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Oh yes. My favorite response to "Do you work with him a lot?" is, "Oh no. He's just like that."

It's vague enough that the layman doesn't usually dig deeper, but the GT initiated know *exactly* what I mean!

ROFLMAO!!!

Yes JD of course for sure people have said this to me. And actually early on I did think I was a great teacher!! I did take credit early on. And then things got really bizzare where my DS would know stuff I didnt even know like ALL the shapes of the states! He had flash cards w/just the shape on the back to learn the capitals well not only did he learn the capitals he learned all the shapes. That was when I told my husband now this is really freaky, and that was when we had him tested. This was a 4 yrs old. Your child is very young, once she surpasses even your expectations then people will stop thinking it is you. Well that is what happend w/us.

Yep Jen I do hate hate hate the comment "does he ever play" !!!! Ok like I crack the whip on him 24/7 LOL

Then what about the parents who have gifted and non-gifted kids, guess people think one is favored over the other.
My 2nd son, couldn't do a 3 piece puzzle to save his life.
And I do try to teach letters but he is clearly not ready, he will simply throw them at me. You just can't force kids to learn if they are not ready no matter how many treats you throw at them LOL

I have a friend who I told her about ds's IQ score. She said, "why did you push him so much?". I didn't! You cannot "study" to take an IQ test.

DD4 cannot speak well. I am glad I don't need to "hide" her like I did with ds.

I had a Sunday school teacher at our church once suggest that I play with my child. LOL. I really wasn't sure what to say about that. I play with him all the time...maybe even a little too much. We recently made a list together of things he can play by himself so that he can have some more time doing his own thing. He does play by himself, but sometimes he needs reminders of things that he can play by himself.

The sad thing is there are programs that parents utilize that is just like this... Mybabycanread is the one that comes to mind. I have heard people spout off about this program on other boards and it goes against everything in my being... I really don't know why. Then last weekend I was flipping through the channels and saw that they have an infomerical so I recorded it to see what this program is that a few rave about. It is clearly a strap them in the highchair and feed them flashcards system.

Does this fall under the Baby Einstein syndrome? The argument is the synopses from infancy to age 5 is at the highest and by using systems like this you are tapping into their raw abilities. So the babies that pick up a few words through this system, are they gifted or will they even out?

But I think with programs like this, those of us that did not push our children do get lumped in with them. It really is frustrating.

I don't know about that programme, but when DS was tiny I did a bit of reading about this - my mother used flashcards with me a bit so I wondered. The programme suggested by the Domans, which I think is what set this all off, is actually very mild compared with the reputation of this kind of thing. It's a long time since I read the book, but as far as I remember, what they recommended for babies was doing flashcards for seconds per day, never doing it unless the baby seemed interested, being careful not to test too much, etc. I decided not to do it because it seemed pointless, but not because I felt it was actually going to do the children any harm. In fact I remember being very irritated with the book Einstein never used flashcards (if I have that title correct) because it seemed to be attacking a strawman: it was assuming that parents were using flashcards to such an extent that it interfered with other things they might be doing with their children, whereas as I remember it there was always room for something else that would take a few minutes! Although, if there really are programmes out there that recommend doing flashcards with babies for hours, maybe it wasn't such a strawman as I thought...

These stories are funny and, apparently, pretty common.

I guess I should say that sometimes DH doesn't really help. I found out that he credits my DS being able to read at 3 all to me. I was aghast, seriously, LOL. The misunderstanding comes from DS having had a big foam puzzle/playmat that had the letters/numbers that could be punched out. We used to play on that all the time, and DS would ask what's this? what's that? and so on, so I told him. Hence, I guess I "drilled" him with the alphabet and numbers. Well, then came the "what does that say?" all the time while driving. You know, reading every road sign and billboard to him wasn't possible, so I explained to him that he'd be able to read them himself one day once he learned what sounds the letters make. Then...."what does A say? What does B say" and so on. And it wasn't long that he was sounding out words himself. And *I* get full credit for teaching him how to read. I had to set DH straight on that one - making me look like some kind of schoolmarm.....

Someone gave us the Baby Einstein tapes and I liked them. We were in Germany at the time and programming wasn't as varied as it is here. I liked them because they were mellow and relaxing, not so much for the 'instruction'. I had a pretty active non-stop toddler, so anything that kept his attention for 20 minutes or so was good for me, but it's not as if he spent all day watching them. I'm sure the series is great, but I don't credit them for DS being the way he is. My personal opinion is that if educational programming was really capable of increasing kids' IQs or performance or whatever the claim is, there'd be a lot more kids like this. I'm sure it doesn't hurt, but I don't know that it necessarily helps either. Just my thoughts.