2.5 yr old intelligence-Is this normal???

[daycarewhisperer]

It is really amazing to be around kids who have extraordinary minds. The three I have had in my 34 years have been a phenomenal experience and I thank the heavens that I got to SEE that in my career. With only running a max of eight kids I could have easily gone my twenty years in home child care and never seen it once.

The first gifted kid I had is now an adult and a graduate of Harvard. He is working on his masters now. He was an amazing baby and could talk completely by about fourteen months. I was young when I cared for him but I knew even then that he was unique. He was fortunate enough to be raised true wealth and has had the opportunities to match his incredible mind.

I have had many many kids who's parents believed they were gifted. That's very common. I've had a pretty good number of kids who did the things you are describing and they turned out to not be gifted but had a ton of adult from birth on and had a ton of exposure to the things the average parent uses as indicator of intelligence like letter recognition, number recognition, sequencing, and verbal skills. I've also had a handfull of kids who fixated on numbers, letters, and sequencing. My son at age four could completely read AND read upside down. It didn't matter which way he held the book..... rightside up or upside down...... he could read up to the level of Dr Seuss books at age four. He just memorized the words and could do the sequencing regardless of positioning. He could put on quite a dog and pony show when he was little with his mad upside down reading skilz.

From the perspective of being a provider, this child's skill set would not be too impressive to me because the things I really want... that are super high priority.. he's not doing all of them. I would work on the these things first, especially nap, playing with the younger kids, and playing toys without getting his sort and sequence on. I would rather he do his numbers, letters, counting, etc. at home on his own dime. At my house I would want "go play toys", be a great friend, be sweet with the little ones, eat good food, and take a good long nap every day. I know from all my years of experience that these things make for great balanced students. He's still very very young and has his whole life to count pages, sort, and sequence. He only gets to be a toddler for a short time so his body, his interpersonal skills, and his ability to truly PLAY is what will give him the best foot forward in life.

It's cool to see a little kid be able to do what he does for sure but the newness of that would wear off in about an hour to me and I definitely wouldn't feed it nor would I spend any time with the parents discussing it unless it interfered with nap, true play, his relationship with the kids, eating, and exercising.