Here’s an example:
I was helping an 80-year-old woman named Maureen yesterday. she lives with her son Bill and his two kids, and her 9-year-old grandson Bert (Bill’s nephew; Bert’s mother Adelaide doesn’t live there. Long story).
We were moving a couch and two upholstered chairs (lounge chairs) into Bill’s living room. I had vacuumed, and Maureen and I had moved furniture around; this included a big-screen TV on a short table.
After we finished, Bert switched the set on to the Cartoon Network (Bill has cable).
The picture was really snowy. To my dismay, Bert slipped behind the TV–but after a few minutes this 9-year-old had reconnected something or switched something and the picture turned clear! :eek:
He must have taught himself how to do this.
Post an example of a kid (your own or someone else’s) who has shown himself/herself to have exceptional skill in some endeavor. 
My amazing star of a child has added blowing raspberries to her repetoire.
For tonights symphony she shall fart, snort, grunt, squeak and as the grand finale, blow raspberries.
Sorry, I listen to folks brag about their kids and I crack up every time I can throw my shoulders back, toss my chest forward and proudly proclaim “Kate Farts!”
She can also stick her bottle in her eye pretty reliably.
I’m a first time Mom, can you tell?
It wasn’t a skill, but my friends son (age 7) was holding my baby and she was looking at him and he said “She’s looking at me like I owe her money!”
My two year old can read some, has been for nearly a year, and spell, badly. Yesterday she said that she wanted a bear, b-e-r bear! (Meaning a gummi bear) She does read many words, like penguin, like, some, Loren, park, candy, lemonade, Dust Devil, eclectech, meerkat, ice cream, coffee, chocolate, Kenya, toy, and dozens of others about that complex. Most of those she will know if you just spell them aloud. Any of them she can read whether or not there is any no-text context clue.
She can also unlock a taskbar and move it and lock it back down. She managed to run the desktop clean up wizard wiping out most of the icons on my hubby’s desktop.
WhyKid is my “Some Assembly Required” Assembler and has been since he was about 5 years old. (He’s 13 now.) When he was little, he’d take 3 minutes to glance over the obnoxious blow-out diagrams helpfully annotated in Japanese, then toss the paper aside. “Hold this,” he’d say, and pass me the heavy stuff. He’d proceed to bolt, glue, flip and oragami me a new entertainment center. Once he got stronger than me (about a year ago), I began to just point him in the general direction and let him at it while I go make dinner.
By the time she was three, Mudgirl had taught herself how to play a DVD by changing the TV channel until the screen she recognized as the DVD screen came up, and then just pushing the buttons she had seen her father and I push.
Also, just this morning, I didn’t get out of bed until 7, went to wake her, and she wasn’t in her room. A few minutes later, she came into my room, proudly bearing my breakfast, which she had made herself! (She’s six now). She fixed me a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, a piece of wheat bread with lots of butter, a glass of milk, and two gummy vitamins “for dessert”. She was so proud of herself!
I have a riding student who is 6 and miles ahead of students twice her age. Not only does she show excellent basic skills, not only does she take total responsibility for her horse (grooming , putting things away, except the stuff she can’t reach), not only does she ride with gritty determination to get the job done, she shows an unusually strong sense of her own skills and good judgement in applying those skills.
For example, she has her own pony who is a bit strong & quick. One day she told me, “When I ride [extremely calm lesson pony] I can practice cantering, but when I ride my pony I won’t.” I know 17 year old girls that don’t show this level of good judgement. 6! She’s 6!
I hope she remembers me when she’s in the Olympics.
I don’t want to spoil your post, but no child should have access to vitamins, particularly vitamins disguised as candy. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.
No, you didn’t spoil my post. Actually, they have a child-proof cap and prior to this morning, she always had to have me open them. We’ve had talks about taking too many vitamins at a time, and how two a day is her limit. However, you raise an excellent point. Even though she knows she isn’t allowed to eat more than two a day, six-year-olds are not known for impulse control. I guess I was too overwhelmed by her own pleasure at her act of kindness to think “How the hell did she get them open?”
I will go put them in our locked cabinet immediately. Thank you for the reminder!
I’ve met the true Movie Trivia Guru, and she’s a fourteen year old girl.
I was at a party where she was apparently the friend of a friend’s kid. You could give her any line or scene from any movie, and she’d give you the movie and context. I mean, any movie: '50’s film noir, drive-in B movies, slasher flicks, Laurel and Hardy, classics, anything. She had the party of semi-intellectual faculty and grad students spellbound trying to stump her.
I’m not a perv or anything, but I think I fell a little in love that night.
I have a recently-turned-9 musical theatre student who has the maturity of a young adult - both in her ability to understand “character motivation” and in tonal quality.
She’s phenomenal. Reminds me of a young Daisy Egan. She has more vocal control and emotional intelligence than a child her age has any right to have.
She amazes me every week when she comes for lessons.
I hope she is still able to be a kid. It’d be a shame if she gets burned out real young. 
Just let her be a nine-year-old as much as she wants…
Dougie, to me a kid just being called Bert these days is remarkable in itself.
I could tell a legion of stories about my own progeny/prodigy (also 9), most of them exaggerated, some of them untrue. But my favourite would have to be when she was two, I suppose, and used to hold a newspaper like her mum and dad. You know, crisp and straight out in front of her at readable distance. Really cute. But not only that. She used to hold it the “wrong way up”.
Not many kids can read at two. Mine could read upside down! Cap that, you lot.
That’s not his real name. I used fake names in the OP; the people are real. I just thought it would be better to use different names. This kid in fact has a much more modern name.
You mean something like a 12 year old making adults look like beginners?
If so, look at this.
Sad to say, I really envy that kid. Mom, you were right.
I have much, much more in the way of awe-inducing drum video, in case anyone’s interested.
My screen name at hotmail dot com, if you want more, please use a subject line that won’t make me trash it on sight.
I also have an Alesis DM5 to sell, brand new, and for a very reasonable price. See above.
Umm, okay.
Holy crap, I watched a few min. of the vid and then kept reading SDMB while listening, then flipped back just in time to see the kid playing WAY WAY WAY better with one hand than I could hope to do with two. Makes me want to get the set out of the closet…
My four year old son is playing hockey this year.
One of the games the play when practicing is to have all the pucks at center ice with one team at each end. On the whistle, the teams see who can get the most pucks from center into the net at their end.
They have played this game three times and each time, while all the kids are skating like mad (a full rink is really big on four year old legs), my son skates quickly to center, stops, and starts shooting pucks toward his end. His team has won every time
He’s lazy, just like his old man.
Totally. Her parents are NOT stage parents at all. She’s got a real kid’s life, which I think is awesome. She participates in a Musical Theatre Workshop as a resident cast member, but since I’m the artistic director there, I really make sure she’s not overworked
She’s got a LOT of talent. That said, she’s also really an all around NICE kid. She’s not a diva, she’s not pushy, she’s just all around wonderful. Wish there were more of 'em like her out there!
My eldest is 3 and amazes me constantly. I’m proud of him for remembering the things my dear Mrs. teachs him (at the zoo "Daddy, those lions are mammals not insects) but it is his pure ability to remember things that is amazing. He will pipe up with a comment about something the adults said, when they thought he wasn’t listening, weeks after it has happened and no subsequent comment has ever been made.
While driving a few weeks back he and his little bro started cheering and clapping. He said “(his little bro) said it, he said it! He said ‘ohren!’” Now I’ve got my 3 yo teaching the 1 yo GERMAN. I promised him the world if he succeeded in helping his bro learn.
Yesturday his mom told me “when we were at the store he opened the door and held it for this lady and her daughter.” Physically speaking I’m impressed with that but other than seeing me do the same I don’t know how he would ever have learned that at 3. I lauded him for his unprompted gentlemanly conduct.
[Sorry if this just amazes me and no one else, I’m biased ]
Oh, I forgot, when I was discussing with my wife the expansion of cougar terrritory throughout the US and the effects it is having on the deer etc as well as the urban lands, and possible protective measures some states are considering (I think bear spray HAS to work) he said “Daddy shooting the animals with all the kids and traffic is not appropriate. It would be dangerous with all the kids and traffic by the houses, its not appropriate.”
We had to query him 'cause it sounded like ‘apope-iate’ but he agreed when we said ‘appropriate?’ and he used in context. Yikes.