Knowing what day a date is..

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My 6 year old son has started telling us what day of the week a date is, and what day someone's birthday will be next year, or in 5 years time. He always gets it right! He plays around with numbers and dates by saying for example if June starts on a Tuesday what day it will end on. We have also discovered he has perfect pitch and reads music. I wonder does anyone have experience of this and does that predict skills in maths? Just wondering how best to help him.

That's some incredible talent for a six year old! When I worked in a nursing home in NY I had a patient in her late 50's who was gifted that way. You just pick any arbitrary day, say June 15, 1971, and she'll tell you what day it was. I asked her how she calculated that. She said it was based off popular events that happened or holidays that transpired and she'd add or subtract days based on those events. What helped is because she actually knew the day of the week of world events. A new pope was just elected this week and I couldn't tell you what day it was! She could.

Thankyou Redrobin62. I am trying to work out how he does it. It seems to come naturally to him and at other times be a more conscious playing with numbers, he can also tell me the date of past events in his life, even little insignificant days

This video is about math genius Daniel Tammet who, as it turns out, has Asperger's Syndrome. I could be wrong but it seems more common that savants like him or Kim Peek (Rain Man) are on the spectrum.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Arlam70bI[/youtube]

As far as I know "Calender/date-talent" is typical for some autistic savants. Don't think there is any doubt it is autism those skills stem from.

[quote="redrobin62"]This video is about math genius Daniel Tammet who, as it turns out, has Asperger's Syndrome. I could be wrong but it seems more common that savants like him or Kim Peek (Rain Man) are on the spectrum.

Interestingly I just watched a TED talk by Daniel Tammet, he asks the audience not to ask him to perform tricks like what day of the week was their birthday x years ago! It started me wondering about what Josh does. He also seems to be able to replay videos in his head and has started to show foreign language ability. Incidentally this is a boy who was diagnosed with Moderate to severe learning disabilities (now removed) and of whom his educational psychologist asked 'What signs of intelligence can you see?' (implying she could not see any.
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_tammet_ ... owing.html
I wanted to ask do these skills mean Josh is a savant or are these common in autism? (I just tell Josh he is really clever, so much more so than me!) He replies 'I know!'

In related news, the kid below, Jake Barnett, is also autistic. He's a 13 year old math & science genius. If I could only be so lucky. (I was smarter when I was younger but I dumbed down to fit in).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVOreBdgZtw[/youtube]

It all follows very good patterns. If you learned the patterns well, and could memorize a few date/day of weeks, and can do some relatively simple math, you might be able to teach yourself to do that fairly quickly.

If you could do Zeller's congruence in your head, you could do it for any date since the current calendar was set.

I have noticed the pattern recognition, like hearing a song in english and spanish and leanring language that way, studying patterns. Fascinating stuff, wish I had learnt that way!

That is how I learned French as a child. My mom loved opera, especially Carmen. Keep playing music for him in other languages and if he likes to read, give him librettos and lyric sheets.

Never could do the date thing. If today is Monday, March 18, I have to look at the calendar to know the date next Monday.
For me "simple math" is an oxymoron.

Thankyou Mindsigh, I see Temple Grandin describes pattern thinkers (although Josh is also a visual thinker, talking about the video in his head!)
I will definitely do what you recommend with the music. Thank you for the insight!