Artist and creative thinker, does your kid amaze you?

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I see a lot of frustration, issues, questions and need for support in this forum, and am glad there are so many people who are willing to answer and help.

how about some bragging? I know this has surely been done before, but I just have to do it.

I'm not alone in being absolutely amazed by my kid, right? Do you sit and watch your child and think, this has got to be off the charts special, right? Other kids this age can't do this, can they?

What things about your child amaze you?

My son has a tablet and watches YouTube videos, specifically ones about dominoes. At age five, in preschool, we noticed he liked stacking dominoes. I bought him tons of dominoes. Now he makes these crazy domino towers. I'm talking stacking dominoes so that they make big pyramids. And he does them so quickly, it's amazing. I'll turn around and there it is, a giant tower and a trail of dominoes up to it. He does it for hours while chewing his fingers and pacing. Then, he sets off the domino trail and watches the whole thing go down. It's so therapeutic for him, I love it.

He also loves legos. At five and a half, after one or two starter sets, he can now build entire lego cars and trucks without help. I just open the box, give him the instructions and he builds it in an evening. His latest one was a FireTruck. I built his first set for him, this stuff is not easy!

Then there's the art. He drew the Sounder Train from memory after we rode it for the first time. He even got the designs on the sides correct. Granted, it's a very simplistic, child representation, but he did it from memory. He even drew the cars outside the window we saw lined up waiting for the train to pass. I didn't even realize he was paying attention when we pointed that out to him.

I'm an artist, and I KNOW my art wasn't that accurate at that age. He adds in details of cars that he draws that other kids don't. His car isn't just the outside and the basic shape. No, there has to be a steering wheel, the luggage in the back the wheel rims, all sorts of details. I absolutely love it.

Your son sounds amazing. Is it possible he has a photographic memory?

With my two and a half year old, (who is non-verbal and socially delayed, but not diagnosed yet), it's anything physical.

In playgrounds, she will automatically head for the hardest, most challenging piece of equipment. Anything tricky she keeps trying until she gets it. She shows caution, but no fear, and she keeps trying until she gets it. It took her three sessions to figure out the monkey bars at a nearby park -- they are designed so you use your legs as well. She's still too little to do ones which just use the arms yet.

And swimming, my goodness. I'm still a little in shock about this. I've just started taking her swimming, and it's been around 6 or 7 sessions so far. I used to take her swimming when she was littler but hadn't for a while as we'd moved to a new area and were still settling in. My husband and I took her swimming on Sunday, and she's figured out how to swim! Before I was putting my hand under her belly to hold her flat in the water, but this time she kept pushing my hand away. Eventually I realised she was holding her legs up in the water herself. At one point she overcompensated, and pushed her head face down into the water, but she only did that once. So we watched gobsmacked as she kept propelling herself forwards. Still with armbands and doggy paddle only, but still....

Swimming. At two and a half. After only six brief 40 minute sessions. With no formal lessons. Is that normal?

Verbal or not, autistic or not, I am so, SO proud of her.

My daughter's art.

What is particularly amazing to me is that she can...how to explain it...make things up. Her current passion is to draw new Pokemon, complete with giving them types, powers, HP (or whatever the heck Pokemon have). My son has told me that they are actually better than the new characters that have been introduced by the real Pokemon recently. T

I asked her once how she did it...drew things that do not exist in real life. She said she just copies what she sees in her head. So I asked her "Is what you see in your head exactly like this?" And she said "...no...you see how this line here has a bump in it? It's not supposed to have it but my hand wouldn't do it right." But I know that what she sees in her head is like what I see when I am looking at a real picture. That level of clarity.

One time when she was 4 or 5, we had huge pieces of drawing paper on the floor for her. Someone asked her to draw Sponge Bob. She did it, and not only did it look pretty much exactly like Sponge Bob...she drew it oriented to the other person, so it was upside down to her.

My daughter just turned 6 in August and is in the first grade.

Now, keep in mind I KNEW she could read better than the average 1st grader, however had prefiously REFUSED to read non picture books, because how can you have a story with no pictures? So I didn't know HOW well she could read.

Well last night she plopped down on the couch with a Junie B Jones book (I was pretty surprised, this doesn't happen with non picture books) appeared to flip through it rather quickly, and then tossed it on the ottoman. She stares off into space and says, "That was pretty good. I'd like more of those." Well I didn't really believe she read it. Because honestly, she had the book in her hand for all of 15 minutes and it's a 2-3 grade book. It's not that long, but I think it might take me 15 minutes to read it because it is about 50 pages or so. So I said, "cmon. You couldn't have read that. That was too quick." And she replies, "YesIdid" So I challenged her to tell me what it was about. She proceeded to give me a 3 minutes long synopsis, at times going so far as to quote actual dialogue.

Well ^%$# me.

So I look around for other books, I don't have a lot because she'd been refusing to read non picture books. Well what kids book does nearly EVERY adult have? Harry Potter. So I give her Harry effing Potter book 1 and she starts going to town. By the time she went to sleep she had read 15% of HArry Potter. book 1. In a half hour give or take. She's 6. She was definately reading it as occasionally she would say something about it or ask what something meant (she reads everything very literally). The other kids in her first grade class are still working on their first 100 sight words. She's reading HArry Potter. Brag brag brag brag.

IT's too bad all the school sees it a hooting hollering mess with perma ants in her pants who can't say 2 words to another kid and gets violent when I put the wrong things in her lunch sack. If they took a couple minutes with her they'd find out that she also taught herself to add, subtract, multiply, percents, fractions, and recently picked up negative numbers SOMEWHERE. We are stratching our heads over that as it was definately not taught in school. I asked. It came up because one day she wanted to use her tokens to buy a TV show (we have reward tokens the kids use to buy TV shows). She wanted to watch tom and jerry. Tom and jerry is a high cost show because it has 0 educational value and is crass and violent. Tom and Jerry cost 12 tokens per half hour. I reminded her that she only had 10 tokens. She then says "oh.. that would be nothing 2. Can I earn the other 2 later?" I asked her to repeat what she said, and she did, so I said "whats 'nothing' 2?" And she says, "well that's when you don't ahve enough. So I have 10 tokens, but I need 12. 10-12 isn't nothing. IT's less than nothing. It's 2 less than nothing. So it's nothing 2."

%$#@ me.

I gave her two tokens for using sound logic. She watched Tom and JErry.

Thanks! It's not often I get to brag. Not often at all.

Wow, you guys have amazing kids. My son just now turned 3, so I have a feeling he has a lot more to show me.

As for now, let's see... he has been able to recognize all his upper and lowercase letters since he was 2 (despite still not being able to sing them or say them consecutively). I first realized this when he was counting letters on street signs, saying "three E's" or what have you when we were driving. He is my first child, so I thought that was just average until I started asking around!

He knows lots of shapes, even the weird ones; can identify at least ten types of dinosaurs; can identify quite a few US states on the map (despite being way behind in language/communication skills otherwise); he also has a quite a lot of knowledge concerning insects and some other animals.

His biggest talent/special interest is probably video games (to my chagrin, I might add--I kind of hate video games). He can coach you through Zelda because he watches game play videos on Youtube almost every day. He has some books on the Zelda games and can name which particular game the different representations of the characters are from. He also shocked us by beating Pikmin on the WiiU, bonus boards and all.

haha, that sounds so much like my son at that age! He was very much non-verbal, and an only child, so we didn't pick up on the social delays until later.

But the play equipment, he was much the same way. Is your daughter a daredevil? Because my son was. My husband and I actually got into shape because it was the only way we could keep up with him and chase him around the parks.

Did she seem to walk early? Or was mobile early? Just curious. It fascinates me how different, yet similar kids with these sorts of traits can be.




Wow, as an artist, I relate to that. I know that feeling of "my hands just can't do it right". but wow, the spongebob story is amazing. The fact that she was able to draw it upside down because she knew it needed to be oriented to the other person, how do their little minds work like that?

I would LOVE to be that skilled, to think that way.

I hope you can find a way to keep her artistic talents flowing. It's not always easy to find a job in the arts, but that visual talent and creativity is something that a lot of artists I've worked with lack. And if not as a job, a hobby for sure.



HOW PROUD MUST YOU BE THAT SHE READS SO WELL!! WOW. Your daughter is my son's age, and he's still working on the basics. I am proud for you!
And it is too bad. I relate to your struggle. Just yesterday I was very happy I was in the lunchroom for breakfast to make sure my son got the red tray instead of the yellow tray the lunch lady tried to hand him. Who knows what that might of spiraled into because he couldn't just say "I like the red tray best, can I have it please?"
But seriously, BRAG. Her math and reasoning skills are obviously sound. Just because she can't verbalize it or explain how all those little connections are being made in her head doesn't mean her little mind isn't working constantly.





I can relate to that as well. I DO NOT LIKE video games but of course my son loves them and when he doesn't play them, he watches Youtube videos of them...

Don't you find it amazing how lucky our kids are to have access to so much through thing like Youtube? Does your son use a tablet? Mine does, and it's so intuitive for him, I love it and hate it. (hate it for the battles with him about it, but love it for everything he learns through it)

Thats great all the things he picks up! And isn't it funny how those little things just sort of stick out, out of the blue (like with the letters) and suddenly, you're thinking "Is this normal? Do other kids do this?"

My son was the same way with street signs. He loves them, wants to know what every sign says and we have street signs in his room and he makes them for his 'race tracks'. The first word he wrote consistently was "stop" so he could make stop signs.

For me, its all just fascinating because I grew up with children in my house all the time (my mom had a home day care) But now, my son is the only kid I"m around and it takes me a while to realize that what he is doing is unique.

I absolutely love it. I think it is a little miracle that his brain is wired so uniquely that he sees the world in a way others don't. It's hard for me to see the areas in which he's behind because I don't think it matters until I have to put him in the outside world and other people don't know how to deal with him.

He's kind-- he is a genuinely kind child.

Last Saturday, he caught his little sister's eyebrow with a toy shovel. So he wipes her face off, puts his arm around her, brings her inside...

He's six.

He plays with the baby, and I have very seldom had to scold him about being rough. He very seldom teases her (which the other two girls do all the time).

He wants to be a good boy. That's not fair-- he IS a good boy, he just fails to meet expectations so often. He's clumsy, and often careless, and prone to blurt things out, and likely to obsess over a thought until he gets his say. He's awkward and annoying. He wants to much to meet the DEFINITION of "good boy," to be approved of and accepted, that it is painful to watch.

He lays down beside me at night with his head on my arm-- no holding, because holding smashes him. He sighs, cuddles into my shoulder, goes to sleep. I whisper how much I love him. He smiles...

Little boy, you are a beautiful creature. A vision in ivory and gold. Sunbeams. How I wish you could stay this way forever.

I'm sorry I can't let that happen.

Our kids are just amazing.

My daughter will be 8 next month. She has so many qualities that I'm proud of. She's happy little girl, very kind and caring about others and I can see her turning into a lovely young lady. Sadly, she gets her frustrations out at home and we see a different side to her, but when we're out and about or she's at school, her sweet nature is all that can be seen. Her love for nature and the environment is very obvious as well. She's a talented child too. She's got a lovely singing voice and is doing well at learning to play the guitar. She can swim, ride a bike, ride a horse and throw a javelin. She's also determined to learn to knit and sew.

She started a new school this term and we had our first parents evening this week. For the first time since she started school, she has been placed in the top sets - new school, better environment - we hoped this would be the makings of her and so far so good. The teacher then started talking about other things that she was excelling ahead of her peers in. One notable thing was art. I glanced down at the teacher's sheet and she'd written 'excellent' for that. I've known this for a very long time about her. I'm an amateur artist and I can see she has more talent than me. She's not technically exact (neither am I), but she has this really great imagination and distinctive style. She also has an ability to project images from her mind, so that they look to her like they are in the real world. That's something I hope she can keep on utilising.

She always has to do things different, in a creative sort of way. I first took note of this when she was 4. I took her to an art & crafts session at a local museum. She had to make a picture of a pirate ship, by sticking paper onto a sheet. My girl cut the corner out of the bottom of her ship, using pinking sheers, placed it at a jaunty angle and she asked me to draw a shark in the corner. The ship was sinking, having had a chunk bitten out of it, by the shark. I hadn't directed her in any way and, at first, I was a little concerned that she wasn't doing what she had been asked to do. I was astounded at what had been going on in her little head. All of the pictures were hung up and they were identical, but, there was one that just stood out a mile from all the others. I could see that the women running the activity were pleasantly surprised.

She now goes to a Saturday morning arts & crafts class. Each time the teacher brings the kids out of the class, there's almost a disbelief in her eyes about the standard of our daughter's work. Last week's picture was something even I would have been proud of, if I had created it myself.

Just now, she says she wants to be a paleontologist, but I can see a career in the visual arts, if she wants it.

My son has always created entire worlds in his head, with enough back stories and action lines to fill entire series of books. It's amazing.

(its also evident that he doesn't really have interest in writing those books, but I digress)

He also constantly invents new games in his head, and those he does often move into proto type. That made him a mini celebrity in elementary school, when there were some younger kids that followed him so eagerly I called them groupies.

His dream job is to work in the creative department of the company that creates Magic. He knows its a tough dream, but he would probably be very good for that sort of thing. His teachers all seem sure he will end up in some game or story telling related creative field. That would be lovely, but I wish I had a clue how to help him get there. I'm creative as a hobbyist, but an accountant by profession, and my husband is an engineer; you can't get more boring and by the book than this set of parents and as creative as my son is, he tends to also have our low-risk mindset. So ... I just don't know.

All of these children are amazing.

Mim is 8 and speed reads, usually when in bed at night. She can get through 1 and a half children sized books between bedtime and actually going to sleep each night. Like CWA I didn't believe she could of read them and quizzed her. She put me well and truelove in my place. She reads faster than me I know.

Her other passion is science, and particularly microbiology. She gets so excited talking about how sperm enters an egg, and even more so when she sees pictures of this. What brought it home was going to a local secondary school and seeing the year 7 biology work. They had made models of cells in bowls, with the different parts made out of plasticine and labelled, and I thought "Mim already knows that..."

My daughter loves science as well, hence her wanting to be a paleontologist. She watches adult science shows and understands it all, some of which is really high level. We've somehow managed to keep her away from 'the birds and the bees', although she can tell when animals are mating and what that's about, but doesn't know it works the same for humans.
I honestly would say her knowledge and understanding is at the level of an average child double her age. I have a degree in microbiology and her Daddy's an engineer, so she's been exposed to science from us. However, her interest in this comes from herself. I don't remember having any understanding or interest in learning about science, until I went to high school, so she's off to a flying start with this.

My little guy is incredibly smart and loves history, science, basically any and all facts. He has a photographic memory, and can do a puzzle perfectly after completing it once. He is completely awesome. I hate seeing him struggle, and am totally amazed at the things he knows already.

When my guy was little, he had some weird and astonishing echolalia. He wasn't saying words yet at 9 months but he sang this while on the changing table, word for word and note for note:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRfBqoGVFXc[/youtube]



He did this with song after song.

He's almost 5 now and hasn't shown any particular aptitude with an instrument and he doesn't seem to have the "human tape recorder" thing going for him anymore, but he does still have a pretty good ear.

what amazes me about my son is how loving he is. he is the most genuinely sweet and loving person you will ever meet. He hugs anyone who smiles at him, and loves to be hugged and snuggled with.

My son has many amazing talents, he is a whiz in math, he teaches himself all different patterns and techniques to get the problems done. he is an advanced belt rank in karate which he works hard to do well in, he can figure out any electronic device in a few seconds...but his loving nature is what stands out the most. you typically don't see that in kids these days!