Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment No external indicators of giftedness ...

Hahaha!!!

Hello. My name is HK, and I'm a Tetris addict...

{Hi, HK!}


Seriously, I was well on my way to 12-step territory. This is (was?) a reasonably common lament among STEM grad students I know/knew.

Which made it no better that I had just about zero self-control over it. I can play Bejeweled without getting TOTALLY sucked in like that. Tetris was different.

RPG does it for my DD. Webkinz was like crack, I swear. Pokemon? Even worse. NO way was I opening the door to Minecraft with her. Remember, she has to have computer access for school day to day-- and she's so clever that not even K9 completely put paid to the Pokemon... so...

Roblox is a Minecraft-lite that is apparently only really fun for her when she's playing with friends, which is okay since, hey, it's usually just a couple of hours once every few weeks. That's okay.

Pokemon was sometimes 4-6 hours a day, when you added all of her sneaking and furtive access time. It was bad.

So, how bad is it that I just downloaded Civilization V into my computer couple days ago because I miss the old versions so much? And Sim City ... I know the day I show it to DS4.11, he'll sleep with the laptop in his bed! lol

As for the original question, DS4.11 isn't showing any special powers either. It's the little things that we notice in whatever he does and when he plays with other kids that tell us, yes, he's different. DS3.4 is clearly driven by academics but the older one LOVES being a kid and we love that about him. Our kid who just a year ago couldn't be around more than 3 or 4 kids because it was too overwhelming for his senses is now our little social butterfly.

Yeah, I agree with the other posts. He is 6. My dd turned out to be much more highly gifted than I had suspected and she still didn't seem like a prodigy at 6. (or now, lol!)

Yeah.

Meanwhile, back at the original thread... LOL

Apart from the occasional flash of insight my DD8 appears to be a normal kid - no sonatas, new scientific paradigms or medical breakthroughs in sight...

Wow ... you have just described my child too. 6 yo girl, in the 99 percentile too, and also unmotivated, unfocused, not intense, no perseverance, and very scattered in interest and attention. Also doesn't take well to instructions from ANYBODY. I am supposed to challenge her intellectually so that she will be less bored (all sorts of behavioural issues come up when she's bored), but have not been successful because she doesn't want to learn what I teach her or try to interest her in. And when I try to go along with what she is interested in, she doesn't stay in it long enough to do much learning on the topic. In any activity that I have signed her up for, whether gym, chess, ballet, etc all at her request, a common thread emerges. First the teachers will all tell me how bright she is, and at the first few lessons she will certainly look like she is the best in the group and doing well. A few more lessons down the road, she is all over the place, spinning and rolling on the floor, not listening to what is going on and generally aggravating the coaches so much that this time they are not telling me how bright she is, but what a problem she is. I'm afraid I don't have any answers for you ... but if it helps, you are not alone! I am trying to accept and learn that my child is a visual spatial and divergent thinker, and that she does not look like the "typical" gifted person or genius that we have come to believe from watching TV - u know the kind with obsessive interests and self-motivation, high achieving, etc.