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I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about...


Donna
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I know there must be others in the same boat as I am…learning more than I ever wanted to know about something in order to assist my dd in finding resources, peers, mentors, and challenge.

 

I am learning more than I ever wanted to learn about music and the music business. 

 

What's your subject/topic?

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Snakes, frogs, and the number of biting insects and plants in the average marshy area! (Plus the herpetology world and herpetoculture world in general-and that the two don't really overlap all that much, except for DD, who is very, very happy in both-which sometimes leads to some interesting contrasts).

 

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Computer programming.  Art.  I was a science major and can't even draw a decent stick person.  How did I get 2 artsy daughters.

 

On another level I also learned way more than I thought about profoundly gifted issues and dyslexia.

 

I had planned to have my children in a school and never thought I would do all of this.  But, we play the hand we're dealt.

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Computer programming, 3D graphics and animation, gears, motors, electronics and quadcopters.  Although I do try to help, plus find him mentors that understand his language.  Most of the time DS speaks some kind of technology-math dialect so it's a bit difficult to understand what he's talking about.

 

I'm frequently in the smile-and-nod phase.  Today DS spent five minutes explaining the exact difficulty he was having with Solid Works (it's a modeling software thing), and then asked if I understood.  I just told him, "No."  My old mama neurons just can't keep up sometimes.

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Astrophysics. I have to do the smile and nod too. I just cannot.comprehend space time and parallel universes, cool as they sound. My poor, aching brain...

 

Cars. The kid's been obsessed since he was 2. Nearly every conversation for the past 10 years has revolved around them in some way. The amount of information he stores on this one subject is truly mind boggling.

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4 squares and 2 squares (apparently this is a game you play with other kids) - I hear about it 6 times a day in excruciating detail. 

 

And then, there is piano music - which I have been dragged into and submerged in for the past 4 years - the skill sets that I have learned include - how to read notes, know what phrasing/dynamics/precison etc are, know how to practice for contests and auditions, know how to play a few scales myself, will check answers to music theory worksheets etc. etc. - I trained to be an engineer and thought that piano music was some thing that came in CDs when I was growing up (and only knew the names of 3 composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Bach).

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Car mechanics.  Oh, my the car mechanics.  We have found several good outlets, including a very friendly Firestone near our house, where they allow her to watch them work, and answer her many, many ridiculous questions about pistons and valves.  We also met a guy near us who restores old cars, and allows her to come by and watch him, and he explains in detail all the tools and parts he works on. Since she's so little, I obviously stay with her at all times, so I hear it all too.  But unlike her, I'm absorbing basically none of it. Sigh.  

 

Also details about planets and space. And working telescopes.  And differentiating stars from planets---they all look the same to me. But she is usually pretty accurate, and lately has been rocking the ability to find some of the constellations.  We have got to get away from the city for a night or two so she can really see the sky. 

 

BTW she is currently doing an "M and M" experiment on me.  She put one candy in front of me, and told me she was leaving the room for 5 minutes.  If I didn't eat it, she'd give me two.  I'm toying with eating it to see how she'll react.  We just did this experiment on her this past week---we left a laptop cam going to watch her, and she spent the whole time silently staring at the M and M, but didn't eat it. 

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Marvel, DC Comics, and Star Wars extended universe. I was a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy and Wonder Woman and liked Spiderman, Superman, the Hulk, and Batman okay. The Fantastic 4 and X-Men I would've recognized. But my kids could probably name thousands of characters and give detailed descriptions of hundreds.

 

Shoot. Me. Now!

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Creepy things having to do with sharks. I love the whale books. I'm totally cool with reading about shark livers and skins and teeth over and over again. I really don't love looking at pictures and reading over and over again about the freaky-looking goblin shark, cookie cutter sharks latching onto marine animals and then rotating to slice round plugs of flesh out of their sides, great white shark embryos cannibalizing the less-developed ones inside their mother's womb, etc.

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Anything herpetology-related (this obsession lasted about a year and a half, starting when DD was three), cats (this obsession hasn't really ever waned), Star Wars, Transformers, and guitars/music.

 

And colonial America. Now, I like history, especially cultural history, and admittedly, I have a degree in medieval history,s I maybe I am not one to talk. But the colonial history obsession. Oh my goodness. DD was six or so when I gave her one of the "If You Lived" books for fun. It took off from there. At seven, she was researching colonial clothing on the Internet and insisting upon very authentic clothing (including drop front breeches for her four year old brother, at her insistence, which I drafted myself). Williamsburg was not complete without four lengthy trips in two days to the milliner's shop so DD could discuss the minute details of the various types of stays with the interpreters. It was a solid two or three years of everything colonial clothing.

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Minecraft, geology, cartography, chess. I'm just no good at visual stuff and find it super tedious. -_-

 

ETA: and how could I forget?! Star Wars! I asked DS once if he was getting bored, and he told me that this time he was watching it for the costumes.

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This made me smile.  I've so been there.  I am very glad that Percy @#$@# Jackson has left our household and is now just a delightful side conversation here or there.

 

Now if only Stampy Longnose would venture out as well.

 

That voice - it grates!! Is he some kind of odd man-child or something?

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This made me smile.  I've so been there.  I am very glad that Percy @#$@# Jackson has left our household and is now just a delightful side conversation here or there.

 

Now if only Stampy Longnose would venture out as well.

 

:iagree:   Stampy has invaded here as well.  Endless you tube videos.  Ugh.

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Circus arts. Trapeze. Lyra. Aerial silks. Stilting. Acrobatics. Partner acro. Unicycling. Poi. Diabalo. Spinning plates. My spinning head!

 

I barely remember the name of any move she does, and she can put together complex sequences of 15+ moves on silks.

 

When she started into circus arts, my dad bought himself all the Cirque du Soleil movies available on DVD to learn about what she was doing. She got them all when he died, and she has watched them all about 100 times each. She could probably play any role in them at this point just from watching them so many times. She's seen 2 in person and is going to a third this summer.

 

She says that discovering the circus world is like discovering "her people."

 

(We've done circus math, circus science, circus history...)

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