Triple Dice Set and Other Moments of Brilliance

So given the situation we've been in with Gamble, we decided to take him to a neuropsychologist. I mean, we don't want to mess around. Given my history with academics and how he's demonstrating his learning ability already, coupled with the new weird feelings he's getting, and his newfound eye trouble, we just want to get some answers.

They did three days of testing, two hours each day.

I'm still not sure of everything they tested. They asked us a lot of questions about behavioral patterns, but he often didn't remember what they asked him by the time he got home.

What we do know is that on the last day, Nicole was in the waiting room at 11:00, when the appointment was supposed to end. A couple minutes late, one of the staff came out and asked for a little more time.

The time ticked away until Gamble emerged, almost an hour late. When asked about it, they said that they were trying to find the limits of what he knew, and every test they threw at him, he kept exceeding. I don't know if they found the boundary, or whether they gave up, but we should find out April 11, when we go back for the results.

When he got home that night, we were bribing him at the table to tell us what they asked, offering him his favorite bites for each thing he remembered.

"They asked me what words were."

"Words?" we asked

"Yeah, I had to say what the words were, like 'triple.'"

"And what does triple mean, Gamble?" Mommie, this time.

"It means three."

At this, I got a smug thought. I don't know if it made it to my face, but I knew right where to probe this one: "Where did you learn that?"

"From the DS."

From playing Mario Party DS, to be exact. It's a video game where you're a character in a board game (yeah, I know), and you roll dice to move. If you buy a triple dice set, you roll three dice.

And it's not the only positive thing he's learning from the DS, the eye doctor actually recommends playing the DS. He's farsighted, and the close-up focusing is strengthening his eyes.

But one of the most interesting knock-on learning effects the DS has had is in addition. When he gets a double or triple dice set, the numbers show up at the top of the screen, and they come together and form the sum before the character starts moving. Every turn is a little math lesson. I was caught off guard by this, when we rolled, and Gamble saw the second die come up and immediately said the sum, before it was displayed. Memorization, sure, but good for four.

We're very proud of our little guy.