Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The ultimate brag thread

Oh Barbara your post made me laugh...we have multiple calculators everywhere because DS5 loves them and has for several years...when he was 3, he would sit at restaurants/in the car/waiting for things and play with the calculator....we have one in his playroom, one in the car, one in my purse, one in his backpack....and then he saw a scientific calculator a few months ago and asked to put it on his santa list because he got all excited when daddy began to explain to him about the other number systems out there :-)

That's great!

Our 9m1w son sings to himself right before he goes to sleep. He's been doing this since 3 months.

We were at a high end audio shop when he was 6m old and we were listening to the speakers using Peter Cincotti's "Philadelphia" and when we turned on the good speakers, Mr W broke into a huge grin and starting humming the melody.

When he was 3m old, he smiled continously when he first heard a live piano. When the pianist started "Cast your fates to the wind," he let out a cry of joy and hummed the melody for days. Even today, when I start humming it, he will look up at me and stare at my face, smiling.

He knows and responds to requests in English and Spanish such as "Go get your book" or "go into the kitchen." Since 4m he has shaken his head no when he did not want something. A few weeks ago, my wife was at a neighbor's, and said "Its time to go." and he said, "bye bye!" and waved his arm.

He will go find his book or toy, and then throw it in front of him, crawl or cruise, pick it up, throw it a few feet, then repeat, until he gets where he wants to be with it.

We go to the book store every weekend. Our usual practice is that I will walk around with him in a chest harness looking at books until he gets excited about one. We will then sit down and I will read to him and then he will turn the page when I tell him. He usually gets a huge grin and will look at my lips and then back at the book while I read. Or he gets impatient and will want to flip to the next page!

He is easy to like as well - he smiles all the time at everyone he meets.

Mr W's fav toy is a box filled with goodies like rubber parts, cut-outs from different food packages, balls, etc. He turns the box on its side and rummages through it, pulling out stuff, looking it over, throwing discards over his shoulder, then going for the next object. I add new stuff just about every day. It occupies him for hours.

Most pawn shops near a University will have lots of cheap electronic junk. We have an old atari set that he will get to play with soon. His first computer will be a POJ (piece of junk), too.

When he starts to read heavily, we will be at half-price books and yard sales.

I might even take him to a junk yard. LOL.

DD2's speech has really become amazing recently, she sounds just like her 4 & 6yo brothers! A conversation I had yesterday that was just so cute and I haven't really shared anywhere because I know it sounds crazy.

DD2: Mommy, help me with my pants. The problem is- the zipper won't go up.
Me: OK, please stop taking your clothes off.

Repeat 5 times over the next 2 minutes.

Then-
DD2 comes in after fighting a losing battle with her shirt, one arm is stuck up in the air in the sleeve and the rest of the shirt is sort of shoved over her head in what appears to be a very uncomfortable position.

DD2: Mommy, help me! I don't know *what* the problem is!

And I was trying desperately not to laugh because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

oh, that is so adorable! No, you don't want to laugh at situations like that - but you sure do want to remember them.

Scientific calculators have made their appearance in our house- and when we visited my sister ... and SHE HAD ONE, TOO! oh my goodness what a find.

This is a fun thread, great stories!

The things I can remember right now seem weird and offbeat; but here are a couple stories-
We were at a pool and a man came over and asked ds8 about a toy he was playing with, a pretty cool rubber 'toypedo'. I could see this from across the pool. I asked what happened and ds said, "Oh, he asked about my toy, he asked where I got it, I think he thought it was his. But I explained I'd had it for several years and I think he saw it was older than his. He said he is looking for one like it, if I see it." I didn't think much more about it, but later saw my son speaking with the man again.
Turns out ds found another boy playing with the man's toy and explained to the boy that the man was looking for it. He got the toy back and delivered it to the man who was pretty surprised; he asked ds a bit about it, and the look on the man's face was just priceless. Anyway, I was proud he was able to assert himself and feel comfortable speaking with this guy and the other boy.
DD2.5 used to insist on my reading the R. Scary books over and over, and of course still really likes them. She has one huge one where around 1 year old she LOOOOOOVED flipping through the pages and finding the little bug that the author had hidden on every page (goldbug). By about 13 mos. or so she had the book basically memorized, she could find this bug anywhere, on every page without fail, faster than I could. She wanted to find that bug and she meant business!

Thanks for the thread. I have a couple of stories from today. First, since I am new to this idea of my DD(26 months) being termed as HG+ and the characteristics that come with the term, I figured I would buy her some board games. Nothing fancy and as I began looking at the pre-school ones I realized that DD already does the stuff that the games are suppose to teach her, so I bought a memory game and laid it out on the floor for her, explaining how the game works since she has never done a memory game before. It did not take her anytime to A. understand it and B. win the game. We always knew she had a memory but I was a little shocked at how quickly she remembered where all the pieces were after flipping them over once.

The other story is one that just made me laugh today. I am a graduate of U Texas so we watch our longhorns and over the last week she asked to watch the longhorns. I explained that she had to wait until Saturday, so last night I asked her if she knew what tomorrow was .. she thought about it and said Wednesday with a smile. (Wishful thinking since she dances on Wed.) I said no it is Saturday, longhorn game. So this morning we went to breakfast and she was sitting in a highchair with her hands hidden she asked her Grandmother and me what today was and when we ask what? she showed her hands, both with hookem signs and said "longhorns, hookem! It is football time!" It was so cute.

OK, here is my little brag:

DD5 was convinced that counting more than 20 was too difficult for her and almost got a panic attack every time I tried to make her count more than 20.
Until a few days ago, when she suddenly started counting up to 65 and she just stopped because she was tired of counting but she has obviously lost the fear that this is difficult. OUF!

Next one i hope is the puzzles: she is really afraid of them. I hope she overcomes this fear as well...

I cannot think of anything right now - It is time for bed now.

Thanks for this thread...it's fun to read about your kids...and always fun to brag!

In this past week or so our daughter (almost 2!) has almost mastered personal pronouns. She has had a hard time with using "I" instead of her name and I think she has it now!

DD started to show us that she understands simple addition...she was adding rocks as the playground the other day! She is very proud of this!

My biggest brag of all...she is finally sleeping through the night! I probably just jinxed it completed now! She has been sleeping so well in the last couple of weeks. She sleeps through the night, or wakes up just once! This is HUGE for us. We went almost 2 years with her waking up anywhere from 4 to 12 times a night.

YAY!!!

One of the things I have learned is never underestimate the sibblings, I have DD5 and DD4 (19 months apart) the 5 year old has what I beleive to be a photographic memory and has always wanted more and more info to learn, my 4 year old is a throw back from the 60's and is a free sprit loves to learn but does not have the same type of drive the older one has (a perfect balance for my 5 year olds perfection personallity) about 2 1/2 years ago when DD5 then almost 3 desided it was time to learn the months of the year, she was going through the calendar reading the months over and over (she learn to read before 2yrs), I told her to put it down and try it without looking. She said " January, February, March" and then she paused for a moment and little sis pipes in "April, May, June, July,August, ect....