Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Suddenly hit by how different my Wolf is...

I was dropping him off at "school" the other day and was struck by how different he is than the other kids there. It is a potty trained daycare through K setting where he goes for socialization and learning how to deal with groups and group mind issues (a learned skill...). Most of the kids are his age or older with a few younger.

I let the teacher take a quick bathroom break and suddenly I was topic of interest du jour. I was swarmed by a school of 5-6 year olds (there is a reason fish travel in schools it's hard to pick out individuals!) bombarding me with questions. Who was I, why was I there, etc...

Then one girl commented that she was going to be going to Wolf's birthday sometime next week. I said, "Oh you mean Sunday? it's only three days away, Friday, Saturday then Sunday." She looked at me as though I was speaking in Greek and then went off on how she was turning 6 and would have to miss another friend's party because it was on the same day.

Then one of the boys mentioned he was turning 7 soon. I asked when? He looked confused and said in a very unsure tone, "A few weeks?"

Wolf has known the days of the week for over half of a year and has been counting down the days to his birthday (by number and by calendar days... in his head...) for weeks.

It was such a weird experience... I'm not normally made so clearly aware of how different he is.

We were rarely around other children our son's age during the first few years of his life, so nothing that he did really struck us as "different."

But when we finally decided to take him to preschool, the differences were considerable and quite startling.

We've got an incredibly little guy on our hands (the most incredible in the universe, of course) and I often wonder what he's going to do to surprise us next.

I had this same moment, but not with DS7 and classmates, just between brothers. My youngest is gifted still, but in very different ways than his brother. He seems to be going through a lot of the developmental confusions that most kids do (dates, reversing letters, spelling difficulties), but every time it happens I have to ask around and find out if it's normal, since DS7 never had any of these issues.

My DS is going to start pre-k in 2 weeks, our 1st time.
I have a feeling I am going to have a wake up.
We have not been around any other 3yo recently. I use his his gifted sister as a reference and he surpasses her intensity/curiosity at this age.

I had a similar experience this past weekend. My DS4 had a playdate at a local science museum with ND twin girls slightly older than him, and the differences were enough to make me think it might be time to talk to DS4 about giftedness. At the dinosaur exhibit, the girls were clearly struggling with the concept of extinction; my son excitedly chimed in with, "The birds that are alive today are descendants of dinosaurs." At a bug exhibit, after DS4 correctly pointed out the differences between the male and female of a certain species, the girls asked their parents what "female" means. The parents explained it in terms of "the mommy" and "the daddy," which sounded like babytalk compared to the conversations I'm used to having with my son. When the girls pointed to "little fishies" in a tank, my son correctly told them "Actually, that's a diving beetle." He wasn't trying to show off, just stating what he'd read right next to the exhibits moments before.

I'm struggling with how to tell him it might be best to keep his enthusiasm to himself. No one has ever told him he's "smart" or "gifted" and he assumes other kids his age can read, so he really has no clue. Luckily, the other parents on the playdate didn't understand half of what he said, so it wasn't a big deal, but I got increasingly nervous as the playdate went on and I realized just how big (and apparent) the gap really was.

Wyldkat, I hear you. My oldest is now 20 and those weird feelings of being from a different planet don't come as often now. But they do happen occasionally, and they can be very disconcerting.

As an example, my son is performing in Macbeth this week. A couple weeks ago, a college student (from a small but respected private liberal arts college) was brought in to talk to the cast. She said that she was majoring in Shakespeare. She told us a bit about the Bard; when he wrote Macbeth; when it was first performed. THEN, she went on to tell us that King James was the son of "Bloody Mary". I could hardly stand to listen to her after that. I waited politely until the end of her presentation, and then raised my hand for the comments. I said that I had a minor point to correct, and went on to say that "Bloody Mary" was Mary Tudor and she had no children. James's mother was Mary (Stuart) Queen of Scots. The young woman then said that it was Elizabeth who had no children! ARGH! I was ready to tear out my hair. So I very nicely repeated the facts, and she refused to entertain the idea that she might be wrong. She just stated that that's what she had learned in her such and such class. I had to go outside and call my nine year old daughter to vent. She was absolutely shocked that a college student who is studying Shakespeare could make such an error. DD knew the correct history when she was four or five year old.

Ms Friz, please don't ask your son to keep his enthusiasm to himself! Let him be who he is, without apology or shame. He's not showing off, he is just being himself.

We've had several of these moments over the past 5 years. The most recent was when my cousin's DD was visiting. She is going into 2nd grade this year. DS5 was helping HER with her homework (she is tutored over the summers).

It's just so . . . awkward. I guess more than anything, I probably need to start finding him some (much) older friends, so he's not always in the position of knowing more than his playmates.

Wolf's best friend is 2 1/2 years older than him. She is ND on the bright side and Wolf STILL knows more than she does about almost everything. Heck he knows more than I do about some things!!! There are areas that his friend knows more about, it all has to do with interests. If it is a subject your DS is passionate about odds are you will be hard pressed to find teachers who know more than he does at some point (and of course those who insist they are right when they are very definitely NOT! lol). {shrug} It's not easy, but it's life with these guys...

My DD4 does that! She delights in marking a day off her calendar and informing us how many days are left until her birthday. It's become a kind-of morning news report with her: "Only EIGHTEEN days until MY BIRTHDAY!!!"

Val