Dealing with a "Gifted Child"

My child has never followed the schedules published in baby books. He was born at 41 weeks after two days of labour and had some head control immediately. He rolled over at 3 months, crawled, sat and pulled up to stand at 5.5 months, walked before 9 months, potty trained by 18 months and coming up on his 3rd birthday is writing his name unaided and learning how to read.

This development path invokes a variety of responses. Shock, awe, disbelief, inadequacy. There isn't a lot of nonchalance. As a parent to a "different" child, I feel awkward. I want to celebrate my son's successes, and be proud of each milestone. Surely every mother earns that right -- for a lifetime -- after enduring pregnancy and childbirth? But when I shout from the treetops about the latest milestone, I feel like an insufferable braggart. A lot of the time I talk instead about the things he doesn't do yet, like sleep through the night or put himself to bed.

We knew before we got married that our offspring would be likely to fall into the "gifted" category. That isn't to say we were daydreaming about introducing our child, the rocket surgeon. We haven't started saving for a Harvard education. (We are only just embarking on paying for our own education.) But the advanced warning our own ahead-of-the-curve development paths has not prepared us for the responsibility of shepherding the development of our own child.

Early childhood education is very flexible. His daycare is absolutely brilliant. They follow the Hawaii Early Learning Program (HELP), which has two books (birth-to-3, 3-to-6) that sequentially list development milestones in a host of categories. Each month they pick about eight milestones that he's working towards and every week they engage him in play activities to help him practice those skills.

He finished his birth-to-3 at 27 months and already is well into his 3-6 book. What do we do if he moves beyond his daycare's resources by the age of 4? The public education system is set up well for dealing with "average" development track children, and reasonably well for children whose development is slower. However, both the husband and I have negative experiences from our parents' and teachers' best efforts at accommodating us in a normal school environment.

My nearly-3yo has the reading skills of a 5-6 year old, the gross motor skills of a 4yo and the social skills of a 3yo. If he stays on this development track, it is going to be very challenging to provide a positive school experience for him. He is a sensitive little boy, which would be hard enough on its own, but he's going to be a very tall boy who thrives on positive reinforcement and will always have his hand up shouting out the answer.

I feel isolated as a parent at the best of times, but I have found a great resource of likeminded mothers online. However, as I grapple with how best to educate my son beyond the age of five, it feels like I'm in a vacuum.

Finally Weaned

I don't want to speak too soon (like with the night time bedwetting which was over for at least a month and has returned with a vengeance), but I do believe the menace is finally weaned! He last "tried" to have "some nana" last Sunday (and he didn't really get any), but still asked as recently as yesterday morning. When I refused him he got out of bed in a strop and headed to the lounge to turn on the TV.

Chivalry Lives

In the playground today Elizabeth decided to take off her shoes. The problem with this is that Elizabeth is a pansy when it comes to walking barefoot on anything other than grass. When she has to walk across stones (round river stones, with which the playground is populated), she wants to hold onto your hand and lean all of her body weight on you. Of course the stones don't actually hurt, so this is overly dramatic, but she's 2 and she's not used to walking around barefoot.

With her (patient as a saint) mom's help, she made it over to the slide. She climbed up and played around on top so her mom sat down again. When she was ready, she slid down, and landed on the stones to a sea of more stones to cross. Panic struck her face. Her mom and I sighed. Then Johnny walked up to her, held out his hand, and walked her to the stairs. I nearly cried.

Another small communication explosion

I marvel at Johnny's mind sometimes. On Monday on the way home he said "No, we do not go home. We need to get diesel for your car." It has been over a week since we've put diesel in, nowhere near where we were, and I cannot fathom the trigger for this.

He has been telling more stories. I like his stories. He made the most of the tornado warnings with "The siren made a noise. We need to go in the basement with a flashlight." He told everyone. Repeatedly. Sometimes he'd trip up on the words and give away his age. He also tells me about his day at school now.

Has it really been three months?

Wow. Time flies. Let's see...

Johnny appears to be dropping his nap. It sometimes takes him half an hour to fall asleep at school, and at home he sometimes drops off on the boob, then wakes up furious when I pull him off and won't go back to sleep. For a few weeks I've been able to get him to fall asleep in the stroller, but no more of that... I'm distraught. I still need my naptime!

Some firsts...
- Yesterday he was drawing letters. Deliberately. Z, F, G, J. Correctly formed. Precocious twerp.
- Last night he slept in his big boy bed in his own room, at least until 5:30am when I took him in with me. He woke up at 11pm for a nappy change, then 2am and 5am for milk. When he woke again at 5:30am I decided the cluster feeding had started and we were doing it in my bed. He slept until 8:30 instead. Glorious. (Well, he'd gone off at 10pm the night before thanks to a v. late nap and some nasty candy/cooldrink at the neighbour's.)
- Friday night he was happy with a cup of warm milk instead of a boob when he woke up at 11pm. Hurray! Let the night weaning commence!
- He hit his first piñata yesterday at Andreas's birthday party at the neighbours. Big success. He also had a blast on the trampoline.
- Last week he blocked his first toilet. His new shoes were so exciting he forgot he needed to poo and made a huge ball of it in his undies. Must remember to put him on the toilet ASAP when we get home and it's been a few days since he's made a poo.
- Last week he made his first consumer decision. (Well, since the screaming-in-the-Walmart-parking lot "I WANT TO GO TO TRADER JOE'S" incident.) At Trader Joe's sample hutch he pointed to a display box and said "Mashed potato." Then he sampled the mashed potato and then after polishing it off, picked up a box, said "we need this" and put it into the cart. At least it was mashed potato and not candy. (Actually he doesn't like most candy -- hurray!)

Well, I'm off to plant things while the boys play at the library.

First time pumping in 9 months

Back at work after a week and a half at home with Johnny, by lunch time I had gone up three cup sizes and pulled out the breast pump. I haven't pumped since the contaminated shipment to the IBMP a good 9 months ago.

Back then, there was lots of fore milk and if I kept pumping I'd get the hind milk out and there would be about 8% volume of cream which settled on the top. I've read about how milk gets creamier as you nurse for longer, but yesterday was quite a surprise. Given the engorgement, I was expecting about 4 oz of fore milk on each side, so you can imagine my surprise when it took me 20 minutes to get 2 oz out of each side and it was almost exclusively hind milk! Even after 4 hours in the fridge, the cream had not settled up to the top.

Johnny never really drank expressed milk except for maybe a month from 9-10 months when he could do his bottle himself. It was quite a surprise then to watch him positively chug the milk down in the car, not a drop spilled. (This from the boy who delights in upending open cups!) It has inspired me to keep pumping for him.

Over-stimulated Toddler Aaagh!

We made a 750 km car journey to my cousin's house to spend my granny's 90th birthday all together as a family on Thanksgiving (i.e. Thursday). My cousin has a 3yo and an 11 month old and Johnny is in toddler heaven. We arrived yesterday afternoon and he got way overstimulated/overtired and we all had a hard time at bed time. He woke up an hour later, sat up, said "Katie. Where is Katie?" and then lay down again and fell asleep. Then he woke up at 5am and didn't go back to sleep until 7am, and after a morning of shenanigans just could/would not take a nap. We tried the car journey trick, and I thought he might fall asleep while cuddling me in a front carry in the patapum around the shops, but no. He did that toddler narrative that they do at bedtime for the first time.

Eventually when we got home we whisked him upstairs without seeing the other two and after a small struggle he crashed like a ton of bricks. Bedtime tonight was another nightmare. He'd be 90% asleep and then suddenly pop up and say "Where is Ouma?" or "I want to play" and then when he finally gave up, he started trying to count to 10. He knows parts of the sequence, not all of it, and the middle part he knows seven, but kept tripping over it. It was very cute but so frustrating. The poor boy's head was spinning. I hope the car journey back cures him, or it will be a long way home.