I was in the kitchen assembling salade ni�oise. DS4 was in the other room, yelling to me "the eggs go in Hufflepuff! the potatoes go in Hufflepuff! The greenie beanies go to Gryffindor! What else is in it? Oh, the olives and capers and everything else go to Ravenclaw." Can you tell we've started reading Harry Potter books?

Awesome. He's got some major ability to synthesize info!!!

Love that story, and we love the h.potter books here too!

Here's a fun made up game from my dd2 who was about 6 months at the time...she loved peek a boo, and I figure this started with the idea that the word book and boo were so similar sounding: one day I asked if she wanted me to play peek-a-boo, which we had always done by covering her face or my face, but instead she grabbed a book and put it behind her back. I didn't think much of it, and tried to just play plain old peek-a-boo, but then she kept taking the book and pulling it out and hiding it again, until I 'got' it. I realized she was trying to play peek-a-book! We had a great laugh

I love the cute stories - especially because they play such a role in our own understanding of our children. The data-driven analysis is good for administrative situations, and for convincing other people that accommodations are appropriate, but isn't it true that it's these little episodes that really give us our sense of our own kids? That's the way it is for me, anyhow.

Yesterday, for instance, was one of those days where half of the time I was thinking, "Meh, he's not so smart after all." For one thing, DS4.1 has started the "I don't want to do it - it's too hard!" complaint. I find myself thinking, "Ok, so he's not really that interested/self-motivated/crazed for knowledge. He's different from the kids I read about." But then, as we're driving in to camp he spots the license plate in front of us: 6677ZI. "Look," he says, "11s!"

But the episode at dinner was the kicker. The conversation was about baseball, and our visiting French student was trying desperately to follow all the English. DS4, who goes to a French school, looked at the visiting student, looked at the rest of us, looked at the visiting student, and then pulled my sleeve. "Daddy," he whispered, "I'm a switch-talker." Once I finally understood what he was talking about I nearly fell on the floor laughing. Flashes of brilliance is the right phrase. It's the dark in between the flashes that confuses me.

BB

LOL, Baseball Dad. Oh that is so very, very true for me as well. Perfectly said!!

OK - another cute kid story. DS4 and I were having lunch and playing the "name a word that begins with each letter of the alphabet" game. He was saying ordinary, expected from a 4-year-old words (like "potty!" for p), then I say "q is for..." DS4 shouts out "quadruple!" I thought that was a good one.

That was a great one!

Love it!

You know, DS4's vocabulary is where I see the greatest evidence that he might be GT. I wonder if I'm just so used to advanced linguistic ability because of DS7 that I don't even really notice stuff like that anymore.

A slightly different form of GT denial--GT desensitization, maybe?

But then another part of me thinks that since it's what he hears all day with DS7 and me, of course he uses slightly bigger words than your average kid. He has to, just to keep up.

Ah, here I go again, spinning off about DS4. I can't wait until we can just have him tested and actually know something for once!

So, yeah, cute story.

We were at a Japanese Hibachi restaurant tonight as a family. For dessert, they had two flavors of ice cream. When DH, DD9, my mom and I had decided what we wanted DS3 was still deciding. He said" I guess I'll have strawberry then" and made a funny face. I asked him why he ordered strawberry (not his favorite by any means) he said: "Well, to make a pattern, I HAD to, Mom". Sure enough DH on his left had vanilla, DS had strawberry, I had vanilla, DD next to me had strawberry and my mom at the end had vanilla. How he thought of a pattern, and why he thought he HAD to make one, is beyond me. We had a good laugh and DS ate the strawberry ice cream.

I love reading these stories!!! Made me laugh and think of my DS5 the other day at the community pool. We found a new pool to visit that had really cool water squirters that shot out into the pool. I was in the corner watching him and trying to figure out what in the world he was doing...he would duck under all the squirters and follow the edge of the pool then would yell "I'm evaporating" and go all nuts splashing and then would go to this umbrella sprayer that shot water down and he would yell "weeee" and fall into the water and then would do it all over again....I finally went to ask him what he was doing and he informed me that he was the water cycle - I was a little confused and he told me that as he swam along the side of the pool, he was in "the river" then when he got at the end, he was evaporated and floated up to the clouds and then when he got under the umbrella sprayer he fell back down as rain and then began again...as he continued to "play", his scenario morphed somehow into him being in the "water pipes" under the road on the way to the water treatment plant, then at the umbrella sprayer he was put through the cleaning process and then released back into the system....I thought he was just thrashing around in the water :-)

Great stories!! I love the water cycle one.

Both of those stories are great!

Mommy2myem - i can just picture your wee-un agonizing over the fact that he was stuck with his least favorite flavor. So funny!

And Belle - your comment about thinking your DS was just thrashing around reminds me of many interactions with my DS. He explains that he wasn't just "playing in the sand" or whatever, then, as part of my GT denial, I wonder so many times if all kids have some grand imaginary unspoken world they play in, but they just don't tell you about it so much like the GT kids.

Isn't it funny that sometimes we just aren't aware of what they are doing? There have been some times where my DS5 has come home from school with loads of papers that look like a bunch of junk...when I sit down with him and ask him to explain what they are, I am amazed at what he tells me....one was his own solar system he created, another was a detailed game with over 10 step directions....I have a pretty good feeling, none of his teachers had any clue what he had done and never bothered to ask!