Again, my kids aren’t gifted, although I think they are pretty smart! My youngest knew how to pee in the toilet at eight months due to training by orphanage Nannies (on schedule, whistling while holding the babies over the potty). She also opened her mouth wide when the dr approached her with a tongue depressor at her first appointment with her Dr a few days after she came home, again at 8 months. And my oldest was in a GT program for creativity! Don’t know how they tested for that, but she is very creative.
We found that travel starting at an early age was very conducive to bonding (they’re adopted in case it wasn’t apparent) and learning. We went on trips with a mix of cultural and outdoor/sciency outings. One day would be museum day, the next would be nature preserve day. We actually went to India when our girls were in elementary school, and the following MLK day, my daughter came home from school and said “Did you know that both MLK and Gandhi believed in non violent change?” After a visit to Yellowstone and a boat tour of Yellowstone lake, my youngest chattered away for days about how the cutler (cutthroat) trout were pushing out all the native lake trout! We aren’t wealthy, we just prioritized travel and they were great little travelers. After a six week volunteer trip to China, my four year old’s preschool teacher was amazed at her increase in confidence and verbal skills.
So I’d encourage you to travel as much as you are able. I would imagine A boy like Ren would just soak up the world!
Thank you for the kind words. Getting the ADHD diagnosis helped tremendously both with just having explanations and coping mechanisms for certain feeling and emotions as well as helping both my parent and I understand why I struggled so much with some things but still performed well in school. Definitely something I wish I would have known while going through high school but it’s a resource I’m glad I now have access to heading to college.
And to OP, overall, there’s nothing I wish my parents did differently. They supported me and loved me the best they knew how to and for the most part let me explore my own interests both in school and out of school. They loved me and supported (most) of my decisions. I went to a Montessori, public school, charter school, and then back to public, and for me, public school was the best option for me because I wanted the big school and athletic opportunities and I was lucky enough to be in an area zoned to an extremely competitive academic school as well, so I was able to get the social, athletic, and academic support I wanted, and my parents gave me the freedom to try out schools and choose where I wanted to go.
Also I wanted to touch on screen time because I grew up with various electronics and I think they affected me very little in the long run.
For the first few years I don’t remember much, but according to my parents I watched a lot of Dora/Go diego Go/Blues Clues/ and Disney Movies
Age 5 was when I got my first “screen” which was a DS I believe with a few games, mostly Mario brothers type games
I think I also got a Wii around the same time, one for birthday and one for Christmas of the same year.
I got a basic iPod for music at 7 and an iPod touch that I “won” from my parents right before I turned 9 through a bet that if I won our summer league champ meet, it would be my reward/gift
My first phone was an iPhone 5c in 5th grade, but the reasoning was that I was attending a charter school about an hour away from home and I needed a way to contact my parents in an emergency. It was extremely monitored and I mostly used it for texting and games.
7th grade was my first phone that was no longer monitored and I had pretty free range of what I used it for (within reason ofc)
Never had my screen time limited, beyond “it’s time to put the game down and help clean” which I never had an issue doing. I often would get bored of screens anyway and I used to get in trouble more often for sneaking a book passed bedtime than a screen. most of the time kids will self limit anyways. There are more fun things for a kid to do than play on a screen all day when other option are there. A screen is just another option like you said. And I definitely think they helped keep me from acting out in situations where I felt under-stimulated or bored and still function that way for me today in some ways.
The ONLY thing that I am against is shows like Cocomellon which offer very little educational or stimulating content. I babysit a few kids between 1-5 and the kids who watch cocomellon seem almost addicted to the show while the ones who don’t are much more happy and don’t act out as much. But that’s just what I noticed from the small group of kids that I work with.
It’s probably too soon to tell at this stage, and pushing him too far too soon could be a disservice.
In other words…he’s just an adorable two year old. Just enjoy watching him grow up! Mine is now a teenager.
I think people are really missing the part where I said I don’t want to push him. I just want to deal with the reality that I have a kid who is way ahead of his birth cohort peers.
I looked into bilingual programs and Montessori and there is not as much as I thought. But it’s opened up a whole new avenue that I hadn’t considered so thank you all for the suggestions!
ETA: @Sophiaaalexa I cannot tell you how much I HATE cocomellon. It’s churning out creepy stepford kids and has just about zero diversity.
OTOH, we LOVE Super Simple Songs - especially SSS Espanol.
How much of his knowledge of words and numbers comes from screen activity? I am curious. If he was not exposed to numbers and words on his IPad, on tv etc., what would be happening. I am not challenging what you are presenting, I am genuinely curious.
Can’t ever know honestly. But he’s been obsessed with numbers for as long as I can remember. He really learned them by running around the pool and pointing to the numbers on the side of the pool and asking about them. Or seeing the thermostat and asking the number.
But he doesn’t just know them by rote memorization. He knows them conceptually.
Spanish numbers he 100% knows from screens though because we never taught him Spanish. He knows all his Spanish colors from screens too.
Yeah we’ve never brought up the Tooth Fairy and Santa is part of stories. (We’re going to “do” Santa but there’s not really been a lot of opportunities…)
Just stepping back a bit, if your kid seemed precocious in an athletic way or musically or artistically, you would find outlets for that and ways to expand that, but quite possibly not acceleration.
I just mention that as a way of wrapping your head around how you can support this and balance it with the other things he needs to learn. Cooking together, btw, is a great way to fuse math skills with many others.
Fascinating on the Ruf categories! I have never seen this. The Santa/TF question is the only one that does not jive at all, though. Both of ours had preschool full testing (however only the younger had the higher ceiling test too), and the descriptions really resonate! the “132-138” range kid who has always been >>99 verbal but 98 math did ALL the level 4 verbal things but the math stuff level 3 . The other one is our >99.9th on everything, “somewhere over 145” in preschool did ALL the level 5 mathy things but mostly level 4 rest. My own brother, a very successful engineer who has a 141-145 IQ from our 3rd grade testing(we are a year apart and snuck into my mother’s paperwork and compared and were happy /mad we were the same, or I wouldn’t know), did not talk more than a couple words until age 2(then it exploded), did not read at all before kindergarten, yet did many of the non-verbal level 4 and even many 5 things. And no he is not on the spectrum. The stories my parents had regarding his bright toddler and young years were almost legendary later. So I think the Ruf scores are a very nice description! Will be saving as a resource for my patients.
Enjoy watching your son develop and learn! Children’s minds are just amazing.
Ha! Agree, that part of the assessment seems off for our community . My 7yo kept begging me to please tell the 9yo though. She may have known but did not want to know.
Re Tooth Fairy and Santa, I don’t think either of my bright, but definitely not profoundly gifted kids really believed. I know that my oldest who was an anxious baby (and still struggles with anxiety) was very opposed to the idea of a stranger coming into the house in the middle of the night while we were all asleep. This was around age 2. Sensible kid! We wanted to do Santa though so talked about how “wouldn’t it be fun if Santa was real” or something like that. Maybe we just didn’t to a hard sell on it. They both enjoyed playing along and still do enjoy stockings and all that, but I don’t know that either one of them ever thought Santa was actually real. Maybe my younger one did for a little while. I do remember having to coach them not to say anything to little friends.
Not to get off topic and apologies for the tangent but when my son finally got it he said “You mean you paid for all that stuff?” He considered Santa an avenue to ask for things in an otherwise thrifty family! So that may have prolonged things
My D said a similar thing. She told my neighbor that their had to be a Santa because we were “too cheap” to buy her all those gifts. (She was 5 or 6 at the time). ; )
Tooth Fairy was a harder sell. She wrote the Fairy a note when she lost her first tooth in first grade and was very suspicious from the get go. She asked what the Fairy did with all the teeth and those type of questions. She also requested a note back. The Fairy did send a note back but she still didn’t buy it. Maybe the Fairy should have left her more $ ; )
I would redirect him when he walks around the house labeling numbers. There are many social activities where he can practice math: cooking together, play doh, etc.
I would encourage reading together so that back and forth dialogue/discussion can occur. Does he enjoy sitting with others and reading? I would continue to enrich his vocabulary- gifted kids often understand multiple meaning words, humor, etc at a much younger age than their same age peers.
