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.