Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Maybe he's not gifted afterall ...?

YES-- DD14 has been like this since birth.

When you ask her to repeat the behavior/what she just told you, she gets this sly expression... and refuses.

Aughhhh.

She could do all kinds of physical things from birth, but then STOPPED doing them. Seriously-- she could roll over and did so in the bassinet before we ever took her home, was holding her head up and looking around the delivery room during her first minutes, etc.

Her entire development has followed that same pattern. It's maddening-- and we finally realized when she was about 8 that, um... it probably not valid to compare our 8yo DD's relative competence at cognitive tasks... to a pair of PhD scientists (her parents). We didn't have any other real yardstick of what "normative" looked like, since we didn't spend time with other people's kids.

So we figured that when it took her three hours to put together a PowerPoint presentation the first time...well, clearly she's not THAT bright.

I'm caught in a cognitive dissonance loop with this lesson.

Just yesterday, I was mentioning to my mother that I thought DS was experiencing a speech regression because, you know, he hadn't made my eyes bulge or my stomach turn in a few days with something he said. Thankfully, after a quick suck-back-and-reload sequence I realized how ridiculous I sounded, with my mother's help, of course.

All of that simply to say it's easy to become inured to a process of second-guessing when the standard is totally non-normative. I'm 100% guilty of setting adult-level expectations for DS' reasoning...because his rational responses let me get away with it. I need to keep muttering a mantra like, "He's one" to myself to keep things in perspective.

Just a quick follow up. I think I figured out what's been causing the recent change of going from "this is too easy and too boring! I know all this!" to "I can't do this! It's too hard!". He was put on Singulair for asthma two months ago and that's about when a lot of issues started popping up. Super irritable, angry, cries for no reason, waking up screaming at night, not to mention lack of focus pretty much all the time, and all these seem to be a frequent side effects of Singulair! He's always had a lot of sensory problems so I wouldn't even think much of all the other stuff if it wasn't for the concentration and difficulty doing things he never used to have problems with. So we're taking him off Singulair and will see if we get our boy back! He's been without it for just one day and already seemed calmer and more alert and witty today

Me too. But with the maths ds6 will seem completely thick for the first 3 questions then comes right.

Our ds was on Rhinocort for a couple of years and Zyrtec for a few years and both made him irritable and fidgety. Much calmer and more able to focus without.

At one point, my two sons and I were on Singulair and we also noticed similar side effects in two of us. I was one of the two, and felt like I was PMSing all the time - weepy and irritable. One son wasn't affected at all, but the effects were so strong on the other two of us that I never felt comfortable using Singulair after that. We are lucky that our asthma/allergies were mild and we found other options, but it's scary to see how potent the side effects can be. As someone who experienced personally how much Singular changed my mood, I think you're right to take him off of it if you have noticed changes. Good luck!

I hope you've found the cause to your son's change, and I hope he's able to do okay without the medication.

Oh, that's great that you were able to isolate a trigger. Have you ever tried Pulmicort (if it's an appropriate alternative)? I had success with it as a child with no noticeable side-effects.

Me too!!!!!!
We have been so busy that we haven't done much of anything "technically" academic since school got out. We have had plenty of learning opportunities and academics in disguise, but very little brick and mortar school type stuff.
We had signed up for EPGY and some other sites in the hopes of eliminating some academic loss over the summer, but haven't had time to really get either girl on the computer. We finally had some free time the other day and I was shocked at how long it took both girls to get back into the swing of things with what I thought was pretty simple stuff. I watched DD9 try to remember what 6X8 is. She took her time and figured it out, but if speed was needed (like for timed math tests at school) she would not have done very well. I checked the feedback portion after she was done and she did really well, but I guess we need to find more time to let them get on the computer.
Things like this make me sometimes doubt their abilities, so I'm also glad to know I'm not the only one!

It really was the meds! 48hours without them and all day today, I had an absolutely amazing and smart kid on my hands! Would talk nonstop but he has always been like that and today whatever came out of his mouth once again was the good old super bright kid! And none of the defiance of the past 2 months. While the last two months I would constantly hear "no! I don't want to! I can't! I'm angry! You're making me angry! No way!" ... the most common answer today was plain and simple and HAPPY "ok!"

The downside though, I took the boys to a local kids gym and his asthma was bothering him (exercise induced) a lot more than it had while he was on Singulair. So we have to find another safe way of getting that under control but not THIS medicine! Fortunately he doesn't normally have asthma. It's mainly exercise induced and allergen induced. So if we keep track of all the allergens that bother him, we might be ok just with a simple inhaler. I did read that Singulair can also be used just for exercise induced asthma 2 hours prior to exercise so we might just use it for the days he'll have gym at school or when we know he'd be exercising more than usual. At least the horrible side effects seem to go away within a day or two!