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I’m starting a blog about my son, Theo, because many of my online friends and real life friends and family are enthralled with his story. Why? Because he’s an amazing little boy. I realize that most parents think their children are amazing, however, if you spend time here, you will find that Theo is amazing by anyone’s standards.
Theo was born on March 4, 2002. We had lost a child at 37.5 weeks the year before to placental abruption. While I grieve for that baby, I believe that she had a purpose (organ donation), and had she lived, we never would have had Theo.
I think that I realized that Theo was special at around six months. I remember that none of us could read around him. He would crawl into our laps and stare at the written pages. The only time I remember hearing that deep baby laugh from him was one day when I wrote out the alphabet on a piece of paper for him.
I don’t know what possessed me to put that pencil in his hand, but he was so excited, I thought that he was going to bounce right out of his walker. By thirteen months, he was writing on his own. Because he lacked the motor skills, we got poster board for his to write on. Each day, he would select a letter and write it over and over again.
By twenty-three months, he knew his alphabet forward and backwards, and would manipulate his letter blocks all day or type them out on the computer. One day, we saw THEO spelled out on the kitchen floor with his block letters. We quizzed his sister about it, thinking that perhaps she had been playing with him, but she swore that she hadn't. Then, a few days later, he typed it on the computer.
For his second birthday, we gave him Leapfrog and his own laptop. Within a month, he knew the difference between uppercase and lowercase, and the difference between cursive and print. Each night after dinner, we would write and he would often lean over to correct my printing or cursive (much to my chagrin).
It was only natural to teach him to spell as he was learning to talk. This was a big mistake. It got to the point where he wouldn't say a word unless he knew how to spell it. To get him to tell us that he needed a drink, we had to teach him to spell "drink".
It's still astonishing how easily he picked up on the concepts that the number one was spelled o-n-e, and to, two, and too were all the same word with different meanings.
At twenty-seven months, he went with me to the doctor. Our physician and him had a wonderful relationship and he crawled up into her lap as soon as she sat down and grabbed her pen. Thinking that he wanted to scribble, she flipped over my chart, gave him a squeeze and said something about him being such a good boy. He began to write as she was going through the general pre-physical questions. When she glanced down to check something in my chart, he had written, "Theo is a good boy". Oh what a stir he caused with that simple sentence.
You see, we hadn't told anyone about what he was doing. To us, Theo was just... well... he was just Theo, our son. We loved him and wanted him to be happy. But, I digress...
My physical was quickly forgotten and we discussed Theo and his abilities. While impressed, there was some concern because he didn't have any interest in playing like other children do. "What about being a child?" Doctor Marsh asked me. That simple question struck a chill in my heart. I went home and put up the pencils and poster board.
We got him puzzles and software games. The baby puzzles quickly got boring, so we got him the puzzle of the United States (where each state is a piece). He knew all the states and capitals within a month. I went online and printed out countries by continents. Before he was three, he knew every country, it's capital, and what continent it was in. He even made a tv appearance.
While looking for software for his third birthday and trying to figure out what he had and didn’t have, Theo saw an encyclopedia about the Human Body. He said that he wanted that. I shrugged and added it to the cart.
When the software came, he promptly loaded it and we didn’t hear a peep out of him for about a week. He was totally enthralled with this software. Then he came up to me and said, “You’re female and have a menstrual cycle.†OK, I’ll admit that I was non-plussed. How do you respond to that? Before I could say anything, he continued. “And you use the tampax in the bathroom.†I said that he was right and he went back to his computer.
After he went to bed, I looked at the program. There was nothing about tampax in there. Yes, it talked about both the male and female reproductive systems, but not how a woman takes care of herself. How had he made that leap? I don’t use the word tampax, I say tampon. Of course, the box says tampax, but how did he know what they were? Remember, he was three.
So, he’s five now. He knows every bone, muscle, organ, etc. in the body. He can describe operations in detail to you and performs them in playdoh. One of his favorite sites is a detailed dissection of a cadaver.
But it’s not just anatomy. He found Lucy online and became interested in the evolution of man. He knows all the periods, eras, etc. This led to the division of time – down to the nanosecond. A few weeks ago, he starrted talking to me about Kingdoms and Families. I had to look it up online in order to have a half way intelligent conversation about them. Now he’s into the Egyptian mummification process. I have no clue what it will be tomorrow.
So, how are we dealing with the school situation? That will need an entire different blog entry. I will try to get that up in a few days. Just know that we found a school that teaches by ability and if you ask Theo what grade he’s in, he’s in second. No, it’s probably not where he should be in some areas, but he needs the basics, and I’m happy with his progress.
Have we had him tested? Yes. We actually got him tested for Aspergers, the psychologist states that he’s just extremely gifted (top one percentile) and the behaviors are a manifestation of dealing with the difference in his chronological age and his mental age. I’ll get into this with the school blog entry.
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Posted by TheosWorld on 2007-12-07 23:15:42 | Rating: | Views: 59
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