What to do with a bright child?

[Mumanddone]

I will be accused of bragging but I really am looking for genuine ideas here please.

4yo DD has started reception. She is in a private school. She can read fluently, writes and her maths skills are great. She is basically bilingual. She carries a conversation like a grown up - she’s hugely imaginative and great fun to talk to. She’s not some prodigy - she’s actually a bit of a silly little girl prone to not listening but she is objectively very very bright.

When I observe her peers, I don’t feel like they are on the same wavelength for the most part. Some of them are barely able to string a sentence together and they still seem to have very infantile form of expression. DD makes friends easily and is happy to play with anyone but at the same time - will this hold her back?

we decided for private school to boost her, but wondering if this is enough. I suppose there is a sliding scale to private education. Are there places better suited for her? Or is there something we should be doing to support her at home/ outside. She does the general run of clubs ie: drama, swimming etc.

That’s great. So you can spend time checking her comprehension of what she’s reading and working on her use of punctuation. Does she stop at full stops for example?

Well exactly.

I was a bit slow with some things in primary school. In primary 4 I was still counting using a number line whilst my classmates were doing long division! Fast forward to high school I got 5 As at higher (including maths!) and a law degree from a RG University. The lkids who you think are so behind her won’t always be.

This

the teachers can explain it better but reading fluently and with comprehension doesn’t necessarily mean what we parents think it does

All children - even geniuses- have skills they can develop. You mention listening is a challenge for her. So that’s something to work on.
If she is happy and not bored at school then that is great.
Maybe you could have her assessed later on. But 4 is maybe to young.
You can do interesting things at the weekend. This could be anything from visiting a museum to going down to the local pond and pond dipping. Or geocaching. It doesn’t have to be expensive.
The best thing a child can have is a happy childhood with kind but not permissive parents. I would always be very very careful if speaking about here in her earshot - or even if she is around but you think she can’t hear.
They are always listening.
Encourage reading. It’s a great skill to have. And if she becomes a really precocious reader then there are many classic children’s and adult stories she can read that have suitable material that won’t be too old for her.

Isn’t it telling of the modern day that any switched on child starts being labelled as ND? I’ve been told this before and I must say I find it hilarious.

Hilarious? Really? Wow.

I know there are sceptics on here about children being able to read before starting school, but I am another who could, and have school reports from my infant school to prove it.
I’m no Brain of Britain, and there is no rhyme or reason as to why I was an early reader and my siblings weren’t. Mum and in particular dad were both avid readers so we all grew up watching them read. We each had a bedtime story read to us every night and had access to lots of books. We even had a book fairy that left books at the bottom of the garden for us if we’d been particularly good!!

The only difference mum can recall between me and my siblings is that I favoured certain books and that when I was having a story read to me I liked whoever was reading it to use their finger to follow the words.
When I started to say the words with her she just thought I had a good memory for the story but it was obviously more than that as when I started infant school I whizzed through the reading scheme books without any problem whatsoever.
Phonetics passed me by

well no - it's picking up on what the symbols mean. Kind of absorbing the principles of phonics without being specifically told them

Are you not aware of the phenomenon of early readers mispronouncing words they haven't heard aloud?

It's not proper reading then as you cannot transpose this to reading books with words you've never seen, say Tolkien's books, for example.

My youngest was like this. Now at Cambridge. Absolutely nothing like any of her siblings all of whom are very unacademic. At senior school she asked to sit the 11+ for a far flung grammar school near to where her Nanna lived and got in which was good for her but socially hard being an all girls school
She spent evenings and weekends playing in the garden with her older siblings and their toys. Very outdoorsy family. No additional coaching but naturally gravitated to learning languages by herself.
She did however HATE to be bored so went to drama, brownies, play dates etc and found half terms and summer holidays intolerable from when she was very young.
Lots of library visits. Learnt how to cook and sew very young too. Oh and unlike her siblings she never watched tv unless it was a history documentary or some such. Was obsessed with Victorian Farm, Time Team, Bake Off etc.
Just follow your child’s interests would be my advice and as others have said make sure they get lots of playtime as still a child despite having a clever brain!

But children may start by just seeing the whole word as a shape they recognise and ‘know’ then quickly go on to notice that all the words beginning with ‘a’, say, start with a similar sound.
Like @merryhouse said,

ipicking up on what the symbols mean. Kind of absorbing the principles of phonics without being specifically told them

(oh and of course we stop at sodding full stops. That's by far the easiest symbol to recognise)

I’m not saying your child is ND but many kids who self teach to read before starting school (ie without any instruction, which I’m sceptical of as you seem to want to push her) are indeed ND - my own daughter included. Other kids in her class could “read” before starting school - not all of course, but some - but what that really meant is that they could read simple 3 and 4 letter words that conformed to regular patterns and some of their favourite stories. I told the teachers that my daughter could actually properly read upon starting reception (and the preschool teachers told them that too) but it didn’t seem to be taken seriously until she read a bunch of reports off the teachers desk so they were sure she was reading as opposed to just memorising stories. She wasn’t just decoding but she could comprehend what she could read and was reading fluently with correct intonation. We don’t know how she learnt to do this, we didn’t teach her at all. She’s autistic :-)

I didn't teach myself to read before school, my tiger mum gave me no choice! 😆

I agree with the poster who said focus on comprehension and delivery when reading aloud. A lot of adults are not good at reading aloud & I think comprehension skills are fairly poor among the general population. Verbal reasoning is good for helping with comprehension.

We have supported her through ample reading, books always being available and modelling (lots of books at home, I am a voracious reader). DH has worked on some phonics and preschool has too but after a few gos at blending, she just got it. I don’t see this as any sign of ND. If she is then so am I (I was the same, could read well before peers with little to no encouragement). I don’t see what that has to do with anything. As I mentioned earlier on in the thread, I do think there’s far too much eagerness to label kids

Pack it in with this ‘everyone is a little bit on the spectrum’ rubbish as it’s very offensive. You’re either autistic or you’re not.

Funnily enough I read your opening post and thought your dd sounds just like my dd was at that age, who is also autistic. And the same as I was throughout school. She’s now just started secondary and did extremely well in her SATS and has been placed in the top set for every subject.

It’s interesting to see other posters pick up on this too. You seem very put out by the fact that people are suggesting it, which is very telling. I suggest you do some research and be a bit more mindful of the language you use.

I would let her be four. A 4 year old who can carry a conversation like an adult isn’t something to be proud of

Ok it sounds like she was taught phonics sounds and also taught to blend which means she has been taught to read. In which case it’s less likely to be a sign of ND. Plenty of 4 year olds learn to read quickly this way. I’m not saying you’re a tiger mom but you are obviously keen to push her so perhaps she is bright but the fact she can read before school is not necessarily because she’s super bright but because you’ve taught her. And if you haven’t taught her, then she’s more likely to be ND 🤷‍♀️ because as a pp said, it’s often autistic brains that can work out the very complex English written language without explicit instruction.

And also if she chats like an adult she’s likely to be ND. My DD regularly comes out with stuff your nan might say eg
“ooh there’s a real chill in the air today isn’t there mummy”
precocious language is another sign of ND.

My god so a child who has a varied vocabulary and nice expression is autistic now? Never heard that before

How did you teach her this out of interest?

And nothing to do with the fact that they’ve heard you/ family member/ character in a film say it and are adopting a way of speech?

I also said she was very much a typical silly girl. I meant to say she talks in full sentences with a range of adverbs and descriptors about things she’s passionate about. It’s not like we’re sat around talking about taxes.

That’s not what I said. But being bright comes with its own stresses and strains of not fitting in hence working on social, emotional, physical and holistic health and just being.

Mine is now diagnosed as ND, my treatment of her from zero to 18 (as she is now) is no different because she has a diagnosis but was all to do with how advanced she was academically. It didn't accord to me she was ND until secondary. ASC I know now presents very very differently in girls than boys.

My daughter, scout lead, house captain, pupil mentor, gold D of E etc - this are all other skills. As is just sitting and chilling and watching Netflix! She is not the sum of her achievements. There is more to her than a CV.

However, you deliberately took the ND bit of my post - I never suggested your daughter was - just mine and then you jumped on it like a cat ripping something apart. You can’t actually see the wood for the trees.

You are so focussed on your PFB academic success at aged 4 - that you can’t see the whole picture. As a teacher at a top top independent school I was trying to give you advice, from a personal point of view. True academic and brilliance success comes from curiosity, drive, ambition, knowledge but without love, kindness, healing, support, compassion and empathy also being built - you won’t build a whole person. My daughter just like yours is not a machine. I was giving you personal information about my journey.

We have parents like you focussed on outcome and nurturing the prodigy they think they have and we deal with serious MH, EH and HH problems caused by this - don’t do this.

Dont jump on the negatives in people’s posts - think! What do I agree with? What can I take from this? What could I try?

Surely not. It is a sign of intelligence and a lovely relationship with an adult they love and spend time with. And/or a sign they have been reading classic books with older more formal language.

Precocious language can be echolalia - it certainly was in my DS1’s case.