It´s been a while since last time I had the
chance to write a new post. I won´t blame stressful life, work overload or
raising 2 kids… Exhausted? Yes. Are these all the reasons? Probably, but this
time we´ll also add a bit of laziness to be completely honest…
Last time I wrote we were evaluating the
signals that we perceived in our big kid which led us to think he might be a
gifted individual. We talked to the specialized department in his school, which
recommended observation both in school and at home. After last months he seems
to be balancing, developing his motor skills which are compared to those of his
peers and also his cognitive skills. Yet he started reading by himself at 3, he
doesn´t seem to enjoy practicing, even though we try to read with him and guide
him somehow to explore and learn new things. Well, not catchy apparently… so
his reading hasn´t improved much in a year. He is more now into dinosaurs
fighting, crashing cars and all the normal stuff that a 4,5 yo kid is supposed
to love. His interest in science (virus, bacteria… curiosity health issues in
general) is still there, but it is not growing exponentially as one could think
after the past month’s boost. Rather than being a “gifted child” as it is
normally defined, we think he might just be a precocious bright little fellow,
but within the reasonable parameters for his age. I have to admit this is kind
of a relief as we were a bit afraid of how to deal with an exponential gifted
kid.
Regarding bilingualism, we have gone through
some important milestones lately and we were doing fine in terms of bilingual
goals so far. One of the main fears when you see it´s actually working is if
you´ll be able to keep it that way. Here´s a piece of advice for those who are
a step behind in this journey: Probably not, but let´s not panic.
The fact is that the boy has started losing
some English, partially but progressively. He is hardly initiating
conversations in English with me now and it really puts me in a difficult situation
if we want to continue with the active exposure to the language, without
affecting the communication. I have to review my “flexibility rules” once and
again so he doesn´t get mad at me or refuses to speak the language because it´s
bothering him. I mean he tells me his things, like how his day in school was or
something that happened, and I listen actively reformulating what he says but
in English.
A typical conversation after school goes this
way:
...so tell me, how was your day?
G me ha arañado en la cara!!
No
way! G has scratched your face in a quarrel today?
Si, y la profesora le ha dicho que eso estaba
muy mal!!!
Wow,
I see, well that´s true, scratching your friend´s face is definitely a very
naughty thing… What happened in the end?
Pues
que…
English
Dani please remember
… well… hm… The teacher… Papi, no me acuerdo de cómo
se dice “castigado”
Grounded
… well, the teacher grounded G…, y luego nos
hemos ido a jugar pero G no ha venido porque estaba castigado!
(Oh crap stay in English mode for good shake!!!)
Of course I don´t yell at him or anything I just try to guide him and be
resilient (focus Dad! never surrender… stay hungry… stay foolish…)
The thing is that a year ago I was able to make
him believe that I didn´t understand Spanish so he actually bought it and
switched into English or he just assumed naturally that it was OUR language.
Now things are different. He is a smart little man and knows perfectly well
that I´m Spanish and he is getting lazier to look for the right word, which
isn´t at the top of his mind as he only uses English with me mostly.
I have tried to explain him what happens if we
don´t use a language, that, as he sees is in daily life it IS useful (his
school is bilingual, but not double immersion program, they only put more
effort in English which is not bad though). He seems to understand the point and
for the next hour he really makes the effort to switch and use the language as
much as possible, but I see a trend in what´s happening and It´s a bit
frustrating.
Our little girl is starting to speak now and she ia also affected by this “Spanish flu”… She utters things mainly in Spanish
and with a bit of insistence on my part (“Pelota, well done girl ,but Papi says…”)
he switches then but she makes clear she is not supercool with it.
I know very well that we´ll go through
different phases and there´ll be ups and downs along the road, but when you are
in one of those “downs” it doesn´t feel pleasant at all… I think the way to
take this in a constructive way is to see it as an evolution of the process and
a challenge in terms of adaptation. We´ll see how it goes…
I haven´t been able to write any new posts
lately, due to an intense period of work, stressful life and lack of energy
after 1. long
hours in the office, plus 2.super
demanding offspring the minute I cross the door at home
…so let´s say lots of things have happened in
the last months, like the kids growing up at light speed, and honestly I
haven´t had the time to sit and think so even fewer chances to sit and write...
One thing that we are very concerned about
lately is facing the possibility of our older kid being a gifted individual. I
think writing about it is a great way to put thoughts in order and mull things
over a bit.
I guess there have always been some signs here
and there but I have repeatedly discarded this possibility, based on the idea
that all parents think that their kids are supergifted children in one way or
the other (e.g. “look how well he destroys all the plates of the cupboard, he is
such an artist!”)… I guess I have always thought that I was being just one of
this type.
The truth is that during the last year/year and
a half there have been some objective facts that according to articles and
books on the matter would classify our little intrepid knight as a gifted child
(no idea at what level or in what specific area, but apparently they could be considered
as evidence).
We must say that it´s obviously not our
objective for our kid to be a gifted one, but a happy one. We don´t pursue to
brag about it or show him in the town square like a freak boy. We are truly
concerned about the difficulties that he might face in school or socializing
with peers as he might feel he doesn´t fit in the group, and if this is the
case we´d like to learn how we can be of any help to make sure he grows up
happy and he has also the opportunity to develop his abilities and work on
unbalanced skills.
As children´s development is very flexible I
think 4 years old is still very soon to state definitely such a “diagnosis”. As
a summary, here are the facts that lead us to think he might have some special
abilities. If there´s an expert on the issue or a parent with expertise on the field, please leave a comment! Any guidance will be much appreciated: Memory: He´s always been very good at memorizing
things. He used to recognize names very early. Here´s the boy at 13 months old
giving me the animals I asked him, and he knew many others in both English and
Spanish.
The same happened with numbers and also
early or at least I think so, as I don´t have many references. As soon as he
started speaking clearly, about 2 years old, he showed interest in numbers, so
I taught him how to count to 10. He learned things so quickly and showed also interest
in languages so I taught him how to count in as many languages I know counting (English,
French, German, Spanish and Italian), and we realized he needed only 1 or 2
repetitions to retain it all, even after weeks of not using them. So far so
good, “the boy is just savvy” we thought… He was about 2,5 years old.
The freaky-scary thing came one day
at 3 years old. We were in the car listening to a cd-story tale (The Tin Soldier).
At some point I turned it off and I realized he was reciting the following words,
not only a few, but he could finish the story by heart starting from any point,
saying the exact words. Then I moved the 13 minutes story to different points,
back and forth and every time I stopped it he could continue like he was
reading it mentally. Not a single mistake. Alright so I definitely couldn´t do
that and it freaked me out so badly. Then I tried the same thing with other
bedtime stories and he had memorized some of them with 10 to 15 pages, word
after word, and the funny thing is he was kind of surprised that I couldn´t do
the same thing, like it was the most natural thing for everyone. Reasoning: We have the feeling that his mind
doesn´t stop working. Every single moment he is awake he is just turning things
over in his head. We notice that the most brain-active moments are when he is tired, before going to bed or just walking home. He gets hiper-talkative and strats firing questions related, and not related to the issues being discussed. Extreme curiosity: Kids always ask “why”, and that´s normal
curiosity in children we assume, but in his case it´s a constant, extreme and exhausting
patern. We have had the chance to compare our conversations with others of same
aged kids, and the other kids ask “why” too, but not even close to the million
times he does. He asks why for absolutely everything around him. The other day
he asked (after staying quiet for a while, which is the sign that he is into
something…) “why are we always ALWAYS swallowing saliva? and what does it do inside our stomach?” or “how do viruses
and bacteria work?”, “how can roosters yawn with their beaks”, “where were the
3 giants while Fearless John was eating their dinner, and what were they doing,
and why?” It didn´t make any sense for him that dinner was ready, hot soup on the table and they were not there... hmm suspicious. Some of these questions are mainly related to the conversations we are
having when something calls his attention, but others come out of the blue
after he´s been thinking for a while. Awareness: He shows a very active awareness
about transcendent issues. Recently he was being disciplined by mom for
treating his sister too roughly, and he replied “I don´t care, cause my sister
is going to die, we are all going to die. She is going to grow up and have
babies in her belly and then she´ll get old and die, so nothing really matters!!”…
Alright so you just turned 4, right? Self-consciousness: He showed a high level of self-consciousness
at an early age. At 2,5 years old he wouldn´t take off his long sleeve T-shirt
on a hot day because he didn´t want people to see the little scratches he had in his
arms, after some fight he had with a schoolmate. Now at 4 he is extremely shy
when it comes to showing his body naked or the possibility of being shown up in any kind of situation. I´d say he is more close to a teenager than a toddler on this. Reading: He started reading spontaneously at 3 years
old (in Spanish). I mean nobody gave him formal instruction. He was good with numbers so he liked reading license plates
when we were in the car. When he got to the letters, he didn´t know how to read
them and that seemed to bother him a lot, so he would start asking what letters
were those and how to pronounce them. We focused only in one language
(Spanish), as reading/writing is phonetic and therefore less confusing. After we
explained him the letters he´d ask for some examples like in “C as in CASA (house)”
so he got the use of the letters with examples. We didn´t realized but he was storing all the information in his database. In some weeks he got all the letters down pat
and started reading words, although without recognizing the meaning at the end.
After some weeks he started reading complete words in a meaningful way. We
never pushed him to practice because we want him to read as a pleasant game. We
only try to explain him that reading is the way to discover things that we don´t
know. He hasn´t practiced much mainly because of the next topic. Frustration: He is very perfectionist and he gets
extremely frustrated when he doesn´t perform a task in an outstanding way. He is
lately more interested in reading but he sometimes says that he doesn´t want
to read because he doesn´t want to make mistakes. For him making mistakes is
just not acceptable. We try to work on it an talk to him about making mistakes,
and how everybody (we, everyone) makes them and you just have to assume it and move on, but he
has an issue with this. School is boring: He is refusing to go to school
lately. At the end of last school year he started to say that his mates were repeating
the same letter/color/shape all the time, and that he wants to know (literally)
“how planes work”, “how microwaves heat up food” and stuff like that. We try to
explain things to him the best we can but we have to admit that we can´t expect
that the school pays such a personalized attention only to him. As a result he gets bored.
Regarding explanations, if there´s something we don´t know, or we don´t know how to explain it in an
easy way, he says “don´t worry, you may look for it in the internet and then
tell me about it after my siesta”. Of course we know the first thing he is
going to ask after his nap is if you had the opportunity to look for the info
about (let´s say) why certain mushrooms are poisonous and things of the like. He does the same thing when I don´t know a word or expresion in English. Now the classes are starting in 10 days after summer holidays, we are worried
because he has already said that he doesn´t want to go back to school. Bossy: He is very bossy with adults. He questions and
rebels against authority very frequently, trying to negotiate and demanding a
reasonable explanation for every rule. He also talks to adults pretending he
knows all and trying to explain to others what he just learned like he were an
adult and he knew it all since long ago. I thing he sees himself as an equal when
he talks to an adult and he doesn´t want to admit that as a kid he is just
discovering everything. Social difficulties: We perceive that he has trouble
sometimes when he initiates conversations or tries to initiate a game with
other kids, like he feels threatened. He always sends preventive attacks and
tries to tease others from the beginning. We try to explain him that being nice to people in advance is a good way to make friends but he doesn´t seem to see it that
way.
- Motor skills: He lags clearly behind his peers in
terms of motor skills. He runs slower and in an uncoordinated way and he falls,
trips over and stumbles, more than the other kids. We believe it´s a matter of
time that he reaches this milestone but he is very aware of his limitations and
gets very frustrated when these differences arise when playing with others.
We think all this facts show that his skills are unbalanced, as some are very developed and others are behind the average. We fear that we might fall short at guiding and helping him develop due to the challenges that this (being really a gifted little man) may imply for him, his sister and the whole family in the end. Gifted or not (who cares) as all parents I guess we just count on good intentions, daily efforts and the hope that it´ll somehow work just fine in the end...
Update: Some years after, at the age of 6 he passed a formal IQ test, and results were he´s been a quite precocious kid, getting more balanced along the years. He has in fact really high capacities, althogh not reaching the pure definition of "gifted", that would imply getting him in a special program or changing school to really adapt. As we said who cares about labels, the important thing is he es growing happy and he is well integrated in his class which is what matters the most.
