Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Personalities are mostly nature, right?

That's the crux of it! Congratulate yourself that you know your opponent so clearly so soon! I tried to borrow that sort of material and have lots of playdates so we could try games and toys at other kid's houses.

Trial and error is the only way. When she can talk it will be a little easier, but in a way you'll need this period of doing it mostly by body language to know her mind - sometimes words just confuse things and you need to KNOW your individual child.

If there are Daycare centers or nursery schools, and you can hire a babysitter ( a big IF) try 'pretending' that you are a prospective client and touring around. Look at the materials in the rooms, Look at the behavior of the children. Your school district may have a 'birth to 3' program - half the kids will have special needs, and the other half on a more typical developmental path. Just don't make any faux pas, ok? And if the kids all look strange to you - just imagine how strange they look to your DD.

What about a playground - at least there the kids are a variety of ages. Printing up some business cards, carrying a little black book, and trying to close the deal on some playdates isn't typically comfortable behavior for moms of unusually gifted kids, but it can all be learned. Think of yourself as training for the role of your child's 'manager.' You try to figure which gigs will be the most advantageous and then trying to book those gigs.

At the playground if you don't see any likely 'peers' try looking for some 5 - 7 year old gentle kids who could be developed into 'mother's helpers' as a way to provide social interaction for your DD. It's just like a playdate, you invite the child or child plus parent over to hang out for an hour, or meet at a park, and try to make sure that everyone has fun.

As you can see, Montessori manipulatives were the last thing on my mind when DS was a baby/toddler. I was much more interested in his social development - I just assumed that he's be smart. To me it seems like those funny tools are good for kids who won't figure it out on their own any time soon. Or course many kids are gifted in some areas and behind in others, so I don't judge other moms for playing with those kinds of games, but looking at my own child, it seems to me like if kids learned those basic things through 'cooking' and washing and sliding down the slide that there didn't need to be bridges for him.

Remember all those ideas about what children need to learn next were based on a very few people's observation of a smallish group of children - and that group of children surely didn't include anyone who was anything like your dd or my ds. Some Montessori programs are wonderful for gifted kids - but the principles have to be used to meet the needs of the individual child, who is being closely observed by an intuitive adult. That's a tall order. The whole point of any 'system' is that it simplifies reality into a bunch of easily followable steps - and this is dangerous when applied mindlessly for our families. We need as much unsimplified contact with reality as possible.
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Hope that helps,
Grinity

Very, very good advice! This is what I wish I had realised earlier. I thought TV was bad for kids, but resorted to those videos early too. My friends thought I was lazy, I was just glad to have that time to breathe. People thought I was crazy when I was searching play ideas everyday for my toddler. I was desperately trying to stop him from dismantling the house. I got snarky comments about 'pushing' when I went looking for a homeschool programme at 4, but if I 'just let him be a kid', he was miserable.

I need to be the mother my children need, not the mother I wanted to be, or my friends are.

So true! I need to write this in my homeschool ideas file, to remind me.

NOW you tell me!!

GeoMamma - I may have to have your quote plaque-mounted and bronzed. How perfectly put!

I recently bought a small wooden sign for DS's bedroom door. It says "Let him sleep... for tomorrow he will move mountains." It spoke to my heart. It reminds me how precious the few hours of rest my kids get each day are, and how amazing they are now and yet to be. Now, I just have to figure out a way to survive until they reach adulthood!

I'd love to take credit, but I stole it from somewhere else years ago and now I have no idea where.

From DD's 1st birthday to her 2nd, we were in Toronto. The government has these centers like some create preschool/play program would be set up. Sand table, play dough area, paint area, and so on with a carpet and they do circle time with songs etc. The places are free. Yes free. You drop in, they have workshops for parents, free. You just have to stay with your child. No drop off.

It was a great way to have them do all this stuff and learn circle time, get socialization and learn to play with others.

There isn't a wrong way to teach kids things early and still let them be children. In this center, there was a puzzle area. I remember a wooden puzzle with all the shapes, including trapezoid and rhombus.

The government thought it was worth having the centers and workshops and the investment paid off in the long run. When we moved back to NYC, we paid 18K for a playschool that was drop-off but had the similar stuff.

I know this was on a tangent but thought of it when someone posted about showing the videos. Everyone needs time off from constant baby care. And also children are always learning. It is nice to have a place that helps with both. I started at the centers hovering and ended by being able to sit with another mother and talk and interfere on boo-boos or issues on sharing.

Kids like it when you start to give them space. Confession here. I hate dental work and I have a hard time letting DD do all her teeth brushing. She has done it by herself when dad is there and I am walking the dog but I am totally OCD on this. She has perfect teeth, never needed work but I am afraid to let her have total control on that. Personality disorder that is sure to pay me unpleasant dividends down the road with her.

Ren

I'm joining the discussion very late, but I just wanted to say that it makes me sad to hear such negative words thrown around about babies. Words like moody, mean, manipulative, demanding, etc. It seems inappropriate to me to pigeon hole and predict a person's life long personality based on their behavior as an infant.

We heard every one of these negative descriptors of our infant and you know what? It wasn't helpful at all. We balked at these descriptions because we didn't want it to become a self fulfilling prophecy. It turned out we had a child who was in immense physical discomfort and he turned out to be a very pleasant fellow as time went on.

PTP - It always astonished me that the same people who could not believe that babies understood object permenence would ascribe sinister motives to a baby's cry.

What I do think is helpful, though, is acknowleging that some babies are 'harder'than others (for whatever reason). Any babies can leave you exhausted but some just take every ounce of energy you have and still want more. It's not the baby being malicious. Mothers experiencing that will have plenty of people telling them it is their fault, and they need to know that it isn't becaue they are bad mothers.

FWIW, I think those babies grow up to be the most fun children, but then I'm a bit biased

Ptp
I totally agree. We had relatives describing a family members infant as mooody, mean, manipulative, all sorts of negatives. It was horrifying. From my point of view the DC was intense, in all things, happy sad, just very intense. But the negatives were so unhelpful one even went so far as to say unlovable. To my mind it says much much more about the adult to be so negative and critical.

We had the opposite, DS as an infant had an incredible tolerance for pain and a personality preference for being happy. Looking back it was almost as if he was so interested in the world that he could put up with anything up to a point. But people responded better to him than our relatives dc because he was "nicer" more lovable so to speak. Yet they would have totally missed his issues because he wasn't as high maintenance as his cousin. Stereotyping personality screws kids on so many levels!!!

DeHe