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

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