Raising Gifted Children

He’s going to be three soon and it’s comical that a year ago, when he turned two, he stopped wearing pampers.

He had an occasional accident, but for the most part, he was pamperless, wearing “big boy undies.”

And then…it happened…we reverted. Christmas day, he got gifts of all sorts and I got a shock. He just decided he was NOT going to wear underpants anymore. In fact, now only did he decide to wear pampers, but he the temerity to tell me which type he wanted to wear. I wanted to try pull-ups, but he had another plan. He was going to wear plain, good, old-fashioned pampers and that was all there was to it.

So, his birthday is coming up. I’m going to try again. Say a pray; I have a feeling I’m in for a bumpy ride!

We have been reciting the same words every day, for months. There are days when he can spell each and every word without batting an eye, but he never spelled his name correctly.

Out of the clear, we were sitting at the table, pointing out letters on a place mat. He just started to rattle off the letters in his name, as if he’d always been spelling his name and spelling were a natural evolution. I just stood there with my mouth open, because I never knew he actually paid so much attention to the little things that I have been trying to teach him.

The fact that he is spelling his name is monumental for a couple of reasons:

1. He is able to spell his name, which shows his ability to retain information,
2. and it helps me understand how he learns, what may work for him.

I’ll introduce him to new words, see how receptive he is.

I do not know what got into the little guy yesterday, but he decided to pick up a book and start reading, on his OWN!

Rather than stop to ask questions, I just fed his interest. He plucked at words, while I gently corrected him. We worked on the same page for about 20 minutes. He seemed content to reinforce what he learned. He took the same book to bed and fell asleep reading it.

I guess it’s true, what the say. Children will do what they want, at their own time.

My desire to teach our son to play piano, often consumes me, but I have to keep his age in mind. I also have to remember that if I do not find ways to keep him genuinely interested, he may never want to play. So, I found a great way to introduce him to music that did not require him to read or play.

We watched Fiddler On The Roof. It’s a hit!

Not only did he enjoy it, but he danced and sang along. His enthusiasm far surpassed my expectations.

I’ll look for more musicals to peak his interest and musical curiosity.

We have been “playing” piano for about a year, but I am starting to teach the rascal to actually play the piano.

His attention span will not permit more than 15 or 20 minutes, but I have been introducing him to middle-c and Twinkle-Twinkle. Eventually, I want to incorporate the Suzuki method of playing piano. In order to prepare him for reading music, I have been introducing him to more and more words.

For some reason, children seem to do well when they learn to read both music and books at the same time.

We have been playing a game that seems to be effective in reinforcing word recognition.

We use flash cards with words, words cut out of circulars, just about anything.

I’ll put five or six words on the table and say, “Can you find the word dog?”

If he finds the word he gets lots of praise; if he doesn’t I quickly correct him and continue hunting out all of the words. Eventually, we go back to the missed words to ensure that he gets them.

Today, he recognized several words that we did not even cover yet: monkey, goat, apple, horse.

…or anything else that baby likes.

Rascal discovered Thomas the Engine, so naturally we indulged his fetish for Christmas. While he enjoys making Thomas and his friends go around the track, I found another use for the overpriced toy, counting.

I line up the trains and get my trusty assistant to count out the number of trains on the track. Then I add or take a few away, asking him to recount for me. While he does not quite get the concept of “add” or “subtract” he finds this tactic more interesting than typical addition and subtraction.

I think this is a good way to introduce him to mathematics, in general.

The rascal will be three soon. My goal is to introduce him to a new word each day. I’d like to see how much he retains by his birthday.

Today we reviewed some words that we had already covered:

1. cat
2. dog
3. horse
4. pig
5. zebra
6. apple

He was able to pick the words out consistently without any help from me. I gave him a little treat each time he got a group of words correct.