Jump to content

Menu

When did you know


Mommyof1
 Share

Recommended Posts

He picked up a picture book and read it out loud at 20 months. I knew it wasn't a memorized story. He also spontaneously wrote the alphabet at 2 1/2 on his magnetic whiteboard easel. We never taught him how to write.

Now, I only learned how gifted recently when an inexpensive testing opportunity for the Woodcock Johnson popped up in my area.

 

Edited by calbear
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My DD4 is very verbal. She surprised her doctor at her 2yr old checkup by saying stethoscope clearly and correctly and knew what it meant and how to use it.

 

Hours after her birth we were in the newborn nursery. I was watching her as her eyes where following Daddy's voice as he was walking around. I honestly have never seen a newborn so alert or aware.

 

She still is so aware and pays attention to everything and wants to know everything, especially science and human body related.

Edited by Mommyof1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"my favorite kind of caldera is a stratovolcano." ~3 years old

 

To this day I don't know where he heard these words. I was with him 24/7. When I realized he'd correctly categorized volcano types (he went on to list his least favorites), my eyes about bugged out of my head.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I told him the fridge magnet he was pointing to was an "E" at 13 months and the next day he brought it to me and said "E!" I had a feeling. He was reading at 2, reading very fluently at 3 but I actually thought it was just a little hobby of his. Other kids liked toys, he liked books and music. when he entered preschool the teacher said "I've only had one kid like him in the 25 years I've been teaching, look up Davidson Young Scholars," the first week, I knew for sure. Apparently he read to her all of the labels in the boxes at Montessori school. Her favorite was "geometric solids." Lol

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ds is 2E so it wasn't totally obvious.   Taught himself letters and numbers at 18 months, taught himself skip counting at 2 1/2, building stacks of blocks taller than he was by 18 months.  But didn't talk much outside of the letters and numbers until after he went to EI at 3.   Used to talk in his own language - it had the cadence, inflections, rhythm, and repeated sounds of language but nobody could understand him.  He also used to play games during testing, pretending he didn't know something when he clearly did.  Like not wanting to say rabbit, but then hopping around the room, or not wanting to read apple but picking up the fake apple the teacher had on her desk.   By the time he finished EI at 4 he was mostly doing kindergarten work with the other kids in his EI class (he was the youngest).  The first couple of years homeschooling was me basically trying to catch up to where he was at.  Just when I thought I knew what level he needed, he'd be past it.  

 

We had a few rough years so he's not accelerated as he used to be but things still come pretty easily to him, especially math.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okbud,

 

I never heard of a stratovolocano. Once I mentioned it to DD we were on YouTube looking at it. It started more interest in volcanos and the earth.

Lol well they're the best kind, dontchaknow

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Like a previous poster, my older son is 2E, so I didn't really get it until I he asked for scrap metal for his 5th Christmas.  I realized he had an engineer's mind under all the other stuff going on.  Once the light bulb went on for me and we had his other issues diagnosed, I was able to start helping the giftedness to flourish.

 

My 3 y.o, was the most mellow baby ever.  I have this weird theory that because he has always been this huge, beefy guy even from birth, he was growing so hard it took all the energy out of him.  But when he started talking before 2, it was to ask questions about word definitions, like "what does 'reprove' mean?"  He'd go on over the next several days to use it correctly in conversation.  I almost fainted once when he told me the bathroom was "malodorous."  But it was one afternoon outside, when he saw a bike and made me go over it, component by component, giving the name of each part and explaining its use that I KNEW.  While I was making supper today, he was leafing through the new Smithsonian Rock and Gem encyclopedia we just got while watching a documentary on Britain's Worst Weather.  *eyeroll*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pretty much immediately! They were incredibly active and alert right away. In the pictures from the hospital (at 3 days) they look like 3 months old.

 

They hit developmental milestones well ahead of schedule. Walking on their own at 9 months. Running and using most playground equipment on their own at 10.5 months (slides, stairs, etc). Freaking out the other parents all the time. 

 

We started basic sign language at 6 months, and they picked it up quickly. Spoken language wasn't as quick (I think partly because they could just get up and go get what they wanted) but once they started talking, people were freaking out again.

 

They did a multi-year university study that included a bunch of testing, so we had a bunch of numbers at age 6 to confirm what we expected.

 

In addition to the numbers and checklists, we could tell they were atypical in other ways: highly sensitive, super intense, and very driven. They were "extra" everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At 18 months when Early Intervention came to test his speech delay.  

 

He was saying no words, no consonant sounds, no babbling, no signing, no waving, no clapping...and yet they started testing his receptive language and they eventually had to stop because he hit the limit of the test.  His receptive language and vocabulary tested at 5 years, and that was clearly not an accurate reflection of his abilities because he was still cruising through the test when they hit the upper limit.

 

This non-verbal 18 month old, who already showed many signs that would later be identified as autism, anxiety and ADD, readily demonstrated that he knew words like trapezoid, antlers, gigantic.  He could point out the third person in line, the nest with 5 eggs, and the shape that would continue the pattern.

 

He's 8 now, still wildly asynchronous, and sometimes I am simply bowled over by how gifted he is.

 

Wendy

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Slackermom,

 

She was walking at 9 months also and has always been ahead in her developmental milestones. She was playing on the playground equipment really young by herself too. She was/is a fiercely determined child. She knows what she wants and is bound and determined to get it.

 

She learned sign language young. I wanted her to be able to tell me what she wanted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used to think I must be misunderstanding the infant development charts because DD was so far "off".

 

She didn't talk early (first words at 12 months) but her first sentences were almost directly afterwards.

 

At 19 months, I told her that if she was going to run away and hide when I changed her diaper, she needed to start using the toilet. We were able to ditch daytime diapers about a week later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jackie,

 

Potty training was a battle. I had people tell me all sort of things. Her Doctor said she will when she wants too. He was right. Her body was ready around 2. She didn't WANT to till 3. Once SHE was ready she only had 2 little accidents (slightly wet panties) at the beginning and that it. Which I wasn't expecting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think it's been obvious at one moment for any of our kids so far. Maybe that's because they're not as gifted as many other kids out there? I don't know. I feel like they had mostly normal early years honestly (though we did have some 2E issues with the oldest, and then subsequent children got less attention once they outnumbered me, so who knows  what they would've done if they'd had more of my time and attention). Sometime around 4 or 4.5, I generally tried to start teaching them some basic math and reading - maybe 5-10 min a day - and then they just progressed rapidly from there. Everything was at their own pace, but by the age of 6, it's been clear that they were far ahead of their peers (in some areas - others may still lag, but I just accept asynchronicity as part of the deal), and that they're continuing to accelerate (rather than just keeping pace a few years ahead). I've felt awkward around my friends who really push their 3 yo's to read when my 5 yo can't yet (especially when my kid starts asking me why the 3 yo can read better than them, but I saw no reason to push them to read when they were happy to play in the dirt and build stick-forts), and then six months later, my kid has not only "caught up" but excelled beyond that and is reading library books of their choosing fluently and actually retaining.

 

ETA: Potty training came easy and early for us, but I always attributed that to putting them on the potty early and often. So my kids were day-trained at 15 mos, 14 most, 16 most, and 20 months, but the 3rd was also night trained at 18 most bc she just refused to keep her diaper on anymore and I gave up one night and told her just to pee on herself then (she didn't and she never wore another diaper) and my 4th had a significant hearing/speech delay that made communicating with her regarding her potty needs challenging (she finally started using it regularly only after we had the inspiration to teach her a sign for toilet - sounds dumb now, but we didn't figure out until pretty late in the game that something was wrong with her hearing... for a long time, we just assumed that she was talking less because she had three older siblings.)

Edited by 4kookiekids
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, honestly, when I saw a video of her at a couple weeks old and she was pushing up and looking around very alert.  I've seen many babies and this one was just more aware. 

 

Then at 21 months when she spontaneously came over and started helping me assemble a mini-tramp.

 

She's not profoundly gifted but has always been significantly advanced in all things mental.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think mine is profoundly gifted.

I'm not even sure she is gifted. Never been tested. She has never been to school, to be evaluated by a teacher. I do know that she is advanced in somethings and shares some gifted characteristics. I'm trying to figure things out and what would be best for her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't.  He was my first, and both DH and I are smart, so it all seemed normal to me.  It was other people pointing things out.  Learned the alphabet before be could walk? Taught himself to read before was 3?  Chapter books before he started Pre-K?  All seemed regular to me.  It was other people who were shocked and either wanted us to go on Ellen or told us that they "allowed their kids to play and be kids."

I did notice some things with language.  He eventually needed speech therapy to deal with some oral coordination problems, so he would completely avoid attempting words with certain sounds.  Instead he'd use more complex synonyms that he could pronounce; e.g. "cat" would come out sounding like "tat" so he used the word "feline" instead.  And now it's so normal to me for him to use words and phrasing more in tune with a law professor, that I don't even notice most of the time unless somebody else mentions it.

After reading from what other people said above, the nurse at the hospital noticed it with him too.  He was in the basinet in my room getting ready for a test, and he was practically rolling over to look at me and hear my voice.  She said she'd never seen a baby want his mama so much.  But, again, I thought all babies did that.

And since we already had one gifted, nothing little sister does surprises us much either.  I think we are more likely to see her strengths that occur in areas that are different from him, but we don't really have any idea what a baseline is.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

DD came home from Guatemala at age 6 months. Before she came home, her foster mother insisted she was saying water and bubbles (in Spanish) every time she had a bath. I was skeptical.

 

We promptly started teaching her sign language as a way to transition her from Spanish to English. By 8 months she was saying the words in English along with the sign, and DH and I looked at each other and thought.. huh.. maybe not bother with the sign language. She was speaking in 2-3 word sentences by 1 year, and I kept thinking I was hallucinating. 

 

DH and I both come from bright/gifted families so it all seemed normal. It didn't really strike me until some issues popped up later that I wanted to figure out, and then all the pieces came together around age 4. We finally had her tested around age 9.

 

 

Edited by deerforest
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't really "know" until he was tested a couple of years ago at 16. He did some pretty awesome things like reading above 7th grade level at the beginning of kindergarten and being able to add and subtract two three digit numbers in his head in preschool. So I was pretty sure, although those things weren't hugely out of the norm for anyone in our extended family.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't know my older two were gifted until I had their WISC-V results in my hands.  I suspected they were, given the strong family history, but there were some definite mixed messages (and they both turn out to be 2e).  I thought it was cute when I discovered DS#1 sneaking out of his crib in the middle of the night to get toys at 16mo.  He'd silently climb out, get a few toys and/or books, drop them in his crib, then climb back into his crib, lol.  He turned to find sounds and rolled over from birth, sat up straight unsupported and flipped pages in a book at 4mo, climbed stairs with alternating feet at 20mo.  DS#2 exhibited extreme sensitivity (to all things!) from birth.  He cried at the sad part of a movie at barely 2yo, hummed the tune to Twinkle Twinkle at 9mo, and spoke in (not always grammatically correct) paragraphs at 18mo.  But none of this was unusual for our extended family, and in fact much was done later than typical for my dad's side of the family.

 

I decided with confidence that DS#3 was gifted shortly after he turned 4yo, before he was ever tested, when within a few weeks time I discovered he had taught himself to read, that he knew shape names like equilateral quadrilateral (I was trying to teach him to call it a square), and I witnessed him spontaneously add two 3-digit numbers with multiple carries and a sum over 1,000 in his head without any prior direct instruction in math.

 

On potty training: my gifted boys potty trained at different ages and with varying support/cajoling from me.  DS#1 was 2y4m and needed about 2-3 weeks of me hounding him.  DS#2 trained himself.  He requested underwear at 1y11m and was accident-free by the next day.  DS#3 fought potty training to the point that I had to donate all of our diapers and stick him in underwear full time to get him to use the toilet at ~2y11m, after months and months of "accidents" in training pants.

 

OP, it might help you to read some books on giftedness.  I recently read Ruf's book 5 Levels of Giftedand it honestly seems like a good place to start for parents wondering if their kid might be gifted.  It's much more detailed and direct about the wide range of abilities found in gifted individuals than the other books I've read.  Gifted is not a one-size-fits-all label.  There can be more differences between gifted kids than between gifted and average kids.  If you read it skip the bulleted check-lists, they are too narrowly focused, but read through the parent's accounts of their children.  See if you can find your DD described in the pages.  Don't bother with her website.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me, the wakeup call was when my late to walk kid sat in a stroller at 15 months, looked at a sign reading "All dogs must be on leash at all times", looked around, and asked me "Where's the Dog?"

 

In retrospect, I'd had a lot of earlier signs (like a child able to carry on full conversations before a year old), but it wasn't until it hit me that she was not only reading, but doing so silently that I started to think gifted might be in our future. I was a lot more worried about her late motor skills and feeding issues.

 

When I knew for sure was at age 2 when she was assessed for a possible ASD (preschool teacher was concerned, pediatrician wasn't, but was willing to refer, and insurance covered it) and the examiners told me she'd hit the top of every cognitive and verbal test they could do at her age, and that it wasn't a question of if she was gifted, but how gifted (that was the first time I heard the words and "Profoundly gifted" and the suggestion that Davidson would be worth checking out in a few years).

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...