I hope you're ready: Independence Day is right around the corner.
What? Oh yes, I know that it's September, not July. But, I'm not talking about America's Independence Day. I am referring to the day that Guatemala gained its independence from Spain--Sept. 15.
Who cares, you ask? Why, my son does, of course.
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A boy who is REALLY into numbers
My son is into all things numbers related, and we discovered this early on.
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When Kai, who is autistic, first started saying a few words, we found out that he sees numbers everywhere. Once, he picked up a fallen tree branch and said “seven.” It took us a little while to understand what he was talking about, but eventually we saw that the shape of the branch looked like the number seven if you held it a certain way. Another time, he had a sideways view of a roll of paper towels hanging down and saw the number nine.
When he got a little older, we found out that he not only saw numbers everywhere, but thought of them all the time, too. When he was 4, we discovered that he had memorized the highway exit numbers of many places he had been, even those where he only went once, a year previous.
So it was no surprise to find that Kai had an affinity for math. At age 3, he kept asking us, just for fun, to create addition and subtraction problems for him using two- and three-digit numbers. Shortly after he turned 5, he found a book that had multiplication tables in it and asked me to explain them. After one session of using beans and cups, he learned multiplication.
Early last year, he became very interested in the 50 states. But, even there, numbers factored in. In just a couple of days, Kai took it upon himself to learn the order in which the states entered the union. Many people know that Hawaii was the 50th state. But, he also knew that Delaware was the first, Virginia was 10th and Oklahoma was the 46th state.
Just before his sixth birthday, Kai drew a map of the United States all on his own. But instead of writing in the names of all of the states, he wrote a number for every state that represented the order in which they joined the U.S. I had to look up the statistics to check it out, and found out that he had it all correct.
We sometimes try to use his love of numbers to our advantage. We once motivated him to eat his dinner by having Mom teach him how to say a different number in Japanese after every bite. While most kids love chicken nuggets, that was one of the few times back then that he ate his dinner readily.
Happy Birthday, Guatemala!
These days, Kai is really into dates. Birthdays, especially, are a huge deal for him. But he doesn’t limit his interest to people’s birthdays, he wants to know the birthdays of countries, too.
I tried to explain that countries do not have birthdays. But then I realized that I could satisfy his inquiry by going online and showing him the date when a country gained its independence.
He really liked these country “birthdays” and has now looked up many of them. He hasn’t memorized them yet, but he does like to check once in a while to see if there are any birthdays coming up.
He recently discovered that Sept. 15 is a big day. Not only is it Guatemala’s birthday, but also the birthdays of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, which all gained independence from Spain on that date in 1821.
It is not every day that five countries turn 190, so I am sure we will be celebrating this momentous occasion. And now that you know, you can too!
