Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion You know you're parenting a gifted child when...

Yes, they must live in the land of Bristol;)

When your 8 yo's Christmas project is writing a book about the elements, inspired by Theodore grey. He and DH are attempting to take their own pictures of every element in the periodic table and he writes his own texts and designs the pages using indesign, copying out the relevant chemical in formation from Wikipedia where he needs it. DH, who is a science teacher in high school, takes him in the labs on afternoons and weekends to photograph the more arcane elements (and I get the cutest pictures of DS in a lab coat and goggles earnestly handling sodium or something with tongs). They have decided that they will have to include drawings of the elements even DH is unwilling or unable to procure (some of the more radioactive stuff will have to wait) to have it ready for Christmas to give copies to the grandparents. He will come running into our bedroom in the mornings while I am still bleary eyed, sipping my tea, and yell excitedly that indium will have to be blue because he just found out the name is derived not from India but the colour indigo and I'm like uhhh yeah, did you change out of your pjs yet!

When your five year old runs up to you and hands you a piece of paper and proclaims that it is a picture showing your skin cycle. She then goes through the stages on the page, which you realize is a flow chart, explaining how your body sheds skin. Then she runs off to her room to play dress up.

Your son, on his fourth birthday, asks seemingly out of nowhere how the world ends. It began, so it must end. And agrees with your explanation of it contracting and having a new Big Bang. And asks hours later as he goes to sleep how can the people be not here when the Big Bang comes. Uh, have a cupcake!

your child is able to quickly find, during a discussion about a story in a book, ONE WORD he read in that book few weeks ago. In our case it's the name Lucille!

DS3, who prefers to not show that he can read, today leaked a bit more of his ability. After asking me to turn to the last page of our book upside down so we could read the story backwards and inside out, he suddenly says, "rehtorb". I ask him to repeat himself because I didn't catch what he had said. He says, "mama, rehtorb is brother backwards. See?"

The page had literally been open for about 3 seconds when he said that, and the page was covered in text. What is his little brain doing?!

This doesn't totally fit but it made me smile so I thought I'd share anyway.

Long story leading up to this but I was making small talk at the grocery store and the cashier says something about there being a lot of poisonous things in Australia and said he couldn't remember the name but there's even an animal with a venomous spike on its hind leg. Without even thinking I respond - "oh yeah that is the platypus" (There is NO way I would have known this without DS8 in my life). The cashier then says "no, I don't think that is it". I then look to DS to back me up (after all he is the definitive source of animal trivia). He then says "No, my mom's right, it is the platypus" and then goes on with a few more details and continues to debate with the cashier.

The cashier beside us turns around and says "what are you talking about now..... you keep having the weirdest conversations...". I had to smile at the ~16 year old cashier. I feel like this whole adventure with DS has opened up my eyes to seek out gifted kindred spirits.

Yesterday my 26 month old told me, "I prefer bigger kids like [brother] because little kids like me don't really talk much."

Teachers told me that DS5 invited a classmate over for a play date and suggested that they turn the radio dial between stations and listen to the radiation leftover from the big bang. The teacher reported that the other kid said, "huh?"

So I thought DS4 was slowing down in math a little because he's been writing addition sentences and skip counting patterns for quite some time, but he wasn't really moving onto subtraction. He could figure out the answer to a given "subtraction scenario" but he wasn't writing out problems. Not that it matters, but it was just odd to me. It was one of those times where found myself thinking, "Well maybe the gap will close. Maybe it will all even out by third grade."

Then a few days ago we were reading a book about the planets & DS was quite impressed with some of the negative high temperatures listed. The next day he was writing while I was making dinner. When I looked at the paper there were several subtraction problems with negative answers (eg, 20-50=-30). Sooo... Maybe the gap won't close after all.

DD6 gets upset at some road construction and yells out the window, "Don't you know the animals have almost no habitat left???"