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

...when your 7 year old leads the kids at the park through playing a pretend game of being "prehistoric nomads" scavenging for food and seeking shelter.

... when your son's 2nd grade teacher informs you that he finished his class assignments early and requested to borrow a copy of her personal dictionary to read at his desk for fun.

When your DD11 explains that our dog is perfect in every way except being NOT perfect.

Our DD11 says our dog is perfect as well. We were discussing our very not perfect dog in the car (the dog drives me crazy!!!). But then she asked if there is no perfection in the world, "Why is there even a definition of perfect?". And it went on from there. Who defines perfection? How would we know what perfection is?

When DS comes home at the end of the school year and gives you his AP Calc AB textbook in new condition with the spine un-cracked. You ask, "did you even use this book?" He replies, "Didn't need it." You ask, "how did you do the homework?" He replies, "it wasn't checked or graded so I didn't need to." You face-palm yourself and recall your meeting with the head of the math department in which you requested that your son be able to skip AP Calc AB and go directly into AP Calc BC and were denied because that would be too difficult. Then you look at your child and marvel at the ability to get an A+ in AP Calc AB without breaking a sweat. After that brief reflection, your child says, "I could have learned everything in that class in a week." You warn him, "The first 3/4 of AP Calc BC will be rather boring for you next year." #RigidSchoolsAdminS*ck

You find yourself researching scholarly articles on GI tract colonization in Colobus monkeys to answer your four year old's question.

We saw a nature show that said that they have gastric bacteria that helps them break down poisons in the leaves they eat and my son wanted to know how the babies get this bacteria in their stomach before they eat leaves for the first time.

You drop your 11 year old off for the first day of summer camp. It's Shakespeare camp and she has been looking forward to it for months. The director tells us they will be working on "A Midummer Night's Dream" and DD shreiks with delight, jumps up and down and does a happy dance. Every adult in the room breaks into ear-to-ear grins. Every kid in the room looks at her side ways and raises their eyebrows as if to say "What the ...?"

I'm guessing the camp may have been chosen for the other kids by their parents. Hoping DD's enthusiasm will be infectious. But either way SHE is going to have a blast

when you get a library card to your small town library, and you have read almost every kid's book in the place at the request of your two year old.

Shes getting a handle on letters and words, and is not yet reading independently, but we read, at minimum... 40 books yesterday. Work is a welcome rest, HA!

When your 8-year old son is explaining to another kid about the awesome skid marks our dog left around the base of a tree when he chased a squirrel and he explains that Dog "couldn't find purchase" and you have to intercept to avoid the argument with the parent who is starting to say "that's not what purchase means." Oh - and you have no idea where DS learned this meaning of purchase.

DS4.5 described me as his "culinary acolyte" when I helped him make homemade lemonade.

He also decided to play "pet vet" yesterday. At DS' behest, the action included stem cell transplants, nanobots, and treating a seeming epidemic of croup. At one point, we had to refer to an ophthalmic surgeon (also played by DS). Luckily, all the patients were saved, no matter how dire the initial prognosis.