Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school first proud then strangely irritated

Just a thought - there is a set of books called "You read to me and I'll read to you" (or something like that) with alternating paragraphs for parents and children. If the issue is that the role that Mommy is the reader and not the child, then these might be a fun way to get past it.

... I did a quick search:
http://www.amazon.com/You-Read-Me-Ill-Together/dp/0316363502

Maybe that's your problem. Have you tried reverse psychology?

She will have in her mind what she'd like to do. And when you suggest/ask the opposite, her mind "may" wonder ... "but what about this other way or other thing"

She will need time to transition. Normal kids need time to transition. Gifted kids depending on how "deeply" they are attached to the current activity will need some time to transition to another activity or thought/idea, etc. Not saying this is necessarily the case with your child per se, but lots of kids seem to need this. Actually normal kids really do need transition time ... all the way to upper primary years, I think. Ok, I admit it -- I need transition time.

We loved the "you read to me, I read to you" series. My little one wouldn't read on her own because then wouldn't mommy stop reading at bed time? So, our situation was quite different.

My son was like that. He read for me when he was 2 1/2 but wouldn't do it in front of his dad. When he was about 3 1/2, his dad caught him one day reading over my shoulder something on the computer screen. I asked my son how he knew what I had just read silently and my husband said he saw him read it. His older son had also taught himself to read.

At 4, in his musical theater class, he was silently reading the script for "Babes in Arms" and the boy who was reading lines next to him lost his place so my son told him the next couple of words. The boy later asked him where he went to school and what grade he was in. My son had never even been to preschool and didn't know what to say. When he was asked this question by someone else at a grocery store after they saw him reading out loud, he told them he went to funschool.com but he still didn't know what to tell people when they asked what grade he was in. This has always been a problem. He finally started telling people if he were in public school he would be in __th grade (whatever grade his age mates were in).

I guess he got tired of me asking him to read in front of adult relatives and once when I asked him to read a sign out loud for his grandparents he loudly said, "Read? I'm too young to read!" and went back to what he was doing so I quit asking him. He didn't seem to mind reading for other kids for some reason and he enjoyed letting them spell out words for him because he could usually identify the words, especially science related words because his favorite book at the time was a children's science encyclopedia. He did enjoy the attention he got from other kids for this. Those years before he was old enough to start school, before we knew the advanced reading would be seen as a problem by our public school teachers, were really fun.