All children's names have been changed.

Example by Hanna Vock, Bonn

Strikingly quick learning may be observed in all developmental domains. Teenagers who are verbally gifted, for example, may catch our attention by speaking fluent Hungarian after three months of their student-exchange year in Hungary – and Hungarian is not easily learned by Germans, it has terrifyingly little in common with German.

But at pre-school age, too, occur swift learning processes, but often unnoticed. I once asked a five years old boy, who was presently occupied with multiplication problems, which were “actually” not to be “dealt with” before second grade:

“How did you learn that?” (No one had taught him nor practised with him.)

He shrugged and responded:

Apparently learning Arithmetic, from simple counting to adding and subtracting, finally to multiplying, has not only set in at a very early stage but has also advanced rather quickly. Bear in mind, most children will need 3 to 4 years for the same learning process. And many children do not only need much more time, they also need a lot of practicing, tutoring, and they often experience the learning process as cumbersome.

Other children learn strikingly fast, things like: drawing wonderful pictures or taking things apart and putting them back together again…

Date of publication in German: October 30 th , 2008.

Translated by Arno Zucknick

Copyright © Hanna Vock 2008, see Imprint