS was highly verbal and sounded much more mature than her really was. He was smart and quick, but not the least bit rational. I kept tryinig to treat him like he was rational, but he was not--he was profoundly passionate and easily overwhelmed by all he was figuring out about the world.

I would suggest lettiing him lead for the amount of time that you can handle it--say 5 or 10 minutes. Set the timer so you both know how long it will last. When it's done it's done. Then do something you can handle, like reading a bedtime story. Or 5 minutes of your game then 5 minutes of his game. The worst part was when there seemed like there was no end in sight. One of my stock phrases was, "I;m sorry, mommy just isn't very good at pretend games. I can only play this for 5 minutes, then I will have used up all my pretend."

But the best news is that this is temporary. Remember to write down some of his crazy ideas and words and games. Because when you want to remember them (like I do now so I could share them with you) they may all be forgotten. When he is 6, I guarantee he will be a totally different creature and you will h ave the games you always dreamed of. DS is 12 and we have family game night regularly and he often beats us using rules we all agree on!

Here we love to eat together and talk. We actually enjoy eating together so much, that I am sometimes feeding the kids fruits before dinner , waiting for DH to finally show up!
Our kids never liked board games too much. They play every once in a while, but this was never our "assigned" weekend/evening activity.
I like having a night out with my daughter. Like tonight. The boys are out camping in the snow, we watched Elizabeth, The Golden Age. Now she is curled up, asleep in my bed, Atos, our dog, beside her. Too bad I can't send you a picture:-)Both are beautiful.

Hi,

What works for our DD4.5 is to ask her what game or activity she would prefer. And if it is some board game, I let her choose some rules, but not all. Most of the time though she prefers something else than board games, like being read or playing fantasy games with her pirncesses and riders.

My problem is though to combine DD and turbo-DS (18 months) in one activity.... now that IS difficult

"But we also don't want him to be "king" (so to speak) all the time and dictate how we play everything. It's also painful to us to play his nonsense games all the time! Sure would be fun to actually do some fun things together and not just weird 4-year old games!"

Actually, this is perfectly normal for his age. Could be it manifests itself in an extreme way for a highly gifted child.
Believe it or not, he will grow out of it, maybe not till 6 or 7.
We've found it helpful to allow our girls to be the "queen" at times, but also teach them how to take turns and compromise so that other children will want to play with them!

Our DD5 loves Magnatiles.
We do a fair amount of imagination play. She has tons of little figures and does much creating of stories that go on and on and on!

On the upside, she is starting to write this year. So, she is becoming an author! Her latest tale is about a baby unicorn and it's great!

Good luck,
Incog

My DS5 has been doing the same thing fortunately he has 3 year old brother who happily plays crazy games with him

I suggest that you take turns, that's what we do with our kids. It could be Mom's turn, Daddy's turn and DS turn to choose. If your DS can write/type let him write down the rules, it could keep him nicely busy and would help with the game as well.

When our son was that age, we would sometimes:

* play chess (this was and is a favorite)
* work on a project (right now he's 8 and is helping my husband diagnose problems with a tube amplifier and repair it)
* work on a snap circuits set
* play Texas Hold'Em poker
* work with clay...this allowed for infinite creative possibilities. We recently made a chess set of Star Wars characters
* go for a post-dinner walk around the neighborhood and talk
* read parts of the newspaper and discuss current events
* invite friends or neighbors over for dinner and spend the evening talking with them
* go to a local concert - we live in an area with many classical, jazz, etc. concerts that have reduced ticket prices sometimes
* play together on a computer game, alternating turns. When our son was that age, he really loved Zoo Tycoon. We would take turns building exhibits and enjoyed that.

Have fun and don't limit yourself!

Tara

Hi Truckee Mom,

I love that other people had kids who could sit still and follow rules. But don't feel bad if your son can't handle it.

The only think my DS could have done on Tara's list was the family walks. He's just way too kinesthetic. Even family meals were tough for us because DS would take a bite of food and then get up and walk while he chewed!! We would have to follow after him or call him back to the table if we actually wanted to converse. Most of our conversation happened while on family walks! He has to move while he's thinking! Maybe your son is the same way.

Bouncing balloons is a great game for more active kids.

Oh yes,

The girls play poker, poker dice and craps! They like roulette the best right now!

Also, DD5 rarely sits for meals either. We allow her to get up and come back. I don't want to make meal time a control struggle, especially with girls.

Choose your battles is a nice thought.

ACS, DD5 is just like your son. I think I am too! I've thought up all kind of cool ideas when I'm on the treadmill! Only to forget them in the locker room!

Incog


I

Bring a tiny pad of paper with a spiral wire binding the pages together (the kind that are 4/$1 or so at a dollar store) and stick a pen in the spiral. Then bring it with you on the treadmill.

I used to do this when I was thinking about book ideas and plot points. It helped a lot, and you can jot down a couple of words without breaking your stride.

Good idea, I may try it!

I hear you, J. We have had similar blushing moments, especially with people who don't know us well. Our son was talking to a grocery checker, and the typical conversation emerged when the checker sees a school-aged kid in the daytime. "Are you sick today? Why aren't you in school?" "I'm a homeschooler." "So, what did you learn today?" "Well, one of the things I did was my math lesson on probability. Then we learned some more about probability by playing poker and blackjack." Silence...as I continued to bag groceries.

Tara

[quote=Ania]Here we love to eat together and talk. We actually enjoy eating together so much, that I am sometimes feeding the kids fruits before dinner , waiting for DH to finally show up!
Our kids never liked board games too much. They play every once in a while, but this was never our "assigned" weekend/evening activity.


Ania, I envy that your kids love to eat with you. Our meals are always so painful. My DS is a super picky eater and a SLOW eater and sitting at the table is like pulling teeth for us. MY DH and I are NOT vegetarians but my DS chose to be one from early on, even before he really new what it meant to be one. We tried to feed him mashed up chicken and he would close his mouth and hold his breath or just scream bloody murder. Around 14 months he made it very clear that no meat would ever touch his body. I love to cook and I always try to involve him in the process but he is much more interested in "creating" and wasting then actually making something edible. I can only do so much of that!


Truckee_Mom

Thanks to all of you for your great replies. It's always nice to know your not alone out there. My son has the ability to sit still if it's on his terms. We notice that he will sit for hours at the computer when he is composing his music or manipulating photos to make a movie (way past my level of comprehension) but if I sit down to ask him to show me his work or teach me he immediately becomes squirmish and loses interest. He can write, but if I asked him to write down some rules for a game, we would be stuck for days listening to him make-up these odd-ball things that would ultimately get side-tracked and end up who-knows where!

acs, it's a relief to hear that there is another couple out there that made the decision to not have anymore children based on actions/needs of their first child! My son also tends to be highly verbal and sounds very mature (we call it diarrhea of the mouth). It can be very difficult to not treat him like a highly rational being at times and way beyond his 4 years of age. We have also been blessed with a profoundly passionate and easily overwhelmed child which means a new crisis everyday. Not too long ago, we spent a week in the kitchen crying over the eggs because he thought they were too cold living in the fridge and the only way to remedy this was to put a blanket on them.

I hope you don't mind if I use your "I will have used up all my pretend" acs, it's perfect! I am so tired of pretend I could scream. I have never met a child that could live in such a world filled with pretend - when do you start to worry?

My question is for those with 1 child vs multiple children. Do only children live in more of a fantasy world then those with siblings? Do gifted children do more fantasy/pretend play? When does it end!!! Help I am drowning in it! :-)

Truckee_Mom

While it might seemed absurd, enjoy it! Soon enough the solutions to his problems will not be so easy to come by!

While I can't answer your one child/multiple question, I know that having a "normal" daughter has helped us to have some perspective and consider our weird child also quite normal - does it make any sense?

I think that as parents of an only child, perhaps we bear the brunt of pretend play because we are the ones they share it with. Siblings have each other to pretend with but only's rely in us more.

Gifted kids can have amazing fantasy lives and it is nothing to worry about. DS has lots of friends who like the same kind of play. he and a neighbor boy managed to sustain at game of of knights and castles for a whole weekend (about 6-8 hours a day) this summer. they stayed in character, ate what they thought were period foods, built tents in the yard, moved them "with the the army" every few hours. It was amazing. I'm just glad he did it with the neighbors and not us. And, yes, we have pictures!

Perhaps our sons are twins! Yes, DS is a vegetarian too. And very particular about what he eats. We tried all the things that other parents say work (hide foods in other foods, have them try "one bite", growing foods int he garden with me, cook with me, at least have them put it on their plates, etc), but they didn't work.

The best thing we did was read a book called How to Get Your Kid to Eat, But Not Too Much. The dieticians at the children's hospital where I worked swore by it and it really helped a ton at meal times. There are no food battles at our house now, I am not a short order cook, and meal times are quite pleasant. The book helps you sort out what you are and what you aren't responsible for at meal times. I highly recommend it!

Great, I can't wait to take a look at the book. Will be around a bookstore on Wednesday and I will see if they carry it! Thanks for the advice. It certainly sounds like our sons are more and more alike! I would grind up chicken and hide it in his food and he would sniff his food and give me this evil look and say I SMELL CHICKEN! How did he even know what chicken smelled like is my question! HAH!

Truckee_Mom

DS has rejected garlic bread that has had a piece of parsley on it. The parsley was picked off (by me) long before it got to his plate and he had no way of seeing the bread before I got it to him. There was nothing green on the bread at all when I gave it him. He took one bite and declared, "Yuck, this tastes like parsley" And he refused to eat pizza he could make out the faintest bit of herb on it: " I see green ! I see something green!" Smart kids are hard to fool.

But a few weeks ago, he actually requested cream of spinach soup (pretty darn green!) for dinner, even though he'd never even had it before. I almost fainted. But he even had seconds. So there is hope (but maybe not for another 8 years--that's what the multi-vitamin is for LOL)

I found consistency works with DD3. And it helps when she wants to play a game. We wanted to do a specific game night. But now find it works better when she wants to play a game and which game.

And Chutes and Ladders doesn't work, her rules only. But Candyland works, Bingo (we have spelling bee bingo and Diego bingo), dominoes worked once by the rules, now the way she wants to play it.

And puzzles when she wants to do them, then it is 5 of them. Although we got the 48 pieces floor puzzles, she likes a smaller puzzle and to do a few of them.

We also got the Marble Run (220 pieces) which works as a family thing. It is hard enough for DH and I to set it up.

We do many family concerts and shows, child oriented ballet companies. But we really wanted to do family night.

It would be nice to have date night. We tried, but that just seemed like so much work the next day because I still had to get up early and do the routine.

Ren

Tara, I love your list! Especially the evening stroll around the neighborhood. Our weather is so beautiful but sometimes life is so busy, we don't remember to do things like that. Gotta make a point.

It must be different with only children than with a bunch of them. I like to eat & talk like Ania's family (often with grandparents over, and each kid gets to highlight something from the day, or another couple, where kids take more of a backseat, but still get to contribute). We play board games, and recently have loved doing puzzles. DH likes the boys to help with yard work, then dinner and hot tub together (best conversations are in the hot tub). Sometimes we'll play pool or have ping-pong tournament. In the summer, we have a very set routine, swim, dinner, tv program. I don't think we watch much TV compared to the rest of America, but we have been enjoying downloaded programs or disc sets (no commercials) for about 30 minutes before bed. The trick is finding programs that are acceptable to the whole family. My kids are a little older (and perhaps I'm overly lenient about content); we watch Heroes, Jericho, The Unit, LOST (some of these have multiple seasons out). So exciting and fun to all be together after each one finishes their homework, lessons. I know real intellectuals don't do TV, but...

As your son gets older, he'll grow out of the dominance of board game mentality (mine did that too) AND he'll be more involved with outside activities that will make evenings together rarer and more special (sports games/practices, lessons, etc.).