Today I was with an 8yo autistic boy who I will be spending a few hours a week with. He has autism and the usual companions, plus mild sleep epilepsy and some motor skill issues. But his intelligence was off the charts. During our car-trip, we started with riddles which he knew the answers to all my favourites. I then asked him what weighs more, a kilo of rocks or a kilo of feathers. He spent a little time rationalising it then said they are both equal.
Ok. I asked him if there was no air at all, and you went to the top of building and dropped a bowling ball and a feather, which would hit the ground first. Again, he thought about it and said they would hit the ground together because without air the feather would fall straight down. Just like a piece of paper would. Holy smokes. 8 years old. We talked about Galileo and the Sun and planets how they all thought everything revolved around the Earth.
I needed to up my game. So I asked him to add up all the numbers between 1 and 100 without actually adding 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus... I gave it to him as homework because Carl Gauss did this as a youngster when his teacher got frustrated because of the genius of Gauss. I'm sure he will come back to me with the answer.
Later I talked to his mother and he was evaluated at 99.9% in the cognitive tests.
How does one nurture a kid like this?
