What is a gifted child? Is it a child that is brilliant, smart, or way ahead of other children his age? Or may it be a child who at an early age was somehow taught, in a subliminal way, how to unlock his greates potential? I believe it is the latter. I have two of those so-called gifted children. They are boy / girl twins and couldn't be more different in every sense of the word. Actually, they are total opposites.
I knew when they were about 9 months old, that something in their heads was moving a little too fast. They had their own language and would communicate with eachother while my husband and I just watched. They were in their own little world.
The twins were my first children and I didn't have a clue on what to do with one baby, much less two at one time! I decided early on that we would do everything together. The real fun began when they started walking. My friends would laugh with pity when I shared that the twins and I had gone grocery shopping and that we did it in under 2 hours. You see, I would incorporate them in my shopping. We would go down every aisle and see how many cans or bags I needed of a particular item. That taught them how to count, learn the colors, learn the different fruits and vegetables, pastas, the list was endless. (It was very funny how a 2 year old knew the difference between all the pastas such as spaghetti, rottini, penne, angel hair, fettucine, etc.)
We also spent lots of time looking at words everywhere we went. We would read everything! That taught them their basic sight words and they were off and reading a lot of words by the time they turned 3.
We would also look at maps a lot and that is how they learned about the different continents, countries, cities, bodies of water, etc.
No matter what we did, we made it fun!! They were learning and I was teaching yet we were just living a normal day. They just turned 9 and they are in the 4th grade. My son, Jordan, loves baseball, basketball, wrestling, math, and computers. My daughter, Steffi, loves cheerleading, tumbling, modeling, shopping, writing, and science. They are just a couple of normal kids that are growing up knowing how to unlock their true potential. By the way, my 2 year old son, John-Paul, attends a Montessori school. The other day his teacher asked me, "Are you doing something with John-Paul, he seems a little advanced for his age?" I just told her,"Nothing special. I'm just teaching him how to unlock his greatest potential".
Awesome retort. I like it.