Remember On 8 I Used a Spoon?

You know those people who talk about how great/smart/talented their kids are, and it starts to sound like their kid is the next great hope for humanity? Yeah, well I'm about to sound like those people in a minute.

Since Scott was born, we've been watching to see what talents stick out. At first, it seemed like his caution shrouded most of his capability and we had no idea what he might be good at because he held back all the time. He wasn't a kid that started hitting milestones (like walking, talking, alphabet, singing, etc) particularly early. When he did learn to talk, he seemed fairly expressive, but it was tough to really tell, since he mostly preferred to make silly sound effects and sprint around to fight bad guys (me).

Then lately he's been into numbers. He loves to count everything, and he loves to watch the calendar. He has his own system for referring to the days. He calls today "this day", and refers to all previous and future dates by number (he doesn't use "tomorrow" or "yesterday" much). Such references can be hard to understand if he throws them at you out of context, as he did with this one he asked of R recently:

"Remember on 8 I used a spoon?"

It took R a few moments to understand that he was referring to a day the previous week when he chose to eat something with a spoon -- a fairly inconsequential event to be filed away in the Captain's Log. She gets very similar queries from him each day, reminding her about various events that correspond to dates on the calendar -- like how many times he beat her in a one-on-one game of Checkers or Trouble two days previous.

Speaking of Trouble, our house has been a hive of gaming activity the last few months as we've picked up a collection of board games and card games to give us new and interactive things to do with Scott, since we tend to be his primary playmates. Our list of games that we play has evolved as follows:

Bingo
Go Fish
Crazy Eights
Mousetrap (this one really launched the trend)
Shark Tale
3D Snakes & Ladders
Trouble
Checkers
Cranium (board only, no cards)
Skipbo
Uno
Guess Who?

We picked up Mousetrap second-hand a few weeks ago, wondering if he could handle it, since the rating was above his age. Three days later, he had us playing it with him several times every day, every chance he got. Katie's nap became gaming time and he quickly memorized the instructions on spaces like "take 3 pieces of cheese from the player with the most." He also liked to count all his pieces of cheese.

At first, his gameplay was amateur. Just gaining a grasp of the game mechanics was all he could handle, and we would have to help him along with strategy so that he wouldn't lose every time. Checkers has been particularly challenging for him to move beyond mechanics to strategy, since things change once you get to the other end and you upgrade to kings. However, we've seen his gaming strategy evolving too. It is fairly evident when we play Trouble, since that is one of the few board games we play that is not based entirely on chance -- Snakes & Ladders is light on strategy.

I think Snakes & Ladders really reinforced his counting skills, because the 3D gameboard is impossible to navigate unless you can count up to 70 -- there are so many ladders and snakes in the way that you have to rely on the numbers. At first, Scott would just follow a memorized path to the ladder at square 18 and climb it regardless whether he landed there. But that didn't work when he played with his cousin A who is in grade one and actually knew how to count. He eventually revised his play to follow all the numbers -- all the way to 70.

Sure, kids learn to count. But he also seems to be doing simple arithmetic in his head. While playing Skipbo two weeks ago:

Scott: Two and three makes five.
D: that's right. What does two and one make?
S: I don't know... Twenty-one!

True. I can't argue with that.

For St. Patrick's Day we got a box of Lucky Charms cereal that had a simple board game on the back. Sitting at the table, he announced to us that there were 55 spaces. A few days later, I quizzed him at the Sunday family dinner:

D: Scott, how many spaces are on your Lucky Charms game?"
S: 55.
D: How many would there be if there were 2 more on there?
S: 57.
D: What about if you had 55 and you took 3 away? Would you still have 55?
S: No.
D: How many would you have?
S: 52.

I don't know much about how kids learn, so maybe this is pretty typical, but regardless, watching your child learn things like this is like witnessing a miracle. It amazing how quickly their minds work.

Yes, my son is the next great hope for humanity.
His Skipbo talents will bring world peace.