Curious if anyone else has run into this phenomenon...the gt child who seems to just destroy EVERYTHING in their path.
I have several brothers and sisters and we were always getting into trouble on one thing or another. But the most obviously gt of the lot was literally nicknamed The Destroyer by dad.
After I married DH (hg+) and we had ds, DH told me that his nickname was the destroyer. I thought this was a little unfair not to have said anything to me before we got married!
Although this conversation started in relation to child 1, child 2 has really surpassed all expectations in this regard.
(dd2.5) (I know it's not a very nice nickname...)

Anyone else seen this in action with gt or nd kids?

Oh my gosh, DD2 is absolutely "the destroyer"! And she is so *quiet* about it. You turn your back for 2 seconds (or go to the bathroom, or blink or..) and she has completely trashed an entire room. I sat down to work with DS6 with school one day with her running around near me, I realized she had been quiet for a minute and went to check on her- she had opened the refrigerator, taken out the flour and spread it all across the kitchen floor. I was literally 10 feet away from her, just not in direct line of sight.

She's only 2 (in 3 days) so I can't say for certain, but she seems to be more GT than the DS6 and DS4. At barely 2 the boys knew a lot, but it was just regular preschool knowledge, early. She seems much more active and self-directed in her acquisition of knowledge- she explores because those are the things she wants to understand, she takes things apart to see how they're made, she tears things up to see what happens. She just seems to have a more mature understanding of the world than the boys did- for instance, she would never run into the road because she gets that the cars are big and she's little. At 2 both boys were still giving me heart attacks in parking lots, despite constant talks about the dangers of running in the road. They would say things like "I'll tell the car to stop and it won't hit me!". She gets that it doesn't work that way.

But, I swear, she's going to make me go completely gray before she's 5!

When he was a little over a year old, DS4 reached up inside the wall of a 4-year-long child-proofed room through a tiny hole in the fireplace (which has a cast-iron stove in it) and pulled fiberglass insulation out of the wall. We only figured out what had happened when we saw the insulation in his hand, and asked him where he had gotten it. We never would have figured it out otherwise!

About that same age, he also locked me out of our master suite. By the time I got the door unlocked, he had his arm wet to the shoulder from the toilet, he had a penny in his hand, and he was reaching for the outlet. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it! It's too much to be believed! I always joke that if we'd only stored drain cleaner in there, he could have dug that out and had it ready to be swallowed, allowing him to hit the jackpot of ways a child can hurt himself!

Now, he never really tore up the house or our property, but he was always finding astonishingly creative ways to scare the fool out of me! He knew no fear--still doesn't!--and he liked to explore.

Not exactly the same, but similar, I think?

BTW, his older brother is HG+. We don't really know with DS4 yet. He might be GT or he might not.

Dunno if that helps at all...

Hi, my name is Incogneato,,,,,and I am a Destroyer........

LOL!

Yes, that was me, but I don't ever remember what I had done to "wreck" whatever it is I wrecked, I just remember getting yelled at all the time.

DD6 is our adorable little destroyer.

Let me attempt to speak for the destroyers of the world. Now, obviously I can't speak for your children, however, I am quite immature, so I consider myself an expert on child-like thinking.

I'm pretty sure when DD took a ball point pen and dug it into my dining room table and pulled it part way across, she wasn't acting in a hostile manner. When I asked her why she did it she said: I wanted to see what would happen.

We say destroy. They say investigate.

Now, we have boundaries and rules of course. There are things that are off limits to their "investigations". But I try to remember when my six year old wrecks our stuff, it's not fulfillment of a personal vendetta against us.

I never buy anything full price: clothes, toys, food, whatever. So when DD dumps spaghetti sauce on her white shirt to see what random designs it will make it takes just a little of the sting out if it.
I even buy scratch and dent furniture for very low prices and fix it up at home. No one has noticed(or at least hasn't mentioned it ). So when the inevitable happens, it doesn't bother me as much.

Oh boy, Houston we have a problem. I can't not call you out: Queen of Denial!!!!!!!!!

Please forgive me, I do this out of love for you, my friend..

LOL! Thanks! It's good to have friends.

And for the record, I'm not saying he's NOT GT, I'm just saying I'm not sure yet! :p

I will say that he has taken a deep interest in DH's hobby of making soap from scratch. He knows all the ingredients that go into every batch, and DH has made 13 different batches, all with very different ingredients! That has led me to think maybe there's more there than meets the eye...and maybe chemistry is his thing! So that wouldn't be quite so obvious a gift for a 4yo, and I might not see it as easily yet. Not a lot of opportunities for 4yos to practice chemistry!

Anyway, I digress. Sorry chris1234. Please return to your regularly scheduled thread now...

I didn't say he was GT either. I said he was HG!


Oh dear, this really is quite serious(tongue in cheek)


Actually I think it relates quite well. My DD's are quite opposite. Think Rhoades Scholar vs. Steve Jobs. The Rhoades Scholar gets tons of "respect" at school for academics.
Ms.Jobs gets hardly any. This destroyer/investigator/creative behavior of hers is not recognized by the school as gifted.

However, the gifted specialist our family works with has said she is at LEAST as intelligent as sister. Hmmmm............

Good point. Thanks for tying my *potential* GT denial back to the topic at hand!

One of my kids was taking apart ballpoint pens and disassembling toys from before age one. She has grown into a chaotic individual who leaves a path of wreckage behind her...she has NO sense of order and the first thing she does with a clean room is spread toys or books all over it. Not sure if she really qualifies as a destroyer, but she is the one most fitting the label in my house!

I love those kids!! If she can learn to harness that chaotic intensity she will be an unstoppable force when she grows up.

GO Lorel's DD!!!

I am loving this thread. Our DS6 has always had a penchant for ummm experimentation with ummmm chaos and he is so quick about it. My house is continously trashed. DS8 is HG+ I'm sure, and since DS6 is so different it's difficult for me to tell if he is, but if destruction is an attribute of being GT, well, DS6 is running strong!

What's funny is that DD2 loves to clean up- I wouldn't call her neat necessarily (she like to make a mess), but she enjoys when it's time to clean-up. She happily puts things back in order, especially sorting toys into their bins. Even at 16 months, she was helping me unload the dishwasher by getting the silverware and putting it in the correct drawer. The boys always see clean-up time as an end to their fun, she sees it as a new way to explore the mess and chaos she's created!

I'm like that, though I'm not a Destroyer. I think it's a hallmark of a visual person. If I can't see it, I forget it's there. It makes it hard to stay organized. Clutter is everywhere.

Well, mine's pretty bad... I'm sure it could be worse, but I don't want to think about how!

You can take things like old calculators, phones, etc. Remove the batteries and make sure there is no power source that can be plugged in when you aren't looking,, and let them take it apart.
We were at a kid's science function and they had a whole table just full of stuff that kids could take apart and look inside.

In fact, someone had actually bought a whole bunch of corded phones like we used to have back in the 70's brand new just to have kids take them apart to see what's inside.

This is absolutely DH and me. Give us about 2 minutes and our hotel room is covered in stuff. Sometimes we just look around and shake our heads--how much stuff did we bring? It isn't the same motivation as Kriston's (need to see everything) though, nor is it that we are creative. For me, it is a single-minded focus on the thing I am doing now to the exclusion of all else. If I want the jacket at the bottom of my suitcase, then everything else between me an it is an inconvenience, to be tossed aside. If my shoes are bothering me, then they need to be off my feet now and I don't care where they go. I never think about wanting to be able to find these things later.

I am just selfish; my motto is "I want what I want and I want it NOW!" Fortunately since DH is much the same way, we really have no conflict about this. The problem is that we had hoped that DS might be more organized, but instead he got a double-hit and no good role models!

Yes, yes, yes! After I posted this I thought, nobody is going to understand this one.
Thanks, mommaandmore and others. Your descriptions have hit the mark. I do think some of it is boredom; and some of it might be trying to check out things they can sort of intellectually 'get', but don't have the motor skills to deal with (rip, tear, shred).

DH and I will sometimes look up from reading, eating, whatever, and have one of those 'It's quiet. Too quiet.' moments.

One time I came into the dining room after literally only 4 minutes of being out and dd (1 at the time) had completely covered the dining room table with a pretty even coat of milk and cereal. And a good part of the floor. It was remarkable in both size and consistency - like she had been evening it out here and there...
Then there was the time she pulled out the noise-maker in a toy of ds's, she's completely shredded many books, and so on.
I think the books definitely end up in the category of 'oh, here's some cool stuff that I'd never see in a board book so let's check it out.' Then 'darn I've torn the page, wait...THIS PAPER REALLY SOUNDS COOL WHEN YOU TEAR IT!! '.

Asynchronous dev.?

Oh, and btw, we try to fit into the 'put that toy away before you take out another' camp, but it just does not seem to happen...we just sort of get out the bulldozers once a week and 'reset'.

My destroyers favorite medium is water, but she's also fond of whiteboard markers. My best destroyer story is when I passed her on the stairs, and all she said was "Water." I went into the bathroom to discover she'd taken the top off the liquid soap and wedged it under the faucet, and turned the water on. The bottle fit almost perfectly so that once it filled with water, water sprayed all over the bathroom like a sprinkler. My destroyer is not identified as gifted, but she has a huge imagination.

My identified-gifted ds was never a destroyer until recently. He's older than dd, but she's the one who taught him how to pretend. Now 8, he's become much more destructive. Last week, he found out what happens when you climb your dresser and sit in one of the drawers.

My ds is so obviously gifted (early reader, obscure interests, asynchronous), I keep trying not to discount dd. She seems so normal. Well, except for the destructiveness (we used to call her Destructo), the imagination (she had a whole family of imaginary friends), the perfection, her issues with smells... Okay, maybe she's not so normal. If I say gifted, I won't have to use the word strange.

DH just reminded me that he used to call DS4 "DS4, Destroyer of Worlds." I had forgotten that. He also tells me that he told a co-worker that if you left him alone in a padded room with an anvil, DS4 would break the anvil and not know how he had done it.

Shows what I remember...

Could you send the bulldozers my, way, Chris? I need them now! :p

My DS 5.5 loves to take electronic items apart. He is quite adept with a screwdriver. He recently told me that he is collecting parts to build his own robot.

I was 5 when I got into models - the plastic kind you glue together.

It was a T-bird that brought the wrath of mom onto me.

I needed headlight lenses and could not find them in the kit.

But my mom had contact lenses.....

I gave up on the one in/ one out rule when DS6 was a toddler. Their most interesting and intense playing comes from combining toys. The 3 kids will spend an hour + upstairs and call me up to see what they've made. The legos will be sheds for the trains and buildings along the tracks, the k'nex are the Ferris Wheel and merry-go-round at the fair, the little people are the people in the town, books aren't books they're caves for the stuffed animals, cardboard boxes are tunnels for cars and on and on. None of it would have been possible with just 1 kind of toy.

The only rule we have is that all the toys have to be upstairs before bed time and we probably clean their rooms 2x a week (mostly for safety). As long as I get my living room back every night, I'm mostly ok with it! And not to get too misty-eyed, but I also know that one day everything will stay in one place and be nice and neat and it will be because the kids have grown. So, I figure, what's a little mess in the grand scheme of things?

This thread reminded me of this article I ran across a year ago. It suggests that neatness might not be so great. I have taken great comfort from this, since I live with moderate choas in my office.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/Careers/04/30/cb.mess/index.html

Oh, the water and the contact lenses!!! LOL!!

Kriston, I see you have good company in the denial dept. with keet! Except on this board, I only whisper the idea of dd2.5 being gifted, and only to DH (to make him feel better when he's surveying the living room). Without some kind of 'official' test or id from a school, and even with something official, fully accepting that idea is just not in me.

Virtual bulldozers coming your way

acs - that is a good article; might have to hang it over my desk at work! Actually, for security they don't let us have stuff piled on our desks, so I compromise on a clear desk and one file drawer full of a pile of stuff which am actually working on in various stages of completion. I save the files for stuff I won't have to touch again for months.

I just found this thread and nearly fell out of my chair laughing!!!
Thanks Everyone for starting my day off with a smile. Now I know that I am not alone.

DS definitely falls into this category, although it is not willful destruction for the sake of exerting his power or dominance over the universe. It is rather just a brain that is constantly asking "why", mixed with a complete lack of fear, and a dash of impulse-control/judgement deficiency that would normally make a child stop and wonder if this sudden idea was really a good one or not. Maybe he is just too curious to stop and think of the possible outcomes. Note, at eight, he has mostly out-grown this... or at least he has moved on to bigger and better projects that take a little bit more planning to see an effect and are easier to spot and defuse... such as with a wonderful book he has now entitled Whoosh Boom Splat: The Garage Warrior's Guide to Building Projectile Shooters by William Gurstelle. Warning... they never outgrow this. Their projects just grown to scale with them.

I remember leaving the kitchen for about 4 or 5 minutes when DS was barely 2. He was happily sitting on the floor playing with pots and measuring cups. By the time that I came back in, he had completely disassembled the dishwasher, taking out the shelves, unscrewing the spinning water dispensor, and was actively trying to get to the motor!

Everyone in our families (both mine and DH's) have decided that having a child like DS was just punishment for what we put our parents through as children. My mom tells a story of trying to wash the outside storm windows when I was just over a year old. She was 20 feet up on a ladder (over a walkout basement, first floor, and up to the second floor) and my 8-year old brother was suppose to be watching me. She turned around to find me on the rung just below her. She had no way of getting to me, and she was terrified that I was going to fall if she started yelling for help and scared me. She was trapped and I was stuck. So we just hung out together, 20 feet off the ground, until either my brother or dad happened by and could come and rescue me.

And my mother loves to described how I learned to walk. I would crawl over to a chair or table, pull myself up, and with a look of sheer determination hurl myself into space and move my legs as fast as possible, with the predictable results of repeatedly crashing. I crawled only briefly, never walked, and never stopped running once I had mastered it.

There has to be a gene sequence for intensity, stubbornness, lack of fear, and sheer trouble.

LOL.

Jr is doing a varation on this. He will crawl until he gets close enough to reach an object, then he will launch himself towards it with both hands outstretched and grunt when his chest hits the floor.

Oh thank you all for this post!

DS is definately a destroyer! Water is probably the biggest temptation. We too have experienced the spray effect in the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry room. The latest stunt was to plug up the walk in shower drain so that the water couldn't drain out and instead flooded the bathroom floor. I really should have known there was a problem when he was taking a 20 minute shower...

My mother cannot understand at all but I gave up on the 1 toy out at a time rule. Now I have a plastic bin under an end table in the living room. Everything gets put in it at night. Once it is full, DS has to put it all away to start over again. That part still takes supervision or I find it emptied in a corner of his bedroom. Of course my mother just thinks I'm encouraging him to be a slob and irresponsible. However, with the 1 toy out rule, DS just stopped playing with his toys and all he wanted to do was screens.

Thanks for all the great stories.

What's the deal with the water! Little C always goes back to doing stuff with water.