Strange "gifts" your child has

[Dmmetler]

I had dental work done today and our usual way of handling it is that if DD sits quietly in the waiting room and works on her own stuff without causing any problems for the receptionists/other folks waiting, we go to a pizza/arcade place for lunch (and the dentist office usually has tons of freebie coupons to load her up with, because the pizza place gives them out to give out to their pediatric patients, so it usually is pretty cheap).

 

Anyway, there was this ice age game involving hitting an acorn at a specific time to crack the ice and you got tickets based on where the crack landed-with a delay.

 

By the 2nd game, DD was hitting the jackpot almost every time. She had the delay figured perfectly. I tried, and I couldn't come close-I could see it coming, but I couldn't get the timing right.

 

I guess it's a "gift"-but I have to wonder if it's good for anything but bringing giant stuffed snakes (sigh.....) home from a video arcade!

 

Anyone else have kids who have some rather odd "gifts"?

[Belacqua]

Not my kid, but a friend's: this boy has a freakish gift for liquid capacity. You can give him any container and ask him to put in some specified amount (in cups, ounces, ccs, or any other standard measurement) and he'll do it with frightening accuracy. And it isn't even that he's memorized the exact amount of water coming from his kitchen tap; we tested for that (he was a willing subject, lest you're imagining me tying this poor kid to a chair and forcing him to pour water!). He could do it with water from another, unmarked container. He could do it by the spoonful, or by dipping into a pan of water.

 

Now his mom is just trying to figure out how to make this a marketable skill.

[Grover]

Not my kid, but a friend's: this boy has a freakish gift for liquid capacity. You can give him any container and ask him to put in some specified amount (in cups, ounces, ccs, or any other standard measurement) and he'll do it with frightening accuracy. And it isn't even that he's memorized the exact amount of water coming from his kitchen tap; we tested for that (he was a willing subject, lest you're imagining me tying this poor kid to a chair and forcing him to pour water!). He could do it with water from another, unmarked container. He could do it by the spoonful, or by dipping into a pan of water.

 

Now his mom is just trying to figure out how to make this a marketable skill.

 

my DH can do this! It's WEIRD. But useful when I don't have any measuring cups and need to bake :001_smile: He can also eyeball an object and tell you how big it is to within a mm or two. He's less accurate over bigger distances, but still pretty good.

[Harriet Vane]

Dh and ds have amazing directional ability. You can drop dh into any city in the world, and he will figure it out and navigate like a native in short order. Literally.

[Firestar Academy]

my dd9 has almost perfect recall of anything she hears. read a story out loud, she can replay it back word-for-word. tried to bribe her when she was 3 about a toy in a store saying we'll get if it goes on sale. 5 years later we were in another store and it was on sale and she brought up the conversation exactly.

 

spooky when she says "remember when you said 'blah,blah'"

 

Robin

[ebunny]

Now his mom is just trying to figure out how to make this a marketable skill.

 

:lol:

 

 

DH (and DD) can figure out and navigate through unknown neighborhoods in our city. They just know. It's uncanny.

Edited August 30, 2012 by ebunny
personal details

[2smartones]

Yes, my dh has the navigation thing, too. Drives me insane!!! I hope my kids pick up on it, but so far, they haven't.

 

My older son has the gift of memory. He memorizes crazy stuff... things no one would ever notice, much less use (like the number of a parking space from an amusement park 3 years ago). He just pulls this stuff out of his head at random times (and oddly, at appropriate times it seems). So far, my younger doesn't have any oddball talents yet.

 

I also have the knack of hitting the jackpot on those games. I didn't discover it until after college though. :lol:

[KAR120C]

Dh and ds have amazing directional ability. You can drop dh into any city in the world, and he will figure it out and navigate like a native in short order. Literally.

He's shockingly good with spatial awareness and memory, like after driving around all day being able to say "well the library must be right behind those trees" when we can't see the library at all, haven't been anywhere near the library for hours, and took the most circuitous route between there and here....

[Dmmetler]

Alli's got the memory things,too (but can miss what's right under her nose). I guess that doesn't surprise me because I have a near-eidetic auditory memory (which got me in trouble in high school because I had a teacher who was big on essay questions, and used exactly the same wording that he'd used in his initial lecture. Once triggered, I could literally rewrite, word for word, what he'd said. He was convinced I HAD to be cheating somehow).

 

I wish she had the internal GPS feature-that would come in handy, since I have absolutely NO sense of direction (I fall off the bottom of tests on Visual-Spatial skills and have extremely poor depth perception in general).

[acurtis75]

Dd7 also has a freakishly good memory but her strangest gift is unrelated.

 

She is still clumsy & despite the fact dh and I were both athletes is quite un-athletic at this point. She also has poor vision. Despite all this, from the time she was very young she almost never misses the ball when we play baseball. She has no interest in playing with anyone other than dh and I but she is like a hitting machine. She begs us to pitch to her and she hits almost every time. I guess it is a timing issue. When she was 2 it was a large bat and ball now it is smaller but still the same result.

 

After working with 5-8 year olds last year in a co-op trying to get thme to hit a ball off a tee I realized every kid can't do this, I doubt this translates in to any real life application but it is a gift nonetheless.

[Greenmama2]

my DH can do this! It's WEIRD. But useful when I don't have any measuring cups and need to bake :001_smile: He can also eyeball an object and tell you how big it is to within a mm or two. He's less accurate over bigger distances, but still pretty good.

 

DH and I can both do close to this. We only own measuring cups now because a friend who was trying to cook in our kitchen pointed out that they might be a useful homeschooling tool to have (DD seems to understand fraction intuitively so they actually haven't been but anyway...).

 

DD has the finding lost things skill, which is useful as her mini-tornado brother has the losing things skill ;)

[jenangelcat]

My daughter can catch flies with her fingers while they are flying. We call her the fly whisperer.

[angela in ohio]

My middle dd is like that. There is not much she can't do better that all th rest of us. We learn a new (cards, Wii, board) game, and she wins consistently after the first time or two. She goes fishing with dh, ds, and my family or dh's family, and she catches more fish than everyone every time. She never played softball before, I signed her up, and she was playing short stop and first base and hitting line drives by the second practice. She knows things she has *never* learned. Luckily, she's really good natured about it, and it doesn't bother my other dc, but it's kind of amazing to see her "charmed life."

[Donna]

My dd has an incredible memory and remembers the most minute details of things that happened years and years ago like who was wearing what or what jewelry they had on. I have learned not to argue with her about it ever. She also has the auditory memory thing. She can be playing something, someone else can harmonize along with her, and then she can play back what they were playing while she was playing.

 

I have a good sense of direction. If I have been someplace before, I almost never have trouble getting around.

 

My middle ds can fix anything. He takes things apart and fixes them sometimes completely rigs them to work but they do.

 

My oldest can ride a unicycle. Maybe lots of people can do that but when I was a kid I worked on riding one for summer after summer and never did get it so I was impressed when he took his out of the box on Christmas and rode it down the driveway then proceeded to hop it up stairs, etc...

[Firestar Academy]

My daughter can catch flies with her fingers while they are flying. We call her the fly whisperer.

 

You win. :D :lol:

 

Robin

[3Blessings]

My daughter can catch flies with her fingers while they are flying. We call her the fly whisperer.

 

Wow- that is crazy!

 

Probably this isn't very unique, but my son can remember any and every license plate he sees. Even if he has only seen it once. We count on him to tell us whose car belongs to which people.

[jenangelcat]

You win. :D :lol:

 

Robin

 

Crazy right? I wonder if she can make a career of it.

[La Condessa]

Not all that weird I guess, but my second daughter has a very good sense of balance coupled with a love of heights that lead to some unusual feats in a not-yet-two-year-old. Her sister's gymnastics coach sometimes lets her go out with sister's class for a while, and she adores the high beam. She climbs up the block and onto the beam herself, and will go forwards or backwards or on tiptoe, and jump off the end of the beam into the arms of the coach sitting on the floor. The only problem she has is when she wants to go faster than the big girls and tries to push them out of her way.

 

My older daughter is naturally very strong, and can replicate physical feats after seeing them done once or twice if all they require is strength, not balance or skill. She did this as a two-and-a-half year old with doing bridges, handstands against the wall, and rope climbing.

[brownie]

We call ds7 Cam Jansen. He seems to have a photographic memory for objects he's seen. Once when he was 4, I couldn't find my power drill. I hadn't used it in 6 months. DS went to the garage door and pointed to a closed cabinet door well out of his reach (almost out of my reach due to all the stuff in the way) and said "it's in there". It was!

[Seeking Squirrels]

DD4 can tell you where every single toy, stuffed animal, book, and item of clothing came from. She can tell you who got it for her, when, and why. Including every sock and fast food toy. Back to at least her second birthday, sometimes things from even before that but with less accuracy on the "when". Somehow she can't seem to remember what I told her to do two minutes ago, though!

[YourFidgetyFriend]

My daughter has the human GPS thing going for her as well. My mom has the worst sense of direction I've ever seen on anybody so when dd was 2, she started directing my mom around the city (and I live in a mid-sized city).

 

I've always had a good sense of direction, but she takes it a step farther. She picks up directions visually like I do, but she memorizes all the highway and street names (I can't remember street names to save my life).

 

She actually thinks it's funny to pretend like she is a GPS and uses the GPS voice when we are on the road sometimes.

[MrsBanjoClown]

my dd9 has almost perfect recall of anything she hears. read a story out loud, she can replay it back word-for-word. tried to bribe her when she was 3 about a toy in a store saying we'll get if it goes on sale. 5 years later we were in another store and it was on sale and she brought up the conversation exactly.

 

spooky when she says "remember when you said 'blah,blah'"

 

Robin

 

My ds7 is like this too. We first really noticed his amazing memory when he was 4. He was sitting at the dining room table, and looked at me and asked "Where is the clock?". I asked him "What clock?" and he said "the brown one with the lion on the front". I was a little taken aback as I answered "We took that clock down 2 years ago"!

[LittleIzumi]

my dd9 has almost perfect recall of anything she hears. read a story out loud, she can replay it back word-for-word. tried to bribe her when she was 3 about a toy in a store saying we'll get if it goes on sale. 5 years later we were in another store and it was on sale and she brought up the conversation exactly.

 

spooky when she says "remember when you said 'blah,blah'"

 

Robin

 

:iagree::iagree::iagree: No mom, last year you said, "__________________" (word-for-word).

[lewelma]

Not my children, but I have an accurate internal clock. I can set a buzzer for my baking, sit down to work, and then out of the blue I think "oh, it's time." The moment I stand up, the buzzer goes off 3 seconds later. Drives my husband nuts.

 

Ruth in NZ

[Dmmetler]

DD7 freaked me out a few months ago. She, out of the blue commented (in one of those "different people learn things at different times discussions") that "Yeah, I could read before I could talk!". My response was "You learned to read very early, but I'm pretty sure you learned to talk first.

 

She then proceeded to tell me what was on the refrigerator at the old house-a house we moved out of when she was 1 1/2. And I'm talking things like the reminder that the car was due for an oil change, dated before she was born.

 

Rather eerie.

 

 

I have an internal alarm clock. It doesn't matter what time I set my alarm for, I'll wake up 10 minutes before it, unless I took medication the night before. It's been happening with different alarm clocks as long as I can remember, so I don't think it's the clock, and it happens all year 'round, so I don't think it's the light. Unfortunately, DH and DD both don't have that trait and need to be pried out of bed with a crowbar on early mornings!

[mom2jjka]

My son is amazing at the 'crane game.' No matter where we go , if you give him a dollar, he will ge4t something out of one of those things.

 

We once went bowling with our friends, and there was a crane game at the bowling alley. That day he won a stuffed animal from the crane for every kid that was with our group (9 in all!) The bowling alley came and turned the machine off because he was depleting their stock. :lol:

[nitascool]

My oldest 12 has the inventory in his mind too. He can tell us everything he's ever gotten, when, where, from whom and what they were wearing at the time. He remembers conversations from when he was a year old. But he can't remember to do the dishes without being reminded... strange how that works.

 

My 10 year old can tell us when it's going to rain or snow, the wind velocity, even the pollen count. Temperature eludes him though. He can't tell if it's hot or cold even if he's soaked with sweat. He can tell us the last time the clerk brushed his/her teeth (but not the last time he did :lol: ), what they had for their last meal. Once he asked a woman (total stranger) if she was feeling okay... she said that she felt a little dizzy, and he told her that her blood sugar was low. She agreed and said she was diabetic. Later, I asked him how he knew and he said, "Can't you smell that?" I couldn't.

 

My 7 year old can tell us how much change we have in our pocket if we let him pat it or jingle it. He can tell us how much change we will get from our purchase and what he can buy with our change. He can tell us how much gas (not a gallon of but $3.89) it will take to drive us to the store to buy his desired item. He can tell us how many seconds are in a day, week, month, year. How many seconds old we are and if you ask him he will tell you.

 

My 5 year old can do the inventory thing too. She is also very strong. She can lift things I have trouble lifting.

[Belacqua]

 

My 10 year old can tell us when it's going to rain or snow, the wind velocity, even the pollen count. Temperature eludes him though. He can't tell if it's hot or cold even if he's soaked with sweat. He can tell us the last time the clerk brushed his/her teeth (but not the last time he did :lol: ), what they had for their last meal. Once he asked a woman (total stranger) if she was feeling okay... she said that she felt a little dizzy, and he told her that her blood sugar was low. She agreed and said she was diabetic. Later, I asked him how he knew and he said, "Can't you smell that?" I couldn't.

 

OK, that, to use the technical parlance, is freaky-awesome. I'll bet if he went into nursing he could get hired anywhere. Heck, they'd probably hire him now!

[Storm Bay]

My dd, who learned colours early & could even name them when in patterns before she was 2, can remember the name of every colour she's ever had in markers/coloured pencils, etc, and when you ask her what a colour is, if it's not exactly a certain colour she already knows (from those or other things) she refuses to call it something close. And she is always correct, but it is frustrating when I call something violet, for eg, and to almost everyone it is, but she corrects me because it's not quite the right shade. She's a teen now, so hopefully she'll be a little more easy going about this when she's older.

 

Not a child, but my bil can guess anyone's weight with remarkable accuracy.

[Beansmom2]

One thing about my child...we took our kids to a Catholic church to check it out for joining (I was raised Catholic). There are plenty of rote memorized prayer (and if you are Catholic you'll know just what I am talking about). Amazingly on our second visit my four year old (at the time) knew the words to every single prayer after only hearing them once. I was astonished. Some might say "miracle" but thats just my child! Also she has an uncanny adult sense of perception..can read people and situations with extreme clarity...its scary.