I think my almost 3 year old kid is scary smart. Help.

[Stink Fish Pot]

Originally Posted by irishgirl

Tech savvy, how exactly? An hour of TV a day isn't exactly being tech savvy. She doesn't use a phone or computer.

Most kids her age can't count, spell their names, don't know the days of the week, and can't tell you their address. She can.

The Nina show is her favourite- we'd be happy with Peppa Pig!

My daughter is not eve two yet, and she just rebuilt the carb on my '72 Stingray. But just to prove that I don't push her, I only let her do one or two carbs a week for some extra cash we are using to pay her greens fees. She can drive the ball about 250 yards, and is 2 handicap from the ladies tees.

My wife and I are pleased that she is becoming so well rounded. We have never pushed her, and yet she has found these things on her own to experiment and enjoy. She even gave her mom and me a shouting on her website about how we never push her in one direction. I really appreciated that, as jealous friends, relatives and neighbors just didn't want to believe that.


(ok, I may have embellished this a little bit, but I'll let you all decide which parts.)

The KEY though is to remember to not push her. If she's as smart as you say, she will get bored with things she has mastered or is uninterested in and she will start to resent doing things that you may be forcing her to do. Steering her a bit, or guiding her ever so slightly (so she thinks it's her idea and not yours) is the best way.

[Washoe]

Originally Posted by SpoilerVirgin

Also, and this applies to all kids, not just the smart ones, praise for the effort rather than the achievement. Kids who are praised for their accomplishments, especially ones who have great skill in one area, tend to not even bother to try in other areas, because they don't get the same level of recognition.

Seconded. Carol Dweck’s work is of relevant interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTXrV0_3UjY

[Farmer Jane]

I still tell my son he's smart. He is. But I also say it when he's upset at something he can't do very well. I've told him that being able to solve problems makes you smarter than people who never have to. He is a very logical child and this helped when he was struggling in reading. ("I figure things out. I can do this...")

I was told growing up that I was either a) a little dumb or b) too average. Neither of which were true, but perhaps I'm projecting a little bit here.

[Zebra]

When she makes a couch cushion fort, is it in the shape of a skull or a volcano?


Then I'd be worried.

[Girl From Mars]

Another vote for probably smart, but not scary smart, from what you've said. My just-2.5 year old knows all the letters, can spell her name, knows my 10 digit mobile number by heart, knows all the words to My Favourite Things from Sound of Music and can count up to 10 in 2 languages.

We don't consider her wildly smart, It's just stuff we've exposed her to, that she's familiar with. So my only suggestion is to keep pushing her knowledge boundaries - lots of new experiences, books and lots of talking about the world around.

And an article I read suggested not complementing your kid on being smart - they begin to put value on that, rather than the effort in trying and can get disheartened if being smart is not enough (which it is not always). Great job, I'm proud of how hard you tried, etc, rather than being smart or clever.

[lorene]

Originally Posted by monstro

She may be scary smart. Or she may just be ahead of the curve now and will hit her peak early.

It is too early to tell.

500 billion times this.

I was horrified when my (quite honestly, pretty freaking smart) brother-in-law cautioned me that all parents think their kid is SMART!!!111!!! but then they get to grade school and see that their kid is one data point on a continuum of smart.

I thought he was an ass. My daughter is SMART! She was burning up the leagues. Throwing off the class curve, even before she was even in class.

But..he was right.

I don't take pleasure in bursting balloons, but what your daughter can do sounds to be high end of normal. Period. My son was spelling words with the fridge magnets at that age. We just had him evaluated for ADHD and part of that was the WISC. Come to find out, he is high average in a lot of areas, average in others, and below average in those that require processing speed and focus.

He's still teh awesomemostest, though.

[maggenpye]

Yeah, my kid was about seven when she was assessed (WJII)and it was a long and expensive process. Worth it for us, because she was starting to have the classic problems that academically gifted kids have.

I figure if she was gifted at music, sports or art I'd be finding support and extension for those things as well as a broad range of other opportunities. Academics is her strength, it doesn't make her better than anyone else, it's just who she is.

At 3 years, the (however) bright kids need the same stuff that all kids need. Which is pretty much what I posted before.

[Lasciel]

Bright smart-ass kid checking in!

At three, she's not around many of her peers for very long, so there's not much comparison going on. You're fine for now. Talk to her, encourage her to be interested in things and to explore and learn on her own. Let her be a kid, even if she's a bright and very intellectual kid.

When she hits school, if she's still way ahead of the curve (no promises that she will be) then there's a good chance that she's going to notice that something's fishy with all the other students (and if she's really bright, God save you, the teachers, too). When she asks, don't pussyfoot around it.

Tell her straight out: "You are much smarter than a lot of other people. It's something that happened in your brain that you didn't cause, just like Daniel's eyes are brown, and Melanie has that pretty curly hair that you're jealous of. It can be helpful to be very smart, but it is nothing that you caused, so don't be vain about it." Then explain the concept of vanity and showing off, or purposefully making other kids (or God help you, the teachers) look bad, and how that's not acceptable in polite society.

Then, if she stays intellectually bright and ahead of the curve past preschool-kindergarten (no promises that she will) you have to really hammer home that just because 90+% of life, especially academics, comes to her "naturally" that isn't an excuse to not TRY and put effort into the things that don't.

Perhaps they're physical things, perhaps there's one subject that's "just too hard" but don't let her slack off - actual mental effort is rare and difficult and scary for her, because her mental image is of herself as being smarter than everyone.

That's good in a lot of ways, but the downside is that if a subject is actually HARD? It causes a LOT of stress and anxiety because there's so little reference for that. As a parent, hunt those subjects and activities down and emphasize the hell out of them. Praise her to the heavens for trying something she finds hard. Make it clear that you're praising her for the EFFORT, not for the achievement, or because she's smart. She'll KNOW she's smart by that point, and having her parents value her effort instead (even when she doesn't succeed - ESPECIALLY when she doesn't succeed immediately) is going to be hugely important.

I never had to TRY to accomplish anything til I was in college, and it was bloody hard to attempt by then - I ended up in therapy because I was too scared to even attempt anything that I wasn't sure I would succeed at immediately. It was putting a huge dent in my quality of life, but I just didn't have the mental tools to do what most people figure out by kindergarten. Please make sure that if your little girl ends up gifted, or just really bright, that she has those tools in her arsenal. She's going to need them eventually.

[Mighty_Girl]

Originally Posted by Joey P

I can spell my name with my eyes closed...so there.

I can read with my eyes shut!

Originally Posted by jz78817

this. I was reading by three and I turned out to be nothing special. Don't get wrapped up in this whole "my kid is gifted and a genius and better than everyone else's kid" bullshit.

I was that kid. I am not sure why, but before I was 4 I had figured out how to read partly on my own (I started school at 7).

I was an avid, almost obsessively-so reader by the time I started school. As a result I had a vocabulary far more advanced than my peers and was very articulate. Eventually I figured I didn't have to work to get good grades, excellent grades in fact. At some point I was left to do my own thing and I coasted through school without much work, basically I bullshitted my way out of high school.

I took a gap year to study Italian and still graduated from university at 20. But here's the thing I learned at the university: I wasn't as smart as I was led to believe, I was just average, at best. My advantage had evaporated. I clawed my way to a diploma and was left with a lifetime of self-doubt and a dodgy self-esteem.

My daughter is, if anything, brighter than I was. At 6 she speaks 3 languages at the same level (above her peers), reads and writes all three very well, and is also a curious child and a very avid reader. I am avoiding the same mistakes my parents made and telling her that just because some things are easier now doesn't mean they will always be. To balance it out she's in ballet. Seeing as she is a very clumsy kid (like yours truly), this gives her some perspective on the whole "smart" thing. There her not-as-smart peers are much better than her and she has to work hard to keep up with their innate abilities.

In short, give your child some breathing space, teach her that hard work is more important than innate ability. Challenge her. If you just let her do only what she is good at she'll have an inflated sense of her own abilities, even if they do turn out to be well-above average. I speak from experience and years of regret.

[TokyoBayer]

I was bright, not scary smart, but well on the right hand side of the curve. Never studies, and pulled in As, just on the ability of recall what the teacher had said.

When I was taking freshman chemistry, I became friends with a guy who didn't catch on as quickly. After class, I usually would explain what had gone on.

In the three quarters, I had an A, A-, and finished with an A, with minimal studying. He was a solid B with three to four times the efforts.

Normally, this would be a brag, but after we graduated, and went out into the real world, I took an almost useless ability to regurgitate what the instructor had said, and he had a finally developed study habits including the ability to plan what to study, and when, as well as better critical thinking.

[Loach]

Originally Posted by TokyoPlayer

I was bright, not scary smart, but well on the right hand side of the curve. Never studies, and pulled in As, just on the ability of recall what the teacher had said.

When I was taking freshman chemistry, I became friends with a guy who didn't catch on as quickly. After class, I usually would explain what had gone on.

In the three quarters, I had an A, A-, and finished with an A, with minimal studying. He was a solid B with three to four times the efforts.

Normally, this would be a brag, but after we graduated, and went out into the real world, I took an almost useless ability to regurgitate what the instructor had said, and he had a finally developed study habits including the ability to plan what to study, and when, as well as better critical thinking.

This. I had no problem sleeping through high school but never developed good study habits. I got slammed in college because of it. I constantly reinforce to my kids that in many was learning how to learn and study are more important than the subjects they make you learn in school. You may never think about some of those things again but it builds a foundation you will always use.

[sandra_nz]

Heheh this all sounds very familiar. I did much better at school (which was about regurgitating what you'd be taught) than at university (where you had to apply what you knew to a novel situation).

[Haunted Pasta]

Of possible interest to the OP, a thread I recently started, in which the SDMB crowd posted a lot of worthwhile observations:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...d.php?t=648282

[BottledBlondJeanie]

As said, your kiddo isn't scary smart. That's really cool she's advanced, but look at some of our "I was reading at two" dopers and rethink. Not labeling her is the best you can do.

And yes, due to a great memory and a stay-at-home mom with a degree in elementary education, I was 'reading' at two and reading at three. My IQ is nice, but early milestones are just that and normally even out a bit as kids get older.

Again, examine the dopers who brag about that stuff as an intelligence indicator. Social ineptitude abounds and significant future accomplishments don't necessarily follow. But, you're a smart chica if you can be judged from your posts Focusing on making sure this early advance doesn't separate her from her peers or make her think she's a special snowflake is the best you could do for her.

I speak from motherly experience, too.

[Cheesesteak]

I think kids learn the things that interest them. When my son turned 3, he had an interest in an iPad game called Stack the States. They ask you a question about a state, you select the correct one, then you get to stack the shape of the state up in a pile. He can't read a lick (knows all the letters, but doesn't read words) but if you answer the question for him "Montgomery is the capital of... Alabama" he picks the right state every time.

He knows the shape of every state, knows which ones are big, which are small, if he sees an outline of a state, he'll name it. Hell, he now plays with states as imaginary friends, or plays his own State Game with random objects, the whisk is California and the toy dollar bill is Rhode Island.

I think he's a bright little boy, but I think he excels in the areas that he's most interested in, and not so much with topics that don't appeal to him. I don't think I could convince him to memorize our address or phone number, even though it should be easy enough for him.

[MsWhatsit]

Originally Posted by BottledBlondJeanie

As said, your kiddo isn't scary smart. That's really cool she's advanced, but look at some of our "I was reading at two" dopers and rethink. Not labeling her is the best you can do.

Wrong. No, you shouldn't go around all day saying "You're so smart." But getting a "gifted" label for your child often means that your child gets gifted services in the school district, which can have a major and lasting impact on their school experience. The OP's child is only 3, but 3 is not too early to identify signs of higher-than-average intelligence.

This brings me to my other piece of advice for the OP, which is to be careful about who you talk about this stuff to. When you tell someone that your child is gifted, or even just smart, or even just mention some of the unusual or extraordinary things your child is capable of, some people will respond very defensively, by telling you that your child isn't so special, that they did those things as a child and they aren't so special, that their children can do more than that, that you are bragging, that you are inappropriately labeling your child, etc. One of the side benefits to my oldest child moving into the gifted program at his school was that I could finally talk to other parents about various scary-smart-related issues without having them roll their eyes and behave as though I were the Braggiest Bragger in Bragland.

[Dangerosa]

I have a smart kid. But there are smarter kids. And three is too early to know much more than smart. It's too early to know if smart will combine with disciplined, or even obsessive. Or if it will be that absent minded non directed smart (that's my smart daughter, she can nearly fail classes because the steps of writing down the homework, doing the homework, putting her name on the paper, getting the paper into her bookbag, and turning in the paper 100 times in a semester is doomed for failure at least a few of those times).

In some ways, her bright average brother is smarter. Barring being thirteen and not giving a damn, he has the discipline she lacks. He will never see the 99th percentile on standardized tests, but he is less flighty and better rounded.

Enjoy her. Give her opportunities to try new things. Encourage her. But don't start planning for the Harvard dorm move in yet. And watch for the downsides of smart, like social challenges. In one ways being a gifted child is just being a different type of special needs kid.

[NoClueBoy]

Mozart invented the internet at the age of three.

[Brynda]

On the issue of praise, it is easy when someone is continually praised for only one aspect of their life (such as pretty or smart) to learn that this is the only aspect that matters, and from there to "this quality is why I am loved" and from there to "I can only love myself when I am X." It ain't pretty.

Praise your smart kids for their accomplishments, and when they try hard, and for their kindnesses, etc. Praise the whole kid, and make sure they know you love them just because they are who they are--flaws and all.

[Dangerosa]

Away from the iPad and onto a real keyboard.

I wish I'd have done more exploring of charter schools for my daughter. I like her public school, but I didn't even bother enough to learn about the options.

I'm very glad I didn't push her ahead. As a September baby, she is among the oldest in her class....but despite being smart, she isn't mature. She is short, she is almost thirteen and hasn't had her period yet and she is just hitting puberty. Physically, she's behind for her age. And socially, she isn't adept either. She wanted to go to school today in black socks while the rest of her was dressed in pastel pink - because those were the socks she could find easily and she didn't feel like looking (nor did she care). She doesn't get that sometimes being nice is more important than being right and winning an argument. She does great surrounded by younger kids, or much older kids where she becomes a mascot, but is challenged in her peer group.

I wish I'd have bothered with more enrichment - like classes at the Science Museum or educational camps. The best thing I've done for her is to send her to sleep away camp for Girl Scouts, but I probably should have sent her to language camp instead of horse camp. However, really short term stuff - her brand of gifted is not to get too in depth into anything. Well, except Harry Potter trivia and Minecraft.

I'm glad, however, that some of the enrichment we've done has been athletic and not academic. She is NOT a good gymnast, but years of gymnastics have helped.

I should have nurtured relationships sooner with other "geek kids" - her district doesn't have a lot of "kids like her" - which doesn't mean there aren't smart kids, just that her brand of smart and geeky doesn't exist. This is a girl who watches enough Top Gear to inform her Social Studies class - when the topic came up - that the fastest street legal car in the world was the Bugatti Veyron. Or to correct her Science teacher "there are FOUR states of matter, not three." Or to use the word melee correctly in a sentence in English class - the sentence had to do with "Fighters and Strikers are melee class characters in D&D, meaning they fight in close." It wasn't until she fell in with girls from our church who had similar geek tastes that she really found "kindred spirits" - until then I had Anne Shirley in a different reality stuck with the prosaic Diana Berry living in this one.

I should have pushed when she dropped out of the math enrichment because it was too much work. It WAS too much work, but I should have stood up for her not having to do the regular math program in addition to the enrichment. She had to do both, both were too much for my disorganized and flighty daughter who is really good at math, but doesn't really like it, she couldn't keep up with the regular work and the enrichment, so she dropped the enrichment. And not the material, just the homework problems - the material she was doing fine with. When she did drop, the teacher realized how much work the kids were doing and let the enriched kids off the hook for the regular math - but by then my daughter had burned her bridges.

[maggenpye]

Originally Posted by MsWhatsit

This brings me to my other piece of advice for the OP, which is to be careful about who you talk about this stuff to. When you tell someone that your child is gifted, or even just smart, or even just mention some of the unusual or extraordinary things your child is capable of, some people will respond very defensively, by telling you that your child isn't so special, that they did those things as a child and they aren't so special, that their children can do more than that, that you are bragging, that you are inappropriately labeling your child, etc. One of the side benefits to my oldest child moving into the gifted program at his school was that I could finally talk to other parents about various scary-smart-related issues without having them roll their eyes and behave as though I were the Braggiest Bragger in Bragland.

Preach it sister!

I imagine these people trolling round the sports fields, finding the team's star player and kicking them in the ankle. "Not so fast now, are you? Ha ha!"

[overlyverbose]

Originally Posted by monstro

She may be scary smart. Or she may just be ahead of the curve now and will hit her peak early.

It is too early to tell.

I'm leaning heavily toward this. Plus, with your first kid, it's very hard to judge especially if you're using those developmental guidelines in parenting books. I used to eagerly read What to Expect: The Toddler Years when my son was small and promptly stopped when I realized that the guidelines listed in references like that tend to set the bar very low.

Just treat your kid like a kid. If she's interested in more "advanced" stuff, show her how to safely make a volcano in the kitchen or build a birdhouse outside or something. If she needs something more interesting, you'll know. Oh, yes...you'll know.

[Disheavel]

With plenty of jokes already spoiling the thread, I will tell a story of my two children:

#1/girl: fully verbal by 11 months (99+ percentile). Paragraphs and full songs/rhymes repeated verbatim by 13 months. By two years old talked to parents in the park rather than play with kids and by 3 years old, could probably have given lectures about the animals at the zoo. She never really got into reading and probably couldn't do many of the things you list for your child by that same age.

#2/ boy: age 3 could barely speak comprehensibly to us, but good with blocks (ok not really good with blocks compared to other kids, but it was the thing he was best at!) age 4, finally got him accepted into a speech pathologist to aid his speaking. His preschool teacher insisted that there was something wrong with him. Kindergarten teacher wanted to hold him back another year and get him evaluated for ADHD as he didn't seem as slow as some of his work suggested. Math, he tests ridiculously high, but viewed as a testing fluke and his ability to type. First grade, #2 discovers a book about trucks/robots/space that somehow clicked with him. By the end of the year, he surpassed most of his classmates as well as #1 in reading, writing, math, etc. within those 8 months. He had a teacher he clicked with and we bought him every book and answered every question he asked (as we had been doing his whole life- so we didn't change, he did).

The lesson being, kids develop at their own pace and in their own time. Yours is certainly going to be a bright kid, but DO NOT compare your child to others. It is a stupid game and too many parents play it. Encourage her by providing her interesting opportunities, don't encourage her by showing her off.

[Liche]

Teach her to work hard, and to figure out for herself how to do better next time.

Do not skip grades. I did (rare in the UK), it was a great idea at 7, but by 13 it was a massive disadvantage and too late to rectify. Fulfil boredom with breadth of learning rather than depth. Start music as early as possible.

Being a 'gifted child', in my experience, means you are ahead of your peers, and seemingly accelerating away. Those who work harder will, in time, catch up, overtake, and leave you behind. If you work hard too, the sky's the limit.

[TokyoBayer]

I'm going to jump back in after rereading many of the comments and the OP again.

I could see if I were the OP, many of the comments, including mine, could be taken wrong, and as criticism of the OP.

I just really wanted to say, enjoy your kid, have fun with the things she does well and continue being a thoughtful parent. (Of course, I've only got 8 months more experience, so I'm not expert. )

[Shakes]

Hmm... [thinks back when little Shakes was a baby. Remembers when, lil' shakes came running into the the living room, with his shirt pulled over his head, runs smack into a wall. Desprately needing my help.

The problem? He had accidentally stuck his head and his arm through the head hole of his shirt and couldn't get back out.

So no, sorry, no help here.

[Gukumatz]

The child's intelligence will take care of itself. Social skills, however, require constant exposure.

[overlyverbose]

Originally Posted by Shakes

Hmm... [thinks back when little Shakes was a baby. Remembers when, lil' shakes came running into the the living room, with his shirt pulled over his head, runs smack into a wall. Desprately needing my help.

The problem? He had accidentally stuck his head and his arm through the head hole of his shirt and couldn't get back out.

So no, sorry, no help here.

This made me snort, then imagine my own children, each with a bucket over their heads, banging into each other and giggling hysterically. One is 6, the other is 2.5. Both are reasonably intelligent (sometimes the 2.5 year old scares me, but only because she taught herself how to break through all our childproof locks, including the stove lock, but that's another story).

If they make it through high school physically and mentally intact, with decent grades and manage to learn how to work hard, I'll be happier than I would be if they were super geniuses.

[MsWhatsit]

Originally Posted by overlyverbose

If they make it through high school physically and mentally intact, with decent grades and manage to learn how to work hard, I'll be happier than I would be if they were super geniuses.

It's not an either/or proposition.

[Autolycus]

God yes with putting emphasis on the social skills. I was a bit ahead of the curve as a young'un and had a real hard time making friends all the way until oh I'd say about high school. To their credit, my parents tried, but anyway, my two cents.

[overlyverbose]

Originally Posted by MsWhatsit

It's not an either/or proposition.

Fair enough. What I was saying was I don't care if they're super geniuses or not as long as they're mentally and physically intact with decent grades and know how to work hard. Of course, if they do happen to be super geniuses, that's just gravy!

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by irishgirl

We are coming to the realisation that irishkid is smart. Not Stewie Griffin smart, but definitely smarter than the average bear.

She's almost 3 and and counts to 20 without mistakes, can do simple arithmetic, recites the alphabet, knows her full name and home town, can recognise the letters that spell her name and most colours.
She has a large vocabulary and gets bored very quickly, and is mostly kept occupied with jigsaw puzzles and Nina and the neurons, a TV show about human anatomy for kids.

Not having raised a child before we were just going with the flow, but on reading up, she's hitting milestones well in advance of where one would expect.


Dopers are smart people, I assume you have smart kids, any advice?

Leave her alone and make sure she's got stuff that interests her.

And I hate to say it but don't set your expectations unrealistically high. Children will explode, intellectually, at different ages, but in the long term it often has nothing to do with their aptitude. I was reading at 3, and my sister didn't read until 6, but we ended up being readers and writers of equal skill; the age at which we started reading turned out to be irrelevant. My math was also quite advanced at an early age, but the rest of the kids caught up to me and many passed me around our early teens. I struggled with math in high school.

My kid barely read a year ago, at age 5 and a half. A year later she's advanced three grade levels in reading with no more effort on anyone's part than was ever the case before. Why? Dunno. Just, suddenly, explosive growth in reading interest and skill.

At 3 you just don't have a really good handle on what your child will be like intellectually. So relax. Provide her with books, and let her have at it.

[mhendo]

Originally Posted by RickJay

Provide her with books, and let her have at it.

And make her read as much as possible now, because if the current generation of college students is any indication, she won't be interested in picking up a book by the time she's 19.

[Mighty_Girl]

Originally Posted by overlyverbose

I'm leaning heavily toward this. Plus, with your first kid, it's very hard to judge especially if you're using those developmental guidelines in parenting books. I used to eagerly read What to Expect: The Toddler Years when my son was small and promptly stopped when I realized that the guidelines listed in references like that tend to set the bar very low.

My daughter was the opposite case, and it kinda freaked me out. When she was 8 months old her pediatrician said "she'll be the intellectual type", and I don't think that was a compliment.

While she has always been a bright kid, her motor skills were behind her peers for a long time (fine motor skills were OK). She was more interested in books (even if she didn't know how to read) than learning how to walk or run. In fact she never crawled, when I was about to start the process of taking her to a therapist on the pediatrician's advice, she decided to start walking. She's much better now, but her brain is running faster than her body.

[Dangerosa]

Originally Posted by Mighty_Girl

My daughter was the opposite case, and it kinda freaked me out. When she was 8 months old her pediatrician said "she'll be the intellectual type", and I don't think that was a compliment.

While she has always been a bright kid, her motor skills were behind her peers for a long time (fine motor skills were OK). She was more interested in books (even if she didn't know how to read) than learning how to walk or run. In fact she never crawled, when I was about to start the process of taking her to a therapist on the pediatrician's advice, she decided to start walking. She's much better now, but her brain is running faster than her body.

My cousins daughter was like that and didn't walk until two. But had a huge vocabulary for that age. She's fifteen now, and bright (she should be - she has the genes for it and the family socialization) but not scary bright.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by mhendo

And make her read as much as possible now, because if the current generation of college students is any indication, she won't be interested in picking up a book by the time she's 19.

Attempting to make the kid read will have the effect of making them not want to read.

[mhendo]

Originally Posted by RickJay

Attempting to make the kid read will have the effect of making them not want to read.

I should've used a smiley. I was making a comment on the reading habit of college students, not giving actual advice about raising a kid.

[terentii]

My daughter was perfectly bilingual by the time she was 2 1/2. Not that that's unusual in a multicultural family, but she was already talking like a freakin' adult at the age of one and a half!

She lived separately with her Russian mom and her sister's family for a year and a half after we split up, then came to live with me. Her spoken English was very poor then; after two months, she was speaking it as well as she spoke Russian.

What really freaked me out was that she taught herself how to read (Russian) when she was three. Neither I nor my ex knew about it until I heard her reading aloud one day to herself. Not only could she read Russian, she read it with absolute fluency.

She started learning French at age six and got tutoring in how to read English before she moved to Canada at age ten. She immediately outperformed all the other fifth-graders at her Toronto middle school, in both languages.

She's 17 now, and recently had her IQ placed at 120, though I personally think it's higher.

[Moonchild]

Get your child in the best possible preschool you can find (and afford). Ours went to a terrific Montessori (challenging and diverse) and it paid dividends in preparing him for his current schooling.