Is my two year old gifted? what should we do about preschool?

Question

My son turned two in October. He's known all his letter since about fourteen-fifteen months. Also learned small numbers around then. He knew a bunch of sight words before he could speak. He used signs before then.

Now, at around 27 months he has started to sound out words. He can read a little bit, but most of his struggle is with telling where words end and begin. He can subtract one from any number under five, and add one or two to any number under ten. He can count by tens, and count up to 100 objects. He can count backwards from ten. He is obsessed with science. Particularly astronomy and physics. He listened to me read a hard fact book about Jupiter for a half hour today. He told me almost 100 times today that all 8 planets circle the sun, and that they are all very far away, very far distance. He knows them all, even a few of Jupiter's moon's. Yesterday I told him a moon was a body that revolved around a planet, asteroid, or a dwarf planet, and he yelled, "dwarf planets like Pluto, charon!"

He watches some dry lectures on space, and math and he freaks out while he watches them. Like he does flips and stands on his head and jumps around, like my friends two year old when she watches yo gabba gabba. He just can't hold still while he's learning, the kid is pure energy.

I try hard to get him to do stuff that isn't learning, like pretend play. He loves to make everything talk to each other, and tell stories. He pretty much talks non stop.

So going at this rate, what would preschool be like for him? I want him to go for the social skills it provides, but there are no play based preschools here. He doesn't see other kids much, but he does play well with others. Although he tends to get overexcited and can't contain himself. That usually leads to trouble without a break from the activity.

Should I keep him home for another year and just start him in kindergarten? Or try preschool? Do I tell them about him first? Has anyone had experienced with this? We are also considering homeschooling. Could he get enough from homeschooling? I'm just doing whatever he asks typically now. He picked out the Jupiter book from the library. He rarely reads fiction anymore.

Answer 1

Sounds like you've got a bright child there, and it's good that you're thinking about these things early.

Starting school ahead (i.e., starting kindergarten at 4 instead of 5) is something that is controversial, and it's unclear on what the right answer is. If it's something you're thinking about, I encourage you to do your own research on the matter. There are benefits (avoiding 'boredom', catering more appropriately to the child's abilities) and drawbacks (being physically and emotionally immature). There is no clear-cut answer, and it's something you'll have to decide for yourself, in conjunction with the resources available to you - particularly the school administrators, counselors, and if extant the gifted program there.

As far as right now, it sounds like you're giving him a great education already. Preschool is certainly a good choice, and one thing you can consider there is one of the variants of self-paced preschools, like a Montessori school. At a Montessori, for example, children of several ages are mixed together (3-6 in ours), and do activities at their own pace - with little to no expectation of a particular age being appropriate for a particular activity. They also help each other learn the activities, which can be a great way to build leadership and social skills even while within a classroom environment. My oldest is probably gifted or close to it, and he's definitely benefiting from this model of schooling; we'll be sad to leave it when he starts public school next year.

Otherwise - I would encourage you to keep broadening his horizons. It's great that he's interested in planets, for example; keep pushing those boundaries and finding him more things to be interested in. Science, history, geography; or even things like cooking, crafts, art - all things his mind can be exposed to. He's young enough that exposing him to all of this will help not only develop important skills, but also help him figure out what he's interested in as he grows up.

Answer 2

I will suggest what we do here in India for bright children.

1) put him in summer school for small kids

2) take him to zoo, museums, ancient places (like forts) , puppet show etc. Tell small stories around it.

3) importantly, tell him lots and lots of bedtime stories/tales from history, mythology, religion, scientists, mathematicians repackaged as small kids tales. One example of such book in india is "panchtantra". It is a ancient story book (3rd century BC) for small kids with small life lessons involved, for kids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchatantra you may get its english version or lots of similar books from your country.

Its important that you read the story yourself, and then tell later him as bedtime without the book around. Do not let him read the story book himself, for some time now (just my opinion)

Story, story, story - you need to repackage everything as story.

4) most important, is socializing of kid with other kids, real physical play (running around, playing with soft ball etc). Do not indulge in the board games etc for now. It is very important that his father needs to devout few hours regularly for physical play(like any ball game, mock kid-boxing) with him.

5) keep the TV(cartoon shows), tablets,smart phones away from him for now. If you can not then atleast allow it only on alternate days for limited hour. We need to protect the mental imagination of children, esp. bright children - from the onsalught of too much of cartoon shows.

6) Talk to him as much you can. Listen his made up stories with atention as much you can

7) Introduce kid level(easy level) "meditation" to him after six months or a year. there are lots of techniques for meditation. I will suggest "sudarshan kriya technique" from 'Art of Living', its a very easy breathing technique. This will slowly add up as self control and focus in later life, which is very important for bright kids, as many of them later get defocussed

All these small things will add up a lot.

Answer 3

Might I suggest not placing a child into school early. Supplement his education with extra-curricular activities by all means, but in my experience, doing well at school depends on having a certain level of maturity rather than being purely dependant on intellectual ability.

In particular, in English classes in my final year at school, I had to write a series of essays at the end of the year. I thought that they were very good at the time, my best work in fact, but still received poor marks, only just passing, and was unable to understand why.

I had been placed in school as early as legally possible, since I was also a bright child and an early reader. When I re-read the essays one year later, I couldn't believe that I had submitted such juvenile tripe, and only then fully understood what my teacher had been looking for.

Obviously, my teacher had been expecting a certain level of maturity, and wasn't considering age differences across the year. Had my parents delayed enrolling me in school one year, I may have done much better.

I've heard that there are studies showing that the oldest children in a class tend to fare best, so delaying enrolling your child as long as possible might be wise.

As a side note - early reading can be an indicator of Asperger's syndrome, so finding some pre-school social activities for this child may be valuable.