Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school 3yo needs so. much. input.

This is exactly where I was a little over a year ago. My husband was strongly against the idea of another baby because we knew we couldn't survive more years like the ones we'd just been through. But I thought, what are the odds... Thankfully DD1m is the mellow baby we prayed for, but I see a gleam in her eye sometimes that makes me wonder what we're in for further down the road.

I'm not going to lie though, pregnancy was hard because I had even less energy than normal. I looked into preschools, but nothing that seemed like a good fit ended up working out. I felt bad that I couldn't play with DS3 as actively while I was pregnant and after DD was born, not having as much time for DS made me feel very guilty at times. It's been a tough adjustment, but not quite as bad as I imagined. This was partly thanks to my husband, who used up all his vacation time and worked from home whenever possible, since we knew our son would need a lot of help with the transition.

All that said, I wouldn't change things and I'm glad we went for it. But it's such a personal decision. We are definitely done at two, no more Russian roulette for me since I'm not sure how #3 would turn out. I don't want to push my luck.

We've occasionally joked that DD13 is "good enough for two children," as our tongue-in-cheek explanation for why she's an only (which is complicated and frankly nobody's business anyway)...

but the real reason is at least partly that she's just.... ENOUGH for two children. Enough intensity, enough curiosity, enough conversation, enough stubbornness, enough unrelated medical problems, etc. etc. She's just been an e-ticket ride from day one.

I sometimes feel like she's given us the parenting experiences that some of our friends with three or four haven't had. (Seriously.)

I'm very sorry to tell you this, but my DD is nearing 7 and still talks nonstop. I have to say, she comes by it naturally; I still remember myself at that age, and I drove my brother insane.

I don't think I could handle it if I had been home with her all the time before she started school.

Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!

I've tried answering her in a mocking version of her shriek, to make a point, but unfortunately all it's done is become a habit for me, so that when either kid says "Mom!" I automatically shriek "What?"

I've had some slight success with inquiring "is anyone bleeding?" "Is anyone on fire?" but it only gets a momentary respite before the summons resume.

My mother is undoubtedly laughing her butt off at me when I can't go to the bathroom without at least one child.

I'm reviving this thread because it is so à propos. 2 years later, DS is still a non-stop conversation on legs. Everything is lived through a detailed play-by-play, often accompanied by excitement that leaks out physically as an impromptu Martha Graham style interpretive dance. Thankfully, he now eats (with a steady stream of books.)

I, on the other hand, have gotten softer around the edges (both figuratively and literally!) Now, DS can accompany me on my workouts (and I have learned to listen patiently to a diatribe on whatever while doing deadlifts) and I can slap together a meal for us that takes more than 5 minutes of active prep. The constant input need is still exhausting, but in a more forgiving way than before because DS is developing a better appreciation that his parents do fatigue.

One big sanity saver has been DS' sleep maturation, whereby he can self-sustain sleep for an hour or more without direct physical contact. I no longer need to actively manage his sleep environment. (As I type, he's snoozing beside me, without our touching, as hammering is going on below us.)

I'd be interested in a redux from the other posters.

Hi Aquinas,

It's gotten better for us too. At almost 4.5, DS still talks nonstop when he is interested in having a conversation or playing or in the bathtub/shower... Lots of interpretive dance and singing here too. He is absolutely silent when reading, which he does very intensely. I check in on him because the silence makes me a bit nervous that he might be up to something.

He is eating better too. He will sit and eat at the table with us. Occasionally, he wanders off for a bit, but he comes back to finish eating. He doesn't eat as quickly at the table as he does when watching tv or reading a book, but we are now easing into those better eating habits. We no longer feed him while playing. He's welcome to take a break and have a snack though and often does. He still out and out refuses most junk food, so some of those early habits have paid off. He just didn't develop a taste for them (yet).

Some days he intensely wants my attention and input and other days, he really just wants to be independent and my presence (hovering) just isn't wanted. I can actually make a real meal that takes a lot of prep. Two years ago I wouldn't have thought it was possible.

As for sleeping, he sleeps in a bed tent that looks like a race car over a twin mattress on the floor. He still rolls out of bed every once in a while, so it isn't on a box spring or bed frame. Every once in a while, he'll call for me to get him a cup of water in the middle of the night, even though he knows it is next to his bed. No complaints on my end though. He'll probably grow out of it eventually.

This is so funny.
DS is 8 and I STILL have to yell at him to STOP! BITE! CHEW! And frequently "Come back to the table!"

For cultural reasons, I refuse to have books or any screen time going on during a family meal (I eat while working or reading by myself of course which is, um, totally different). So, he will have to learn how to sustain a multilateral dinner conversation and still eat. Not easy. Having him learn to read fluently, sustainably at age five was such a wonderful development for our family. It's only when the non stop talking stops during the day that you realize just how exhausting it is (and I am an introvert to boot).

These days, I am also not above to just telling to stop and shut up. Nicely, the first time. Not so nicely the fifth. Sometimes I need to hear my own thoughts.

Oh, and the sleep thing really got better around age 5.5, too. Not sure whether it is coincidental, but feel being able to get sustained intellectual input while reading quirky in a corner as opposed to getting it through an activity that somehow winds you up (talking, screen time etc) really helped.

I'm here! It's funny, I'm currently going through another wave of "Oh God, is my child gifted? Do I have to get him tested? I need help!!!!" and feelings of despair. I hate googling for information about this, because first I have to wade through the layer of stuff about "you probably think your kid is gifted but you're probably wrong" to get to the people I can relate to, who are more like "Listen, it's more helpful to think of my kid as someone with a disability who requires accommodation" than people who are happily sharing the information that their kid is very smart. So naturally I came back here to read what other people are going through, and saw this thread had floated back up.

My son is 5 now. The short version is that nothing has really changed, only intensified further. I have learned more coping and self-care skills in the intervening years, but as I've learned to cope more, so has his intensity increased (in fact, I think that my improved ability to remain calm in the face of his emotional intensity has slowly taught him that it's safe to let that stuff run - hoo, boy, mixed blessing), so that overall I feel that I'm emotionally in a sort of holding pattern. I level up, he levels up, etc. Very Red Queen. I feel that my central challenge has been to accept that he is the way he is, no matter what label gets put on that way of being, and I increasingly have. Other parenting opinions are less important to me now, because I can see that they just don't really apply to someone who is the way he is. Great, you think that the key to parenting is to be "firm and consistent"? Meet my child, who has been brushing his teeth every night for years and who resists like SPARTAAAAAA every single night with novel arguments. His father is a successful lawyer with extremely powerful arguing skills and he still gets argued into the ground. (Which is the kind of thing where if you don't have that same experience, will sound like... "but the parents obviously just need to put their foot down", I know.)

It made me laugh to read in this post that he was, at three, interested in taking out window screens, because I had forgotten, but right now he's going through another phase of that. (Apparently he had an idea that if he could take one out, it would make a great pretend giant screen computer ala Star Trek or something.) So his behavior and intensity has not really changed, but now I talk to him like he's an adult, basically, about why it doesn't work to take out window screens. It still takes many, MANY repetitions, because his drive to do things he wants/needs to do to satisfy curiosity is so intensely powerful. What has changed is that I am more able to accept that this is a fundamental trait in him that is not helped by being authoritarian. So it's more that I am able to remain calm in the face of the totally insane things he does and less that he does saner things.

In a lot of ways, my family/domestic life revolves around managing his intensity. The way our home is decorated (nothing can hang on walls - all furniture is chosen to be safe for people who need to parkour around the room), the way I feed him (yes, it's great that your child is eventually convinced to join in what everyone else is eating - thanks for your opinion that I could easily make this happen with my child if I tried harder), the way I run errands (without him whenever possible). Our family life is essentially designed, at this point, to be the path of least resistance for dealing with someone who is extremely driven, extremely intense, extremely emotional, extremely physical, extremely curious. Other families have "screentime limits", ours has conversations about how marketers try to manipulate children into desiring their products using narrative and cute characters they recognize. The forbidden fascinates him. I have learned the hard way to not forbid ("Because I said so" does not work with him. Trust me, I've tried. It doesn't.) and instead to talk to him about listening to your own brain's instincts about safety, emotional safety, etc.

My bottom line at this point is that I have a radical child-rearing approach that makes it often really hard for me to relate to or talk with other parents in a genuine way. (I think it's easy for the way I parent to seem "permissive" to others, which makes me feel sad, defensive and isolated.) My home life feels not very similar to other peoples' home life. Mom and dad are still the ultimate authority here, but our lives are also set up so that he can make as many of his own choices as possible. It just feels like he isn't like other kids so dramatically that I've had to piece together a child-rearing system that looks very little like other peoples'. That often makes me feel like I'm alone in the universe, as a mother.

He's in his last year of a progressive preschool program and will go to their elementary program next year. It's a very non-traditional child-led program, which is (I hope) a good fit for him, because he shuts down in the face of direct instruction. I went through a short phase of encouraging him to learn to read (for probably obvious reasons) and all that happened was that he would dig in, get extremely resistant, and then when I wasn't paying attention do math on his own or whatever. He is not a person who generally benefits from direct instruction unless he has come to you asking for it. Answering unasked questions, with him, is counterproductive. I went through something similar with trying to potty-train: it was totally pointless, a power struggle that went nowhere. Once I backed off completely and was able to genuinely say "You'll figure this out when you're ready. It's okay to wait until you're ready", he potty-trained (including overnight) from literally one day to the next, without my "help".

My best metaphor for thinking about parenting him is to think that he's a visiting alien dignitary I have been assigned to show around the planet. Thinking that I'm here to teach him how things are, how to behave, how to do things, backfires almost every single time. Thinking, instead, that I am here to facilitate growth that emerges from within him, is the only way to make things work moderately well for both of us.

For us as parents, this trait of resisting direct instruction tends to feed our "Is he actually "gifted"? Are we crazy?" because there isn't something specific and academic to point to to bolster our suspicions. He isn't reading Shakespeare. (He sight-reads certain words but aggressively resists phonics or direct reading instruction.) He has an enormous and ever-increasing vocabulary, but we can never tell if that's an indication of anything. He self-generates math for himself, but it's just addition and subtraction and some multiplication. He has broad, intense interests. He has extremely grandiose ideas that far, far outstrip his ability to execute those ideas in physical reality, which is very frustrating for him - this is a major issue that is hard for me to figure out how to support. The gap between where he is (can build a circuit in his Snap Circuits) and where his ideas are (autonomous robot that will pick up his toys) is enormous and very disappointing to him. Starting at three, he's had moments of having very intense feelings about things like the infinity of the universe or the finite nature of biological life. He had a series of spiritual/existential "crises" (I don't know what else to call them) starting at around the time I wrote this first post. They were really hard for me to cope with, because talking to someone who is three about whether or not there is a consciousness that persists after death feels very complicated. I've had conversations about spirituality with him that are more difficult and complex than most conversations I've had with adults. (I'm not saying that to brag - if anything, I'm saying this because OH GOD HELP ME.)

I still find parenting him very challenging. I feel even more than I once did that he isn't much like most other kids. I still wrestle with "is this giftedness? or is this... something else?" His father and I repeatedly cycle through wondering if he has some kind of mild developmental disorder that causes Difficult Personality Syndrome or if this is all part of the way in which his brain is an uncommon one.

His emotional intensity has been hardest for me to deal with. I've gotten some use out of Dabrowski's theory of overexcitabilities here, but fundamentally I am still in the position where I have to live with/parent someone who can have very deep sadness or anger over things like there not being more milk in the fridge, or be sad for days that a house he built in Minecraft burned down. It's very easy to find myself tiptoeing around him. I often feel unqualified. Like maybe my kid needs a group of gurus/therapists to follow him around and buffer the world for him, but instead what he's got is me. I could at least use an 800 number for emergencies, you know?

Re: sleep, it took a long time to get him to be able to sleep apart from me. He now spends part of the night in his own room and part of the night next to my side of the bed. I'd like to get to a place where I no longer have to sit next to him as he falls asleep, but path of least resistance. I try to remember the lesson of potty training, which is that his development tends to be invisible, invisible, invisible, BOOM, total radical change you didn't see coming.

I've learned, in terms of self-care, to use the time he's in preschool to meditate and do yoga and take care of myself instead of trying to work. It's been a tough journey for me: I defined myself in terms of my work (which I LOVED and was the center of my life before becoming a mother) but for right now, the sanity that becomes possible when I take care of myself is more important than my work. (But I really miss it.)

Right now, my husband and I are trying to figure out whether or not have him evaluated. I feel quite fearful of what I worry will be an initial gauntlet of "All parents think their children are geniuses" headpatting, because I find raising him to be so exhausting and overwhelming - I don't want bragging rights, I want help, insight, and support!

appleblossom, I don't know if it makes you feel better but FWIW, I am raising a girl version of your DS and it is really exhausting and overwhelming. Yesterday, we spent the whole morning outdoors and I thought that'd slow her down. She practiced music all afternoon. At that point, I thought she was physically and mentally exhausted. I tried to send her to bed after dinner but her response was, "But Mommy, how am I supposed to go to sleep? I'm not tired at all." I wanted to cry.

DD4 had to get evaluated for K entrance and I have no regrets but if your DS is happy at his school and you feel his educational needs are being met, I'd hold off on the eval until he is 6 so he can take the WISC. I think you'd get more of a complete picture that way.

Appleblossom, just wanted to chime in that although things have majorly improved for us, it is still incredibly exhausting. Our house is definitely set up for parkour. :-). And a trampoline is a necessity in our tv room.

I'm glad you have a school that is fitting. That is really great. We're pretty much planning to homeschool. The unschoolers groups have been a good fit for us for the most part, although there are a few parents who don't appreciate that our son has interests they deem too academic. That has more to do with their own issues. For the most part the groups and kids have been welcoming and the parents are accepting of the intensity and self driven decision making. The older kids have been great for our son.

We are thinking of waiting until at least age 6 for the WISC to have DS tested. Our main motivator is access to programs like DYS.