Hi Everyone!
My son has just turned 7 years old. He is a sociable, talented, and precocious child. He has never taken to early development of skills as he seems to need to perfect his abilities before he will willingly display them.
He was raised by two parents who majored in philosophy in university, and as such, has been raised with logic, reason, and bluntness. He never experienced baby-talk nor a dumbing down of topics. I've protected him from extreme violence, sex, and horrible news items, but not much else.
He is a fan of "pretending to be stupid" as we adult privately refer to the behavior. Recently, he was tested for the gifted program and barely missed the cutoff. He has an extensive vocabulary, knowledge of science, and ability to construct historically accurate structures with his blocks since age 3.
However, he has an intense love of video games. (He has grown up in a household of "geeks" and "nerds")
My son could tell you at age 4-5 how plants manufacture their food, how computers use binary code to operate, how a prism works, how solar power works and how to manage the power accumulated in a day, and anything about local wildlife and domestic animals. He understands the inner working of cells, the current impossibility of traveling at the speed of light, the theory of evolution, the cycle of life and death, the chain of infection and infection control, how a heart-bypass machine works (without explanation, but only through the text and pictures in my nursing textbook.) He currently wants to and is trying to learn the biological process that leads to the building of a scab.
At the same time, he adores video games and his life revolves around them. He owns an iPhone that was gifted to him, and old, broken PS3 with limitations he has learned to bypass to make it fully functional, and he plays and "beats" games that other adults find extremely difficult to defeat. His favorite games are: Plants vs. Zombies; Age of Empires; Age of Mythology; and MineCraft. He loves chess, photography, earth science, physics, astrology, math, drawing, singing, nature, video games, archery, medicine, and snorkeling.
His vocabulary is impressive, however, his reading skills are on an average level. He does not want to put the effort into reading, although he desires to be able to read and crows with pride whenever he *can* read something.
He is naturally able in math skills, however, he is not exposed to advanced math skills and he is not particularly inclined to learn mathematical skills at this time.
His first grade teacher was wholly impressed by him and he was given preliminary gifted testing, for which he did not quite qualify.
My question is this: I believe my son is quite gifted, but that he has not been exposed to *academic* excess. I believe that his mind is simply more capable and that his school work does not challenge him enough. He has earned about a 99% average for the entire school year despite the temperament issues I've already addressed.
I do not want to push my son in a direction that he should not be headed for, but I see a brilliance in him that I want to pinpoint and foster.
Any help and/or advice would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Last edited by winter1000; 03/20/11 11:11 PM.
