Bright or Exceptional?

[Browntile]

Would like others views on this if possible please.

Boy aged 4 and one month. Obviously not starting school until Sept next year.

Able to recognise numbers up to 1000.
Secure in number bonds to 20

Can name square numbers to 100 and understands concept of what a square number is
Knows 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables and understands concept as well as some other times tables and can invert (divide) the same
sums.
Can answer questions such as 42+3 or 68-2
Recognises shapes such as pentagon, hexagon etc

Is this just relatively bright or quite exceptional? Thank you.

My DS is very bright and top of his class for maths, he's always been obsessed with numbers. No way could he do all of that at just turned 4! So I think your DS sounds pretty exceptional tbh. Hope he goes far!

Thanks all. For those wondering if he may be autistic I may have perhaps thought that had I not got an older DS who was assessed for aspergers/autism around 6 years of age. He was assessed as not having autism. My DS4 whilst being a bit of a maths whizz is also fine socially, has lots of friends at pre-school and I really don’t have any concerns at the moment about autism.

Exceptional I'm not sure my 9 year old
Could do some of that

Very bright, certainly!

But as a primary school teacher, I'd be interested to know other things as well. Can he read, for instance? Is his "brightness" across the board, or just restricted to maths? How does he get on with other kids? Does he have friends? What do nursery say about him?

I also have a Numberblocks addict who is generally recognised to be 'exceptional' but he's just turned 7 and I'm a lot more chilled out about it than I was when he was the same age as your boy. I've come to realise that it doesn't really matter whether they are recognised as exceptional or not, as long as the school can keep them occupied. Our school do a lot with deepening the knowledge so although he's not stretched as such, he's also not bored and we allow him to explore whatever he wants to at home. My bigger concern was for his social skills as he was struggling to connect with others in his class but has now found a kindred spirit and fellow Numberblocks fan! School again have helped enormously with the social side and he's pretty well rounded now.

In your shoes, I would concentrate on developing other interests alongside maths, encourage his love of learning in general and see how he gets on at school. And prepare yourself for some awkward moments when parents of same-aged children become aware of his talents, I've become an expert at swiftly changing the subject!