# I think my almost 3 year old kid is scary smart. Help. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 25, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111 "2012-05-25T21:20:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/81 "2012-05-31T00:46:12Z")
> [@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! ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/82 "2012-05-31T05:41:12Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/83 "2012-06-01T17:23:11Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Girl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Mighty\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Girl)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/84 "2012-06-03T05:15:36Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/85 "2012-06-03T12:37:05Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/86 "2012-06-03T13:58:59Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/87 "2012-06-03T16:19:27Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/88 "2012-06-03T18:02:07Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Moonchild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@Moonchild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonchild)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111/89 "2012-06-03T19:31:31Z")
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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-think-my-almost-3-year-old-kid-is-scary-smart-help/623111.md?page=4)