About Ettina Expertise My biggest area of expertise is in autistic and other developmentally disabled gifted kids (especially creatively gifted disabled kids). I can also answer questions about gifted/talented children in general. I can't answer questions about legal issues and such (eg fighting the education system), but I can answer questions about what it's like for the child and so on. I'm better at dealing with questions about school-aged children than preschoolers.
Experience I am a highly creative autistic person with a tested IQ in the gifted range. I've also read a lot about gifted kids.
Education/Credentials Just high school. I'm a first-year student at university.
Question My son just turned 3 and my wife and I are having a lot of trouble with him. He seems to be extremely smart. Here are some of the examples of our experiences.
He was potty trained in two days at age 24 months. He was reciting letter and numbers at 1.5 years of age. He pointed at a musical notes and would say "la la la la la". We never taught him that. He knew all of his shapes by age two (I think even before that). He was drawing some letters at 30 months (v's, t's, i's etc). He was reciting phonics by age 27 months.
He has a phenomenal obsession with electronics. Remote controls, phones, computers. He can memorize the functions of the remote controls.
Just yesterday we were walking in Walmart and I said to him "where is the vanilla?" He responded right there. It was about 2 meters down the isle. I was surprised to see. He knew exactly where it was. He said to me. Daddy there is not big bottles just the little ones.
With regards to his toys he will line some toys up almost perfectly spaced out. i.e almost exactly two inches apart.
With the wonder of this all there also comes the issues. He can be troublesome at times and sometime downright defiant. He will talk back to us. Some of responses are extremely complex but he understand the context of what he saying.
What do we do??
Anything you can offer would be great.
Answer Your son does sound like a gifted child.
As for the defiance, gifted kids are more likely to question everything in their environment, including the rules. If it seems to them like there's no good reason for a particular rule to be in place, they'll often refuse to obey it.
The solution to this is to explain the reasons for various rules, such as 'we wear seatbelts in the car because if we get into a car accident, the seatbelts keep us from flying out the window and getting really badly hurt.' Once gifted children understand why it's important to follow a given rule, they usually obey it - in fact, they may try to enforce it on other children! If you can't think of a good reason for a certain rule to be in place, then it's probably time to reconsider that rule, or if you aren't in charge of making the rules, say something like 'I know it doesn't make sense, but so-and-so insists on it, and if you don't do it then so-and-so will do X, Y and Z.' Some gifted kids will still insist that the rule shouldn't be followed, especially if it's important to them, but over time they'll learn to pick their battles.
