Our stealth smart boy

For quite awhile now, we have considered Will our--how shall I say this? (I know he'll read it someday!)--let's just say we would have voted him our kid least likely to become a rocket scientist. The older boys are, undoubtedly, pretty bright (as in 99th percentile standard testing bright). We aren't sure how academically smart Helen will be, but as far as "street smarts," she's at the top.

Then there is Will. For a long time, the answer to most questions posed to him (for example, to identify letters, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.) has been, "I don't know."

In all honesty, we have not spent much time worrying about this. He is unquestionably our sweetest child. (Hmmm, I guess all the other kids may read this someday, too. Oh well. Will is so sweet that it's impossible they won't already know this.) I think that sweetness is probably, all in all, a better quality than smarts.

The only thing we were just a little concerned with is his former teacher's comment that he would not do any work independently. He would only work if a teacher stayed with him and guided him every step of the way.

Well, now he's in a new class, and his new teacher has pretty much demanded that he work independently. And by independently, that means without the help of the teacher or Helen. The change in Will is dramatic. He has become so much more independent.

And, as it turns out, I think he may not be slow, just a perfectionist. I don't know why this never occured to us before. Charlie is a bit of a perfectionist himself. He is likely to wait to do something until he knows he's going to get it right.

Our first glimpse at this came with Will tracing his name. At school, they write the kids names for them in highlighter, and the kids use a pencil to trace it. Except Will wouldn't participate in this activity. He refused to trace. So one day, after his teacher had been working hard to get him to do it (with some success), we decided to work on it at home too. I encouraged him, and he refused, saying, "I can't." But after lots more encouragement, he traced the "W." Then he said it wasn't right. I argued with him that it was. He finally told me that it "wasn't a line." It then dawned on me that, to him, his somewhat wobbly, 3-year-old lines weren't straight enough. We all disagreed and heaped praise on him for his tracing. He went on to trace the rest of his name, plus "Helen," "Joe," "Charlie," "Mom," "Dad," and "Bob." He's never looked back. Although he still doesn't have the fine motor skills that Helen does (which I think is typical, given the gender difference), he brings home tracing from school almost every day.

And after that, he started doing things on his own that made us look at his intelligence in a little bit different light. A few weeks ago he was driving a friend's play jeep. He looked at the JEEP logo on the vehicle and said, "Juh. Eh. Eh. Puh." OK, so perhaps he doesn't know that the two Es together make a long E sound, but hey, that's pretty good on his own. What is more, since then we have seen various Jeep vehicles around town, and he keeps identifying them as a Jeep. The first one was a true, old-school Jeep, so I thought he was just recognizing the type of vehicle (he does love cars). The next one wasn't, but it still had that boxy Jeep shape, so I wasn't sure. Then, the other day, he saw the front of a Jeep Grand Cherokee out the window at school. It's an SUV. It doesn't look like a Jeep. And he said, "Look, Mom - there's a Jeep!" Then, "Jeep has two Es." OK, maybe the kid's got some smarts after all.

Then just yesterday, he asked for some almonds. When I gave them to him, he said, "Aaaah-aaaah-aaaahlmond. Almond starts with an 'O.'" It doesn't, of course. But I think that's a mistake only smart 3-year-olds make, right?

Sweet and smart? Oh my.