Hi there...
I am so very grateful to discover this forum. I have been reading old threads for some time now and have found those posts incredibly helpful in some of the deciscion-making we are doing with my DS5.
The short of my story is that I am what I would describe as a pretty-smart over-achiever professional/mother who was most-likely 'gifted' in the creative realm with art and writing as a chld. I always had to try in math/science as that did not come naturally. Subsequently, I learned that hard work lead to success, praise and achievement - and that formula helped me perservere throughout my higher education.
My husband is quite the opposite. I'm sure he would've been considered gifted as a child and truly did not have to crack a book his entire pre-college education. He was bored in school, super-disorganized and not really motivated in the least. College was a terrible experience initially as he had never developed any study/organizational skills to succeed. After a break to mature somewhat and some crazy adventures as a young man, he want back to school and completed his business degree with straight-As. But he still struggles with motivation and organization (some of which we attribute to a nice dose of ADHD-inattentive type). But he does think he developed some distructive work-habits in those formative years.
So, my DS5 has been a joy to parent. He was not the artist-child that I expected (as he carried my left-handed trait)...but instead he demonstrated a lust for knowledge even as a young two-year old. He did not speak terribly early, but learned all the prepositions before he even began naming objects. We first noticed he seemed advanced when he learned his letters by two (despite the fact we hadn't taught him). He quickly picked up reading sight words and then simple books. By 3, he was driving us crazy with his incessant questions about anything and everything. He was obsessed with synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, word riddles and the like. He also loved to discuss math concepts and loved to do multple number problems in his head (5+2+1-4=). He LOVED the idea of the zero times-table and would tell what I can only describe as 'math jokes' with it.
As a 5 year-old, he continues to have a thirst for knowledge especially in the sciences. He reads fluently at about a third grade level, and loves to explore science books that are at a much higher-reading level. He reads mostly by sight-memorization (as he seems to remember nearly every word if he sees it once)...but he certainly gets tripped up on words that are phonetically tricky or uncommon. He has not learned full decoding by any means. I think what is the most interesting to me is that he is truly a mix of my drive/creativity and my husband's analytical aptitude. He just sees things in the most different and creative ways. I'll find him cross-referencing his globe (yep, nearly his favorite toy) with a U.S. altas and a book on weather environments...and then he makes his own map of an area with all the compiled information.
He just seems to apply knowledge easily and is always looking deeper into an issue. Any issue. His favorite phrase is, "Now let me get this straight...".
He has not been tested, and there are no gifted resources in the schools here until third grade. I'm not even sure if he would be considered 'gifted' versus 'smart'. Honestly, the label means nothing to us. But where we are concerned is finding ways to challenge him in the hopes it might deflect the issues my husband experienced.
He will be in Kindergarten this fall...there is no early admission. We do live in a highly-educated area so many kids will most likely be ahead of age-norms, but I'm thinking he's still going to be far ahead of his peers. Our pediatrician has prepared us to expect that the school may want to go ahead and advance him to first grade. We do worry that DS is sensitive, a follower, and not advanced socially in any way compared to his learning achievements.
Would testing be of any benefit to us? Any advice on how to keep him motivated to learn while in an maturity-appropriate but not academically-appropriate classroom would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for sticking with my long and circumvented tale. I pledge to be less windy in the future.
