My little girl is 4, she starts reception in September and has been in a nursery thats attached to the school for the last year.
My health visitor (who has been visiting us while reviewing our 2nd child) mentioned a few months ago that our LG may well be classed as Gifted. Until that day I had no idea what that meant. I always knew she was bright, but first child and no friends with children meant I never really knew how far off average she was.
She has always been on target or above for mile stones, and very early with speech. Her first "proper" word (i.e. not mama, dada, do-de) was at about 11 months (it was Teddy - clear as a bell) and she was using broken sentences at about 14 months ("We go shops now") - by 2, her speech was perfect, and she has an excellent vocabulary and uses better grammar than most adults I know haha (she corrected me the other day because when we were walking I said that park was "not much further" "farther mummy".)
Fast forward to where we are now. As I say, she isn't in school yet, but is reading well. A teacher friend gave us some books for her, and they are about right for her at "Oxford Reading Tree Level 4" - she can read all of the words but does stumble a little on a few and has to sound out and use the pictures to suss it out. She could possible read a little harder - but the non Reading Tree books we have are still a bit much for her - though we do read them together at bed time obviously.
I asked her nursery teacher where I could get some books that were suitable for her, and I was told she "shouldn't be reading yet" and we were told to go back to "can you find and "a" on this page" so that she didn't excel to far past what they will be learning when she starts reception... that really grated me, but thats not the point here, i've since found out about the reading tree and it's making it easier to search out appropriate books (thank you scholastic!!)
She can write well, and forms most letters correctly (sometimes b and d she does the loop from the bottom instead of going back up, but thats it) - she can spell most words that she can read, or at least has a very good guess. She's written about 10 different letters to people this holiday thanking for new toys, telling grandparents what we are up to etc. At first we wrote it out as she dictated, and then she copied. But now she writes and just asks us how to spell words she doesn't know.
She has a good basic knowledge of maths and knows shapes and numbers, and can work out addition and subtraction using counters and bits of paper (or up to probably around 8 in her head) - but its not one of her biggest strengths.
She has an excellent memory, and seems to spout facts from nowhere that she must have heard on TV or something, today telling me that "the moon isn't made of cheese its made of rock, it just looks like cheese because of craters" or the other day "when we flush the toilet, it goes down a drain, gets cleaned and then goes into the sea!"
She's also got a huge interest in the human body - she has a skeleton that you can take apart and put together, and it has internal organs that you put in in the right order. She can tell me all about how her organs work (better than I knew until recently! haha) she tells me that the oesophagus is like a trap door so you cant breathe and swallow, and that the stomach squashes all the food together to mix it up ready to go into your intestines. She understands blood pressure (I spent a lot of time in hospital with high BP before baby brother was born, so I think that's possibly where the interest comes from) and is just generally keen to know EVERYTHING!
I feel like her nursery was no bloody help, though I never mentioned gifted / talented to them as I felt that I would be brushed off as one of "those" parents. She got into a lot of trouble at nursery. Fortunately never being unkind, but being constantly disruptive - and I feel that it is because she was bored, which I mentioned to the teachers but it seemed to be disregarded.
I worry that when she goes into reception she's going to carry on being bored and disruptive and getting into trouble, and it's going to be a poor start to what should be a great time for her.
I feel like I can't talk to my friends. I posted a video of her reading on Facebook to show my family that I don't see often (and because I'm super proud of her!!) but have since received loooads of snide comments about how my child is "perfect" and how "it's alright for you with your genius child"
She's NOT perfect. She's such a handful, and I honestly don't know how to cope with her a lot of the time - I'm exhausted and have all the same problems every other mum has. It's not a bloody competition is it! But alas, everyone else seems to feel it is :(
I worry because when she is in the very play based education of Reception class she is going to get bored. We're 3 weeks into the summer holidays now, and she has every day bugged me to teach, to learn, to expand. I'm trying my hardest to keep her interest, but I'm spending every blooming evening to try and find things on pinterest that will keep her interested but are also at least a little bit play based. She just demands her activity books (those "ready for school" books you get at the works etc.)
I feel like responsibility for educating her is suddenly landing on me - and I don't know that I'm up to the task, she just wants more more more! Oh for a child that would crash in front of Cbeebies for a couple of hours, or go kick a football for a bit. She has a whole play room (which is, if I say so myself, AMAZING) that has loads of different toys set up for playing - but she's not interested for more than 5 minutes and just wants to write, read, do activity sheets, count, talk, question, experiment and explore.
Sorry, this has turned into a much longer post than I intended, but once I started rambling it just al started flowing out.
The main thing I guess I wanted to hear from others is
- surely its not just me? This is exhausting.
- what age were your lovelies identified formally as gifted and
- did them being on the gifted register actually change how they were taught stuff, or does it just seem to be a paper work exercise?
Everything I can find online seems to talk about older children, and I'm feeling more and more alone in this.