Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Advice, ideas to keep a 3Y4M interested and busy

My LO is 3Y4M old. Although it's too early for any formal testing, we believe she may be gifted.

At 17 months, she could speak A to Z in sequence, count 1 to 20 in sequence, and speak several simple words. By 19 months, she could sing whole rhymes, and at 22 months was speaking compound and grammatically correct sentences.

Loves reading and if she finds a book of interest, gets us to read the book with her again and again every day for many days. At 2Y4M, she could sight-read a couple of her favorite books.

Has very good memory. Is able to precisely recall events, actions, names, faces, names of dinosaurs etc from months in the past. At 3Y, at a local science center - I mentioned the names of several popular people on photographs on a wall to her just ONCE, distracted her for 10 mins, and then asked her to point out the photo while I called out the name of each person. She got them all right. A whole week later, I showed her the same photographs on my phone and asked her to name the person � she got them all right.

Prefers to play with children much older than her � we think probably because they communicate as good as her, while children closer to her age aren�t as verbose.

Is an extreme perfectionist. If things aren't the way they are meant to be � she gets frustrated. She tries to make intricate connections with her toys, but her tiny hands wouldn�t let her, this makes her get frustrated. If things don�t follow a "pattern" that makes her upset � for instance, she turns on the bathroom light before brushing, if I do it by mistake � that makes her terribly upset. While climbing on a slide, I told her once "Watch your head". For the next several days, as she climbed the slide she told me "Say watch your head". If we make a grammar or pronunciation mistake, she immediately pounces on it, gets frustrated, and is quick to correct us saying that�s not how it is said. Even as early as 2Y old, during a play class, while all kids play with Maracas, she goes around picks up several Maracas, arranges them in a semi-circle pattern and keeps looking at the pattern.

Quite often, gets to ask us complicated questions like � "What do you see as a dragon?" "What happens when banana goes into the sky?" and makes statements like "I want to climb on the slide and slide on the climb" "My nose is not small, my nose is bigger than a small nose" "If ring is rang, why is bring not brang". And to top it all � when I told her "<name> Stop" while she was doing something. She said "I'm not Alexa. Say 'Can you please Stop'" If you own an Amazon Echo, you'd know what she meant.

And above all, the biggest challenge for us is her emotional intensities. She gets frustrated pretty quickly, is deeply disturbed if mom or dad look upset, insists too much on fairness � for instance, she always readily shares her toys and expects other kids to do the same � which they generally don't, and she gets very upset with it. Sometimes starts to randomly look at nowhere in particular into what seems to appear like "an abstract state of thinking" like daydreaming. She remains in that state for several seconds, to sometimes nearly a minute.

If she's being asked to do something that she considers not interesting, she doesn't hesitate to ignore it entirely and do her own stuff � her Pre-K3 teachers observe this at school as well.

Now, considering all this � I�d like to know some tips and inputs you may have to keep such a person constantly challenged with activities that may interest them. Weekends and holidays in particular throw us a challenge as we are running out of ideas to keep her into something that she finds interesting. We live in New Jersey, so any suggestions to places we could take her would help too. She doesn't like Zoos � because she doesn't like to just "look", she wants to "do" things. She likes the local Science Center, we are members there and she goes there once nearly every month.

Any thoughts, advice, ideas, places you could suggest would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.

Physical stuff - hiking, swimming etc to take some of the edge off. Does she sleep OK. Some of the things are red flags for ASD so keep an eye on it but there is a lot of overlap and things change.

You might want to spend quality time together simply helping your child become aware of her community. Some ideas are:
- Taking walks or local "adventures" to grocery stores, pet shops, garden centers, discount stores, restaurants, lakes, etc,
- Talking about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g you observe together, as this helps build vocabulary,
- People-watching (including observing behavior, emotions, and moods),
- Taking photos, collecting souvenirs (from leaves and pebbles to business cards), then putting them in a box ("treasure chest") or scrapbook to review, sort through, talk about, and reminisce on other days.

As already mentioned, some of the behavior exhibited by your child may be related to ASD (or not). The CDC has a lot of information online; This CDC webpage on ASD may be a good place to begin researching, in the event your child and family may need assistance in learning to live with ASD. DSM-5 Diagnostic criteria here.

Thanks everyone. Lots of helpful information and tips here. I'm beginning to put some of them into DD's context. Hope it would give her the much needed avenue to explore.

What a lovely age and a fun little one you have on your hands. Above all, please let your mantra be to follow the child. In terms of stimulation and nurturing interests, it's difficult to go wrong with interest-led activities.

That being said, a prepared environment or an enthusiastic parent-playmate can be a tremendous boon to an inquiring little mind.

You may be surprised at the degree to which physical and mental stimulation are interchangeable. Puffin suggests physical activities. I second this. With my DS, a good 2-3 hours of active, energetic physical play or exploration each day helps take the edge off some of the more insistent behaviors.

For activities, the sky is really the limit. Disregard age-norms on most activities or interests--except maybe the physical restraints, which tend to move more closely to lockstep with age. I'd suggest:

- Keeping a steady rotation of new reading material on hand, both fiction and non-fiction. If you have accessible shelving or bins in which to display the books, your child can guide the exploration and delve into new interests. Your library card will quickly become (if it hasn't already) more valuable than your credit card!

- Exploring museums, plays, musical performances, restaurants, cultural festivals, etc. as a way to explore new topics and new people. Being active in the community is a wonderful segue to friendships and passion projects as children get older.

- Encourage sport, for several reasons. Obviously health and team-spirit are two offshoots of sports involvement (and it doesn't have to be formal--it can be just a few neighbourhood children running around with a ball). But, for your child, combating perfectionism will be key. Sports are a great equalizer--there is always a new technique to be learned, even the most gifted natural athletes need to train to achieve elite status. It's great for humility and perspective. Cultivate that early and often. I'm convinced that resilience is more important than intelligence in terms of determining long-term outcomes for gifted children as they mature. (But that's anecdata, not data!)

- Music, for an interested child, can be an avenue to self-expression. You'll know from your child's cues whether this is appropriate now. Even if it's just singing and dancing together as a family, or your LO watching mum or dad play an instrument, it opens the mind to the possibility of musical expression.

- Languages, for the same reason as above.

- Building and disassembly. For mechanically inclined children, this might tend toward an engineering bent, a curiosity about life sciences, what have you... There are lots of great toys that foster fine motor skills and encourage creative thought. Some favourites for us at that age were Lego (just starting, still fiddly with fine motor until early 4ish), Magformers (there are now many me-too knock-off products that are much cheaper), Tinker Toys, straws and connectors, and Bunch'ems. Random collections of authentic tools and construction pieces can be fun for children to explore building with. DS LOVED helping his grandpa with designing and building a fence this summer.

- We recently bought a subscription to the Kiwi Crate/Tinker Crate products. They have a wide variety of age ranges. It's been a hit.

- Leverage YouTube and documentaries to the extent that interest dictates. Depending on where you live, I'd consult the website of your local public broadcaster. Their content tends to be more educational, and there are often online games/extension activities that further motivate interest.

- Incorporate learning into games you play. As you're walking through your neighbourhood, play games that involve word play, observation, hypothesis testing, observation, etc. On a brief walk around town you could:

1. Do a running count of a certain mark of car
2. Estimate the number of steps it takes to get from X to Y
3. Discuss why different features of bridges/buildings are chosen from a structural perspective, and the build your own models at home out of food to test different shapes/structures.
4. Track animals and observe evolutionary differences between different species.
5. Listen to a street busker and learn about a new instrument.
6. Talk about how a bicycle works as someone cycles by.
7. Make a running story where you alternate one word at a time to add to the plot.
8. Make up imaginary back stories to the activities of the people you pass.

As I said, the sky is the limit. My opinion is that the intellectual side takes care of itself in a gifted child exposed to a stimulating environment. What's important is to accentuate the "soft" life skills--humour, resilience, social graces, curiosity--that will stand your child in good stead as time goes on.

Celebrate failures as learning opportunities. I saw perfectionism's ugly head with DS when he was 3ish and consciously started to ratchet up the difficulty of some things we were doing so that failure was inevitable. Then we'd gleefully celebrate a failure as the best way to learn. Better to learn how to fail and persevere at 3 than at 15...or later!

And, most of all, have FUN! These years and children are precious and a real gift to their parents.

We have a similar situation with our 3yo. So I tend to plan weekends out in advance. Subject to change if my son just wants to do something else but I'm never waking up and trying to decide what to do.

We have annual memberships at the zoo, aquarium, museum, various kids places. Then we go to one or the other regularly. Hiking is great. Art class is fun. We added soccer as an area where he can learn to compete and learn to handle failure.

Also, we're starting to organize a regular play date with some local kids at our place. And every week a different parent takes a turn hosting so that no one is forced to always be available.

Without knowing your neighborhood, we take long walks as well. He pedals his bicycle or scoots the scooter as we walk to and from errands.

That was a long-winded way to say that planning the weekends well in advance will reduce the stress of trying to figure what to do. You can always change it but I've founded that letting DS know what's on the schedule makes it easier for him as well.