# My son has perfect pitch



## haffner1 (Aug 15, 2010)

My 8 year old son has autism. He has been learning music at school and a little from me at home over the last year. I have tried to teach him guitar, but his low hand strength and sensory problems make it almost impossible for him right now. I got him a cheap keyboard with an instruction program and he uses it off and on. I made him learn the notes of the open strings on the guitar though, and showed him how to count up the notes up the string to get the notes over the fretboard. It has been a few weeks since I have done this with him, so today after I changed the strings on my acoustic I played a few notes to make him tell me what they were, just to see if he remembered. Then I noticed after a couple notes, he wasn't really looking at my hands. So I made him turn around and look away, and he still gets every note! I just wonder what the best way to take advantage of this is, for him to get the most out of it. He is not a savaunt or anything. I mean he doesn't pick up and play complicated piano pieces just from listening. He seems to be able to pick out the melodies from his favorite video games ok, but he does not work out the harmonies.


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## jymellis (Aug 15, 2010)

i say keep doing what you are doing.


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## Stealthdjentstic (Aug 15, 2010)

Thats awesome, good on him


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## Eptaceros (Aug 15, 2010)

Definitely keep him associated with some kind of musical training. If he has perfect pitch, he can use theory to understand more of what he's hearing, rather than just be able to identify what he's hearing. Also, I'd try to keep him open to any and all musical instruments. The guitar is a beautiful instrument, I wouldn't be posting here if I didn't think so myself, but there's a plethora of tools of musical expression. Your son might stumble across something that he'll be able to grasp more smoothly than the guitar; over time, that could turn out to be the perfect vehicle for him to express himself. All in all, keep on keepin' on.


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## JunkMan13013 (Aug 15, 2010)

That is incredible tbf, I tip my hat to your son and to you.


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## haffner1 (Aug 15, 2010)

I worked with him a bit more before bedtime tonight. He seems to be able to get diads pretty quick off the bat, but triads are more challenging. He can get two of them, but he is off by a step on the third note. I will keep working with him now that I know he has the ability. I called a lady I know from church who is an elementary school music teacher. She agreed to work with him once a week on the piano. We will see how much progress he makes. I know it sounds mushy, but this whole thing really brings a tear to my eye. With his autism, it has been extremely difficult for me to find something that I can connect with him on. I hope that this can be something that can bridge the gap between us more.


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## Stealthdjentstic (Aug 16, 2010)

Keep us updated


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## Psychobuddy (Aug 16, 2010)

I'm jealous, but good for him. As Stealth said keep us updated.


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## AlucardXIX (Aug 16, 2010)

Awesome! Maybe all he needs is proper piano training to show what he can really do!


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## malin (Aug 16, 2010)

haffner1 said:


> I worked with him a bit more before bedtime tonight. He seems to be able to get diads pretty quick off the bat, but triads are more challenging. He can get two of them, but he is off by a step on the third note. I will keep working with him now that I know he has the ability. I called a lady I know from church who is an elementary school music teacher. She agreed to work with him once a week on the piano. We will see how much progress he makes. I know it sounds mushy, but this whole thing really brings a tear to my eye. With his autism, it has been extremely difficult for me to find something that I can connect with him on. I hope that this can be something that can bridge the gap between us more.


 
you just did it

I had watery eyes at work


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## haffner1 (Aug 17, 2010)

Still working with him on diads until he gets really good at them. He is a lot stronger with natural notes than with using sharps and flats, I assume because he had only been playing the natural notes at school last year. He didn't learn the sharps and flats until I showed him all the notes on the keyboard this summer. He has an easier time when the notes are no closer than a major 3rd together. He has a harder time if the notes closer together and I use a lot of sharps/flats. He is getting better even since sunday though, and single notes he gets right off the bat.


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## JunkMan13013 (Aug 17, 2010)

haffner1 said:


> Still working with him on diads until he gets really good at them. He is a lot stronger with natural notes than with using sharps and flats, I assume because he had only been playing the natural notes at school last year. He didn't learn the sharps and flats until I showed him all the notes on the keyboard this summer. He has an easier time when the notes are no closer than a major 3rd together. He has a harder time if the notes closer together and I use a lot of sharps/flats. He is getting better even since sunday though, and single notes he gets right off the bat.


 
Im keeping a close eye on this thread, The human mind is a powerful thing and your son is proving it. Please keep us updated over the following weeks


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## haffner1 (Aug 19, 2010)

I had the piano teacher over today. She was astounded by his ear, but she has never taught someone like him before and is going to check with some of her connections across the state to get recommendations for the best ways to teach him. I made contact with a lady from California that has been listed on various university websites regarding perfect pitch and autism. She is sending me a handbook and recommended me some starter material for him to get his hands moving properly on the keys and progressing in the right direction. She also recommended me some reading material to help me understand his abilities in regards to his condition. 

I also discovered that he can sing a pitch on demand. Even when he has been away from the keyboard playing a video game or whatever, if I tell him "sing an F note!", he will sing it, and when I play the note he is spot on. He has a harder time with the sharps and flats still. He has to think for a second or two, but if I just play the white keys, he will name them right off, across all the octaves even if I play them real short and stacatto like.


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## BrainArt (Aug 19, 2010)

Haffner, what you're doing with him is exactly what you should do with someone who has perfect pitch, keep doing what you're doing to help him hone it properly.  

This is exactly what my grandfather did with my mom, what my mom did with me, and what we're now doing with my little sister. Each one of us having perfect pitch and just a natural ear for music.

So yeah, just keep on doing what you're doing and after a little while of doing this and practicing, he will have an amazing talent.


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## haffner1 (Aug 21, 2010)

IbanezShredderB said:


> This is exactly what my grandfather did with my mom, what my mom did with me, and what we're now doing with my little sister. Each one of us having perfect pitch and just a natural ear for music.



Do you always hear notes from common household items? It seems that he does. He has never offered this up before until I discovered that he has this ability, but when I asked him, he already knew that my computer fan on my recording computer runs at a C#. I knew already because it always shows up in the background on my pitch correction software, so I just figured I would ask to see if he picks up on that sort of thing.


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## BrainArt (Aug 21, 2010)

haffner1 said:


> Do you always hear notes from common household items? It seems that he does. He has never offered this up before until I discovered that he has this ability, but when I asked him, he already knew that my computer fan on my recording computer runs at a C#. I knew already because it always shows up in the background on my pitch correction software, so I just figured I would ask to see if he picks up on that sort of thing.



Yep, we pick up on different notes in different things around the house. Some waver between two or three different notes. Sounds like he has a really acute sense of perfect pitch, it took me a few years to be able to do that.


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## OwainXerath (Aug 23, 2010)

If it helps, I used to have a young student (who I won't name) in th UK near Guildford who had perfect pitch. He had a form of very mild autism. Very very mild autism. I'll be honest, he taught me more than I could teach him. But, that said he did lead me to think VERY hard about how I could nurture his talent, and not just treat him like another student. He was 12 and his mother was an amateur Cellist and a moderate pianist, and she took him as far as she could, in that he could name all 12 notes. He couldn't dissect diads or triads, but could tell the root. After reading into the different ways we associate things and remember things I quickly realised he had a (contrary to what you may think) a primarily visual memory. So, I had 3 types of memory to pair up (Audio/Visual/Kinasthaetic(feel). I had to strengthen his audio to his visual memory, and although the work here was mostly done. The way he worded it was along the lines of "different sounds have different shades of colour." He'd already made a link there. So I tried (after much aggrevated questioning ) making a Cmajor scale chart, colouring all the appropriate notes in felt tip pen roughly equating to what he sees in his minds eye. 

Making the step to join up the kinaesthetic (which is how I play, and as I found, am most at home teaching) feel was fairly easy. I got him to play said scales with his eyes close and got him to really concentrate on which finger was going to go in which fret, and on which string he was placing it. He quickly linked this to the sounds that he was hearing, so then we moved on to transcription. 

I would give him a basic song (nursery rhymes to begin with) to transcribe. Although I tried to get him to write it down in standard notation, he would rarely do it, but be able to recite it at will, so I know he was doing his homework . Also, we started on intervals, and this is where I may dwell for a while due to my limited success with it.

Diads had no colour to him. I've heard of other perfect pitch "people" hearing them as brown or making them feel a certain way. But, I would play a basic interval (a major 3rd for example) and ask him if he felt anything. Naturally he replied with "It's very happy sounding." I tried to probe for more information, but it clearly did nothing for him. So over the course of about 2 months we filled a sheet with a table consisting listing the interval, how it made him feel, and what song he associated with it. For instance, a major 2nd could be associated with "Happy Birthday" because that is the interval between the first two notes. Minor 2nd was Jaws etc.

We didn't really achieve much success, he often got confused with diads, although playing the interval one note at a time he was about 80% accurate. Which is probably better than any other 12 year old, but was enough to deduce that his perfect pitch had little to do with it, probably because I actually focused on intervals with him. He could tell major from minor, but who can't.

Funny story, his favourite intervals were a perfect fourth and a diminished 5th. Mathematicians may find this funny!


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## haffner1 (Aug 23, 2010)

My son doesn't understand at all what I mean by intervals yet, but hopefully we will get there. It just depends on how quickly he picks up the concepts. He really has limited playing ability right now, but hopefully with the right instructor and program, that will improve. 
With diads within the major scale, he is about 95-99% accurate with naming both notes, but he doesn't understand them in terms of interval distance, he just names the pitches. He is still a little less accurate with the sharps/flats, mostly because he forgets the names. I made him a cheat sheet printout of an octave on the keyboard with all of the notes labeled and when he uses that, he does almost just as well with only natural notes. 
Oddly, his relative pitch seems comparativly poor. I have been trying to get him to play back simple phrases on the keyboard. I will play something simple like a decending Am arpeggio- when he hears the notes, he will easily say "E-C-A", but when I tell him to play it, he will usually go to the wrong octave for the first note, and then head in the wrong direction with the second note, like try to play the C above instead of the C below. I noticed he can pick out the notes easier on guitar than on the electronic keyboard we have. A few minutes ago, I strummed a Dm7 chord and asked him the notes and he easily said DACF, but on the keyboard he has a harder time even with just triads.


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## robertinventor (Aug 23, 2010)

Just a thought, might he be picking up on the overtones of the note? With highly developed perfect pitch one might hear many pitches making up each note instead of just a single pitch, which may be a bit confusing.

Also with some instruments the first harmonic is stronger than the fundamental. So if you hear it as a single note you hear it as the fundamental, but if you hear it as a cluster of harmonious pitches, which together meld to make the timbre of the instrument, the first harmonic might be the one you notice.

That could put you out by an octave (or an octave + a fifth if you pick up the second harmonic and so on). Just a thought.

Relative pitch can be challenging if you have good absolute pitch - especially diads - because the same interval transposed to a different pitch can sound completely different. 

With a melody of several notes like four or five you can hear the shape but with just two notes, you hear the individual pitches. Like trying to see that the interval between yellow and red is the same as the interval between green and yellow, you notice the individual colours rather than the intervals between them in colour vision. So in the same way, if you hear the qualities of the individual notes very strongly, that overwhelms your perception of the interval between them.

Generally problem with perfect pitch tendencies is a kind of overload, so much detail and variety in what you hear, every single pitch, even quarter tones and less, may have a different "colour" or texture to it - so takes longer to make sense of it, compared with someone with weak perfect pitch and strong relative pitch. 

Don't really have perfect pitch myself. But have long term memory, can remember a pitch for many hours sometimes, and do hear e.g. the sound of cars going past in the street as a rich tapestry of different pitches each with its own quality. But never learnt to identify all the individual pitches by name partly perhaps because I hear even small changes in pitch as different in sound so a C slightly sharp is a different sound from a C slightly flat which makes remembering them all next to impossible. I don't know what it is, been told it isn't perfect pitch but comes with many of the same problems so can maybe understand a little of some of the issues involved.

So anyway main point is, no surprise if some things take longer to learn than expected. With perfect pitch, you have more to learn so no surprise if it takes longer.

Robert



haffner1 said:


> My son doesn't understand at all what I mean by intervals yet, but hopefully we will get there. It just depends on how quickly he picks up the concepts. He really has limited playing ability right now, but hopefully with the right instructor and program, that will improve.
> With diads within the major scale, he is about 95-99% accurate with naming both notes, but he doesn't understand them in terms of interval distance, he just names the pitches. He is still a little less accurate with the sharps/flats, mostly because he forgets the names. I made him a cheat sheet printout of an octave on the keyboard with all of the notes labeled and when he uses that, he does almost just as well with only natural notes.
> Oddly, his relative pitch seems comparativly poor. I have been trying to get him to play back simple phrases on the keyboard. I will play something simple like a decending Am arpeggio- when he hears the notes, he will easily say "E-C-A", but when I tell him to play it, he will usually go to the wrong octave for the first note, and then head in the wrong direction with the second note, like try to play the C above instead of the C below. I noticed he can pick out the notes easier on guitar than on the electronic keyboard we have. A few minutes ago, I strummed a Dm7 chord and asked him the notes and he easily said DACF, but on the keyboard he has a harder time even with just triads.


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## robertinventor (Aug 24, 2010)

A couple of software tools that may help:

Functional Ear Trainer

The Home Page of Alain Benbassat
(freeware) exercises to help improve relative pitch.

Absolute Pitch ear training software for learning perfect pitch and playing music on PC keys
helps to develop absolute pitch more - to learn to recognise the absolute pitch of notes accurately at speed.


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## Stealthdjentstic (Aug 24, 2010)

haffner1 said:


> My son doesn't understand at all what I mean by intervals yet, but hopefully we will get there. It just depends on how quickly he picks up the concepts. He really has limited playing ability right now, but hopefully with the right instructor and program, that will improve.
> With diads within the major scale, he is about 95-99% accurate with naming both notes, but he doesn't understand them in terms of interval distance, he just names the pitches. He is still a little less accurate with the sharps/flats, mostly because he forgets the names. I made him a cheat sheet printout of an octave on the keyboard with all of the notes labeled and when he uses that, he does almost just as well with only natural notes.
> Oddly, his relative pitch seems comparativly poor. I have been trying to get him to play back simple phrases on the keyboard. I will play something simple like a decending Am arpeggio- when he hears the notes, he will easily say "E-C-A", but when I tell him to play it, he will usually go to the wrong octave for the first note, and then head in the wrong direction with the second note, like try to play the C above instead of the C below. I noticed he can pick out the notes easier on guitar than on the electronic keyboard we have. A few minutes ago, I strummed a Dm7 chord and asked him the notes and he easily said DACF, but on the keyboard he has a harder time even with just triads.




It's OK, I'm much older than your kid and still don't really understand intervals


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## meisterjager (Aug 24, 2010)

This is amazing to hear )


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## Vision (Aug 24, 2010)

This thread is amazing. Wow, he can pick out strummed notes... just wow.


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## Kurkkuviipale (Aug 28, 2010)

If he doesn't do harmonies, I think you should definetly teach him to play a solo instrument. Ofcourse in the side of piano, whitch in my opinion is the best way to figure out the whole fundamentals of music. 

I bet he'll be figuring harmonies out soon enough. Just play and tell him to play something classical, whitch is a good and a simple start for a talented musician. Later on he can go to a more progressive/popular/whatever genres or why not stay with classical music?

Teach him (or make him study ) the theory of music, and ofcourse, make him sing!

Damn i wish i had a perfect pitch ... Don't know if it's the right word for this, but man. Congratulations.


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## haffner1 (Sep 1, 2010)

He is getting a bit into identifying major chords now. I made a little wheel for him to turn so that he can see how intervals move across the chromatic scale since his ear is still rather stuck on C major. He seems to do ok identifying major chords where the root is a natural note, even B major, but if the root is A# or G# he has a harder time. F# or C# major give him a lot of trouble.


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## shattered (Sep 3, 2010)

Is he enjoying the process?


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## haffner1 (Sep 3, 2010)

Yes and no I suppose. I think he enjoys it to a certain degree, but his autism gives him a very short attention span. I have to teach him in five to ten minute bits, and then let him go off and do his own thing, and then come back to it again for another short session. If I don't push him though, he pretty much won't do anything with it. He is like that with a lot of things though. I guess a lot of kids with autism that have perfect pitch never do anything with it. That may or may not be the case with him, but I owe it to him to make him do enough so that he can use his ability to understand music better. Then hopefully he may take to it and get something out of it.


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## kittencore (Sep 3, 2010)

That's really cool. Be careful not to push him too hard though, because it might turn him off to music.


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## Bungle (Sep 3, 2010)

Dude, my girlfriend and I have tried teaching each other perfect pitch, we're both 26 and have been playing music for about 10 years each. My girl does a lot better than me, but I've got to say, your 8 year old son is kicking my arse up and down the street!


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## All_¥our_Bass (Sep 4, 2010)

Stealthtastic said:


> It's OK, I'm much older than your kid and still don't really understand intervals


It's just the space between two notes.


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## Daiephir (Sep 6, 2010)

That's pretty cool/incredible/cool


(You should make him become the tech guy, so he could tune the guitars at shows  )


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## All_¥our_Bass (Sep 7, 2010)

OwainXerath said:


> ... Mathematicians may find this funny!


Explain, I'm into math (but wouldn't consider myself a mathematician by any means) cuz I'm not gettin' it.

I do know that the perfect fourth has a ratio of 4/3 and the tritone's ratio is &#8730;&#8254;2/1.


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## Jontain (Sep 10, 2010)

An inspiring thread to say the least, give you son a high 5!


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## lemonlust (Sep 10, 2010)

He might be a savant


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## cradleofflames (Sep 10, 2010)

I knew people with perfect pitch who hated listening to even tempered instruments because of the intervals that will never be completely in tune. Some musicians that play that type of instrument won't notice it on a conscious level but it can still be problematic.

Perhaps a fretless instrument might be a good approach.


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## groph (Sep 10, 2010)

haffner1 said:


> Do you always hear notes from common household items? It seems that he does. He has never offered this up before until I discovered that he has this ability, but when I asked him, he already knew that my computer fan on my recording computer runs at a C#. I knew already because it always shows up in the background on my pitch correction software, so I just figured I would ask to see if he picks up on that sort of thing.


 

HAH, Yeah I've noticed the appliances with notes too. I certainly don't have perfect pitch at all, but one day whilst re-stringing my guitar and tuning the low B down to Bb, the air compressor we have downstairs kicked in and harmonized almost perfectly with my low Bb. The microwave at work is somewhere around an E, but I haven't checked this. I've just heard E a billion times. A couple of years ago when I was in high school, someone was shifting a chair around upstairs, and a musically inclined friend of mine sang the note it made and said "Huh! Perfect D."

That's great about your son. I'm not a parent myself but I've heard over and over (and agree with based on experience) that if a child shows signs of talent in a certain area, you should jump right on it and nurture that talent as much as possible. If your kid seems to be of above average intelligence, the same applies. Get as much educational material as possible and nurture, or else your child will have stunted mental development. I can't begin to imagine how happy you must be about this, connecting with a child must be one of the most satisfying things in life on so many levels.


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## haffner1 (Sep 11, 2010)

cradleofflames said:


> I knew people with perfect pitch who hated listening to even tempered instruments because of the intervals that will never be completely in tune. Some musicians that play that type of instrument won't notice it on a conscious level but it can still be problematic.
> 
> Perhaps a fretless instrument might be a good approach.



It doesn't seem to bother him that much when something is slightly out of tune, so hopefully that won't be a problem. I have tested him on a piano that was quite flat, and he was still able to identify the notes, though sometimes he might say the next note down from the key I struck because it was close in between. I asked him what a note was on one of his kids TV shows the other day- where they are always singing stuff goofy and semi- out of tune. He told me it was a Bb, but I found the pitch on my guitar and it was actually much closer to a B. 


Interestingly, I found out that he has actually not been learning the notes on the keyboard like I thought he had. When he goes to his music, he reads what the first note is and finds it by ear instead of by sight on the keyboard. I decided that now I have to make him practice naming notes by shutting the keyboard off so he can't do it by pitch.


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## avenger (Sep 12, 2010)

All_¥our_Bass;2129120 said:


> Explain, I'm into math (but wouldn't consider myself a mathematician by any means) cuz I'm not gettin' it.
> 
> I do know that the perfect fourth has a ratio of 4/3 and the tritone's ratio is &#8730;&#8254;2/1.


Can you explain where you got these ratios?


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## theclap (Sep 13, 2010)

first step would to be to get him the periphery CD and get us some tabs for that!

but seriously, I get a lot of students as a guitar teacher that are 7-9 and I feel the teaching technique and atmosphere should be similar. Nothing is ever pushed unto the student once they begin to feel uncomfortable, give them room to talk and don't force the attention on it, and always do it in a comfortable environment. You obviously have that down already and kudos. The one thing I do that I haven't seen you mention is that I have the younger kids listen a lot more to music then playing, that might be interesting to bring into your work with your son.
It also might be a good idea to invite rhythms into it as well with clapping and explanations that coincide with what you are teaching him pitch-wise. If he enjoys clapping back things that you clap, it'll start to point towards the fact that he does enjoy music not just listening to a note and telling you what it is. If he is still very young his interests and tastes just like every one else will change with so who knows maybe he will start to gain a major interest in what you are trying to show him.


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## youheardme (Sep 27, 2010)

I find this very interesting... hopefully he's able to develop this further... if thats what he wants of course


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## haffner1 (Nov 1, 2010)

I have to brag on my son just a little more- sorry  - actually I was wanting to do one with him naming triads, but for some reason whenever the camera is on, he gets excited and keeps getting them wrong. Oh well, another month or so maybe when it is much easier for him. Also, his teacher was able to get him working on playing with both hands finally!


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