Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Playing dumb?

My son (3.5) seems to think that wrong answers are more interesting than right ones, especially if he gets a reaction. I notice it too when he's playing games on the iPad. He plays correctly for awhile, but then he wants to see what happens when he picks the wrong answer or does the wrong thing. He likes to explores all the possibilities, and doesn't care at all about being "right" or winning. I wonder sometimes if this will change once he starts school.

MumOfThree, I have a funny story to relate along those humor lines...

When my son (now 8) was in Kindergarten, his teacher pulled me aside at pickup one day and said she was having a problem with him. She was clearly distressed to be telling me this, since she loved my son and didn't understand his "misbehavior" in this case. She said he was laughing at kids who got the answers to her questions wrong (e.g., 2+2=5), and it was so unlike him to tease. I knew right away what was happening, though. I told her that most likely, he thought the kids were joking! To him, it was unthinkable that anyone wouldn't know that 2+2=4, so OF COURSE the kid was trying to be funny! And, like your child, he thought this was the best form of humor EVER! I had a talk with him that night about different ability levels and it never happened again.

DD absolutely does this. For her it's because she has an obsession with finding things that are funny and it's a way of testing out humor.

I will say, though, that once she started preschool she started neglecting certain activities more. I think a big part of it is that she's an extremely social kid and was very focused on the social aspect (and this was shown too because she really wanted to do pretend play, barbies, etc). Sometimes she'll purposely make mistakes and I think it's more to get us to participate in whatever she's doing (counting, spelling etc) because she really wants social interaction at all times.

DD9 still does this sometimes - not as much as she did when she was younger, however.

When we sat down with the people that were going to do the psychoeducational testing with her when she was 7 we tried to explain this to them. She had a habit of giving off the wall answers and do the grin thing and watch to see if anyone would catch it. If no one did she would just move on. I recall one question she told us about where they asked about something that was hot and dry during the day, but could get cold at night. We asked her what she answered and she told us she couldn't remember what she told the testers, but that the correct answer was a desert. She thought it was funny and laughed about it - much to our chagrin. We don't know if they caught her in the act or not and took that into consideration. The report we got didn't say anything about it.

My mother took my brother and me in for testing on the same day. My test took quite a bit longer than predicted, so my brother had to sit in the waiting room for a long time waiting for me before his test started. He got out much faster. On the way home, he told my mother, "Mommy, I tricked that lady!" She asked how, and he said, "If I gave her an answer that was wrong, she stopped and asked me questions about something else!"

He still squeaked into the gifted program, which was the only reason we were tested, so she didn't follow up on it.

It could be him being 'funny' too. And he is very interested in reactions and feelings right now. One of his favorite questions is 'Is Mommy happy?' It might just be part of developing emotionally. He's always been a sensitive type child, but his previous way of making others feel better was a cuddle or a quick hug.

We actually tested him this weekend on the whole 'forgetting how to spell his name' thing. DH couldn't get him to do it either, but I know he wrote his name for me both Thursday and Friday at different activities. So, he's choosing to 'forget' for some reason. I know a lot of the kids in his group are still learning their letters, so he might have noticed that, caught on to the comments or it could just be him testing boundaries and reactions.

I'm glad to know that this seems fairly common for his age/stage of development. I don't know if it's gifted related or if I just haven't heard of his friends around here doing it yet.

He's also purposely calling attention so he gets caught doing things he gets a timeout for. I'm going to guess this is all related. LOL

Thanks everyone for your responses! It is nice to hear about other kids like him having similar responses. It makes me feel better, especially since this whole gifted thing is a very big unknown path for us. It's always hard to know if things are a normal developmental thing or a challenge because of his intelligence.

When DD was 2.5-3.5, her questions were, "Are you happy? Are you happy and proud?" This would usually come out of her mouth immediately after we corrected a behavior, so it was her way of asking how serious the issue was.

Oh yes, Dd5 does this. I'll take the blame, as I used to use it as a way to test him. I.e., "Mom, what is 25+34?" Then I give an answer off but close to see if he corrects me. But he has turned the tables on me, and now I get that big smirk every time I try to ask him something, accompanied with an outlandish answer. He just finds it hilarious. I think I can tell every time he is doing it..but I have probably ruined him for testing at this age;)