Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school calendar savant?

my son is 4 years old and recently started showing interest in the calendar. He can tell you the day of the week for any random date in the next 3 years. he usually gets 9-10 correct out of 12. At first we thought it was eidetic memory (photographic) because the calendar we bought for him has the next three years posted. but now he is doing years not posted. He is not in the autism spectrum as his social skills are intact. He also remembers the birthdays of people he has only met once and will continue to remember their birthday for months. Does anyone have any advise as to actions we should take.

Give him one of those calendar lists showing him the entire set of possible calendars along with years and see if he can memorize that going forward 10 or 20 years. There are only a rather limited number of possible calendar iterations.

I always liked that as a kid.

Not the memorization, rather the calendar lists.

That's a cool skill. My Dad had crazy calendar skills (amongst many many other amazing skills). I missed that gene entirely. I think in terms of "Next week" or "Three Tuesdays from now" I do weird calculations about the last time I saw someone events/time passed in between and how old their child must therefore be now... But am entirely broken for dates...

Master and Law, thank you for your reply. He is just starting to read at, I am guessing, his scheduled level. He is ok with numbers but the date thing is leaps and bounds above all other skills. He also kicks my butt at connect four. Our main concern is that we want to enhance his skills without making him into a freak show. But so many people are blown away by his skill, it's hard not to show what he can do. One night I asked him the day of the week on December 14th 2050...(I know it is one out of seven odds, but he got it correct. It seems to be what day of the week the month starts on, allows him to figure it out. We have asked him how he does it, but he is not able to elaborate. I am wondering if we should get some professional testing done? and if so...where do we start?

Wow! My son started doing this at four, too! I've never heard of any other kid doing this. My son knows the past and future three years. A very cool party trick

He also has memorised license plates, music track lengths, streets and suburbs, movies, everything LOL