I can’t believe I am going to write about Target again, but WHAT THE HELL, TARGET? You are hurting me. Deep down to the core.
What I entered the store needing:
Seventh Generation Non-Chlorine Bleach
Secret Unscented Conditioning Solid Deodorant
Neutrogena Anti-Wrinkle Anti-Blemish Cream (This is the best face lotion in the history of mankind. I don’t have acne-prone skin, but I read somewhere that it was good for mild rosacea and HOT DAMN, it cleared my rosacea right up!)
A bath puff thingy
Crayons
What I left the store with:
A bath puff thingy
Crayons
People, I don’t need any more crayons. I am literally drowning in goddamn crayons over here. Wito is obsessed with crayons — so obsessed that you wouldn’t even believe me if I tried to explain. The only way I can get in and out of Target without a nuclear whinefest is to buy him a new box of crayons. (RoseArt makes a great little box for less than a dollar, although it’s probably made from corrosive sublimate. Whatevs.) So I buy him one. Every. Time. And every time, he comes home and sings this highly annoying (yet peppy!) Box of Crayons song from Signing Times.
In a nutshell, he lines up his crayons in order of rainbow color and sings along, signing the colors and practically making out with them. HE DOESN’T EVEN ENJOY DRAWING, PEOPLE. And I’m a little hesitant to admit this, but he knows the names of an enormous amount of Crayola crayons.
(Annnd, begin tangent.)
It’s one of his favorite games – we hold up a crayon and he yells out the color. However, he has to look at the name on the crayon – it’s not pure memorization. (We’re talking pretty specific names here, such as Turtle Green, Apricot, Turquoise Blue and Blue Violet.) In all honesty, we’re not sure how he remembers all of the crayon names, but I do catch him sounding the words out when I’m not looking. Which brings me to my point- um, I think he is starting to read. We’ve finally come to the conclusion that he can’t possibly have memorized two shelves’ worth of books, yet he knows them word for word. And just recently, he’s been rattling off the names of street signs as we pass them. Um, WHAAAAA?
He memorizes everything you tell him, everything he sees, everything he hears. Don’t get me started on the spelling. He would rather listen to me spell words than spend a day at Sea World. Just this morning he asked, “Mom, how do you spell guinea pig?” UM, I DON’T KNOW, SON.
(GOD, this is sounding completely braggadocios. I am grossing myself out. Please forgive me, but if you want to know what’s going on with Wito, well, this is what’s going on with Wito. Please feel free to stop reading right now. I promise I will be back with a detailed account of my very first epilator experience later this week.)
(Painful, yet a truly delightful end result!)
I would be beyond grateful to hear any advice or suggestions you all might have for parenting early readers. Even better, I would love advice from parents who are dealing/have dealt with toddlers who have a never-ending desire to learn. Some days I really struggle with feelings that I’m not doing enough for him. I want him to be challenged, but I don’t want to be Rick Moranis from Parenthood either. It’s a slippery slope, man.
He’s only 2 1/2 years old, but he CRAVES mental stimulation in the form of memory games, spelling and reading. Do you know of any games that would be fun for him? People around here have suggested looking into “gifted programs” for him. It’s way too early in the game for that, right? Right? (Seriously, wouldn’t that be too much for a 2-year-old? He isn’t even potty-trained!)
I would kill for some wisdom right now. As my mother would say, I am “cornfused”. If commenting isn’t your thing, feel free to email me a sarahATwhoorlDOTcom. We thank you muchly!
roz
April 30, 2009 at 1:27 pmMy son did the same thing – especially reading street signs and bumper stickers and shouting out things like “Minnesota” that we were SURE he hadn’t memorized.
I think a lot of the advice you’ve received so far is good. One negative aspect I will mention that we’re dealing with now – just because a kid learns to read early does not mean they’ll have as easy a time with other subjects. My son is finishing kindergarten and, while he can read better than anyone in class, he is about average in math. He finds this enormously frustrating, I think because he has to work at it, and is not used to having to work at anything!
roz
April 30, 2009 at 1:49 pmOh, PS, some of these bright kids are late potty trainers. My son for sure…. :(
Kristabella
April 30, 2009 at 2:10 pmWito is a GENIUS! My favorite was “Mom, how do you spell guinea pig?” My nephew asked me last time I was over there “Auntie, do you know how to spell chameleon?” And I was like “not without spellcheck, kiddo!”
I have no suggestions because I am a spinster with cats. I wish I could get my cats to read and clean their own litter box.
Kristabella’s last blog post..News Flash: Packing Sucks
Jenni
April 30, 2009 at 3:13 pm1st off… Target is like crack. The more you go, the more you want.
2nd off… My kid is more like Steve Martin’s kid. You know the one. He wore the bucket on his head and ran into walls that way? So, um, my advice? Keep buying Crayons! :p
Nancy R
May 1, 2009 at 10:58 amYou could play “what rhymes with _____”, and “what begins with letter __”. Just be careful with the rhyming game, because they can say words that rhyme but they don’t know the meaning of…like “what rhymes with door?” “Hoar!”
So, yeah…sometimes not so good to play in public.
Nancy R’s last blog post..Shots From Last Week
Nancy R
May 1, 2009 at 10:59 amI’d like to say I made that spelling error on purpose to avoid naughty word searches…but no – just typing in a hurry.
Nancy R’s last blog post..Shots From Last Week
Sam
May 1, 2009 at 7:52 pmSuch great suggestions, they all sound great – the memory games, especially. What popped in my mind was Julia @ Here Be Hippogriffs’ son, Patrick. You know he’s crazy smart and was obsessed with letters…you might want to send her an email and see if she has some advice for a fellow mother of a super smart kid! And you don’t sound braggy, seriously.
Jenni, you comment made me laugh so hard. Just the visual image…smack!
Sam’s last blog post..feeling quiet
Jae
May 2, 2009 at 4:52 pmNot sure if this has been mentioned or not but maybe Wito would enjoy the “I’m going on a trip and I’m going to take…” alphabet/memory game? Maybe start slow and let him name whatever comes to mind and then start making it category specific?
margalit
May 3, 2009 at 3:39 pmI have a son who is now almost 17 years old, but was a precocious reader and learner. He had absolutely NO interest in fiction books at all. He just wanted to learn, so I bought pretty much every Usborne and Dorling Kindersley book made back then, and he read them. When he was 3 a friend took him to the science museum here in Boston and she came back totally shaken. He had explained in great detail how electricity works to power lights. That’s the kind of kid he was.
Now, not so much. He remained totally nuts about learning until middle school and then he realized that nobody learned like he did, and he basically just shut down. It isn’t unusual for profoundly gifted kids to do just this.
When you have a gifted child, parenting becomes REALLY competitive. WAY worse than just plain old parenting, you’ve got these nutty gifted or nothing parents that only send their kids to gifted programs and gifted camps and go to gifted conferences to learn more about how to push the kid to be more gifted. 12 year olds in college. Parents who allow their kids on Oprah and Ellen to show off their precocious parents.
PROMISE ME YOU WILL NOT DO THIS, EVER.
My advice: let him learn at his own pace. Montessori is great for gifted kids, but sucks for kids with IQs that are over 150. They just can’t handle that type of learning. Most parents of PG kids give up on school and either home school or hire tutors to teach their kids. We did private, public, homeschooling (twice), back to public, residential for a year, back to public. The point is, with kids like this every year can be totally different and you have to be on your toes as to what works and what’s failing. And you have to be ready to turn on a dime.
Parenting gifted children sucks. I’ll say it right out loud. It is horribly hard to have a kid that is SO different, who is almost always smarter than the teacher, who has no patience for a spiral curriculum, and who wants to spend way more on in-depth topics than any school allows.
Sarah @ BecomingSarah.com
May 7, 2009 at 9:11 amI was an early reader too. In fact, I wasn’t much older than your son. My mom said she would go around to elementary schools looking for memory games to play with my sibs & I because otherwise she’d go out of her mind.
On the other side of the coin, though, just so I’m not a total braggart, I did wet the bed until I was, like, 12. So. You know. Obviously there’s somethign to be said for BALANCE. Good luck!
page
May 20, 2009 at 12:50 amI started reading at about the same age as your son, and read everything I could get my hands on (imagine a 4 year old asking her father what a hickey is, and him realizing she got it from a pilfered copy of “Grease” from the baby sitter).
I loved the Richard Scarry Picture Dictionary, the Museum of Natural History book (big one, has the entire collection), anything descriptive and I loved reading into a tape recorder. I also got a HUGE kick out of freaking out everyone by reading The Bell Jar at age 5, and absolutely loved learning to write my own stories. However, I sucked at math. Still do. Numbers give me the cold sweats. I can spell anything, just don’t ask me to add up a column of numbers. Give that job to my husband.
Preschool saved my parents and brother from my endless tirades of questions, and provided me with so much more stimulation than I ever would have had at home with a babysitter (my parents both were gone 6-4).
Target + Crack. Just sayin’.
page
May 20, 2009 at 12:52 amOh, and GOD, the library. I know he’s already going, but the library is still my happy place. And secondhand book sales (the Planned Parenthood book sale in my hometown is stuff of legend). Let him go wild.
Bella
June 1, 2009 at 2:43 pmHi, I know this post is a little old, but I wanted to say THANK YOU for all the Library love. I’m a Youth Services Librarian and all the pro-library comments made my day. One often overlooked area of the library that might be great for Wito is audiobooks or ‘kits’ (when there’s an audio book AND physical book to read together). These are a great tool for early literacy and will give you a break because Wito will be independently entertained, and as with being read to, he is developing his literacy skills.