Collin, the Super Child Genius

Not a day goes by where I am not completely blown away by how incredibly intelligent my son is. He started reading by the time he was 2 just like I did, and now I can see his reading and writing ability has surpassed what mine was at age 4.

At just 4 years old he can pick up any grade level book and read it, and not just read it aloud but actually comprehend what he is reading.

Not only can Collin read, but he can spell too. I let him play with my phone from time to time, and one of the ways he picked up spelling is through the "auto-complete" feature that most texting phones have. This is the feature where you punch in the first few letters and it gives you a row of words that match so you can select one without having to spell out the entire word.

He'd get on my phone and send text messages to his mom and a few of my friends, and they'd be nothing but long lists of words he picked out.

He has come a long way since then, and now he can actually type to you what's on his mind.

The Nintendo Wii gives you the ability to send e-mail, and I like the fact that you have to register addresses before they are able to send you messages. This is perfect for my son, whom I want to introduce to the world of e-mail without having to subject him to advertisements for natural male enhancement from Darren Rowse's imposter.

Well last night when I got home late, I found this in my Gmail inbox:



I have never received a better e-mail in my life.

Sometimes I forget he's only four...

My son is so extremely intelligent for his age that sometimes I forget that he's only four. Tonight while I was in a vulnerable position in the bathroom, I asked Collin to go downstairs and get me some toilet paper. He came back up with three sheets.

He did exactly what I asked. I should have asked for a roll instead of "some".

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Merelymel13

Writing for Kids Isn't Child's Play

I started playing with one of my lightly used domains tonight: Goobaga.com. Goobaga was supposed to be a cool sounding and brandable name that I could use for a blog, a product, or anything else that tickled my fancy.

Today Goobaga has become a repository for bedtime stories that I am going to start writing for my four year old son, Collin.

You'd think writing for a kid could be the easiest thing in the world. You'd be half right. While it's easy to dumb down any English sentence, how do you do it in a way that keeps the child's interest?

In "Mario Meets the Princess", I was faced with multiple lines of dialogue between Mario and the Princess. In an "adult" story, you break up the back-and-forth monotony by cracking out a thesaurus for use with your verbs, and interjecting descriptions of demeanor, environment, and ambiance. With a children's story, if you pull that out you'll confuse them to the point where they'll forget what the two characters are talking about.

In "Mario Saves the Toadstool People", I didn't have to spend any time introducing characters since it was already someone my son knew very well: Mario. This allowed me to jump right into the action. One minute Mario's fixing a clogged pipe, the next minute he's kicking turtle shells and listening to Toadstool people sing.

The common goal between writing for adults and writing for children is keeping the reader's attention.

With adults this is done by answering the "what happens next" question with enough interesting detail to paint a clear picture of the situation at hand and engage the reader to ask the same question again.

With children this is accomplished by answering the question quickly and simply with enough action to have them turn the page and have the "what happens next" question answered before they even have a chance to ask.

Boy do I need practice at that.

Mario, Goomba, and Paratroopa are trademarked and copyrighted images of Nintendo.

Gas Prices So High, Even the Kid Can See

I was playing "gas station" with my boy this evening before his bedtime, and after deciding on which kind of gas he wanted I let him know it was going to be $4.00 per gallon.

Let's just say that wasn't cool with Collin. Listen to his reaction.

My son turned 4 today...

Hard to believe that about this time four years ago I was laying in the hospital bed my (now ex-) wife had temporarily vacated and holding my newborn son and giving him his first taste of hockey as the Habs and the Devils skated to a 1-1 tie.

In four short years he's gone from not being able to sit up to not being able to sit still. Oh baby, does time fly by.

Last night before bed he was playing in his room and working on his latest "invention". I walked into his bedroom to tell him it was time to get ready for bed and I nearly tripped over a contraption connected by shoe lace and a belt and two Fisher Price buildings.

"Whoa, what is this?" I asked Collin as I regained my balance.
"It's the Hydromatic Looker 3000!" Collin answered without hesitation.
"Sounds interesting Collin... but what does it do?" This I had to hear.
"It looks for things you lost!" Collin responded in a tone that implied I should have already known the function of this machine just by the name. And in hindsight a Hydromatic Looker does seem pretty self explanatory.

Why would he invent such a machine? Flashback two hours prior, and Collin was playing with my video camera. In the process of filming a documentary on how stuffed animals won't move without assistance, he misplaced the lens cap to my camera.

After he and I had a short discussion about how important it is to take care of things you borrow from other people, and unable to remember where he put the lens cap, he decided he would let science work on his behalf apparently.

I thought I was a smart kid at his age because I could read and operate an Atari 2600. My boy reads, laughed when I tried showing him an Atari 2600 game, sends e-mail on our Nintendo Wii, and now apparently is dabbling in simple machines.

Did the "Hydromatic Looker 3000" find my lens cap? Not directly. I told Collin to dismantle his creation and put everything back where it goes. While putting the pieces of his hard work back in drawers and his closet he ended up finding my lens cap. I love how things like that work out.

When I laid him down for bed tonight and bent over to kiss him good night, he says, "shhhhhh, do you hear that? My brain is growing!"

It sure is, buddy. And your brain has many years of growing still ahead of it. I'm looking forward to being a part of every moment of it.