The first indication...

[roanna]

I love reading the stories about all the kids on here and couldn't resist asking what you thought was the very first indication you got that your child was a little more than normal.

 

I realized this when when asking about the color orange,unprompted, my ds crawled across the room to the orange circle on the wall and pointed to it at 9 months old and then started talking at 11 months.

[Runningmom80]

I will not pretend that I knew he was gifted, because it took someone else to tell me. :lol:

 

However, I knew something was different when he could turn the pages in his books at 6 months when we asked him. Also at 2 when he spelled the word mom in his leapfrog learning toy, and said, "It says mom." (He did this right after dumping a bottle of canola oil on my carpet while I was going to the bathroom. LOL! He learned early to suck up after being naughty.)

[8filltheheart]

I don't really look for it or even pay that much attention b/c we are simply a go with the flow kind of family. I did realize that I needed to take a different approach with my ds when he taught himself all of his multiplication tables w/o even knowing what multiplication was ("mommy, did you know that if I put 5 rows of 6 cars that that means I have 30 cars? Look,mommy, 3 rows of 5 cookies on that pan means we are baking 15 cookies.")

[momma aimee]

I will not pretend that I knew he was gifted, because it took someone else to tell me. :lol:

 

 

 

IQ testing for Menth Health assessment (he is 2x actually) the PhD called him "scary smart" and "traped in himself" and said "even these scary smart scores are artifically low due to {insert all his challnages}..."

 

Frankly :lol::lol: I am still waiting to 'see it' at home. yes he does mental math, but only a year or so ahead of his grade and he has gaps .. and so on

[Runningmom80]

I will say that I appreciate it more now in my twins. When my older DS did things that were "advanced," it scared me. Now I stop and marvel at their little minds, and accept, yes, they are REALLY doing that. :D

[Dmmetler]

I missed a lot of signs, in retrospect, but when she started reading words off signs completely out of context, beyond sight words and asking questions about them before she could even walk, that was a pretty major wake-up call for me in a way that attention skills, stacking blocks, sorting items, or talking early didn't. It wasn't until I was told, at 2, that she was gifted that I really started researching it and realized just how different she had been from other babies.

 

The sad part is that, by trade, I'm a multi-degreed early childhood music specialist who works with children down to infancy, so theoretically I should know normal child development chapter and verse. My only defense is that when DD was a baby I wasn't actually teaching infants-I had two teaching partners who both loved that age level, and were more than happy to let me handle the active preschool groups.

[Crimson Wife]

We lived with my parents while my oldest was a toddler and DH was a grad student. One day when she was 14 months, we started playing a game with her pointing to someone in the family and asking "Who's that?" We just about fell out of our seats when DD responded with my parents' first names instead of "Grammy" and "Grandpa".

 

DS as a baby was absolutely fascinated with anything mechanical. You could see the wheels turning in his mind trying to figure out how things worked. People used to comment about that all the time. He could also stack 7 blocks when he was 12 months and do the shape sorter as fast as I could about the same age.

[JenneinCA]

I didn't figure it out until my oldest was three and a half. She had told me she wanted to learn to read so I bought, Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We got to lesson 20 something and she told me that the book was boring and walked to our book shelves and picked up Amanda Pig and read it to me. She was reading Harry Potter a few weeks later.

 

I still didn't really believe that she was seriously different until we did the testing. It was an overwhelming day.

 

With my older son, I was even more clueless. He didn't read until he was almost five. I didn't understand that he was as out there as my oldest until I saw the testing report. I cried that day too.

 

With my younger son, I finally wised up. I knew he was like the older kids from the moment he was born. I cried when we got the testing report with him too, but I knew what was coming.

[The Governess]

Dd7 was always an alert baby. I always got comments from friends, strangers, etc. about how awake she was. I guess that was the first indication. She was on target for physical milestones but always ahead on language development.

 

We really knew when she began reading soon after her third birthday. I joke that she was born with a phonetic decoder built into her brain. She was reading me the Little House on the Prairie books with full comprehension by the time she was four.

 

She is a bright, intense kid, and I have never had her tested, but my guess is that she is moderately gifted in language arts and has continued to work at least a year ahead in those subjects with ease.

[La Condessa]

I am pretty curious about this, too.

 

I was so enthralled with my first baby, I think I would have been convinced she was remarkable whatever she did. I really still don't know whether she is unusual or not. I go back and forth; sometimes I think she is a normal, bright kid, and then I'll see her do something that I can't ever remember any of the kids doing during the years when I taught early preschool--but then, a recollection like that is hardly real evidence, right? Can I ask about stuff like that here, or would that be hijacking?

 

When my second daughter was born and they set her on my chest, she turned her head and looked me in the eye. And I thought in that moment that this child was unusually aware. But I sort of brushed that off later, putting it down to the fact that I always think my children are wonderful. But that baby understands everything that is said, and she is talking now (not in sentences), and she has an incredible knack for figuring out how to get into things she isn't supposed to--like figuring out that she can get the leverage to open the fridge door she isn't strong enough for if she takes a hold of one of the handles with each hand, and then twists her body down and to the side.

[2smartones]

Extremities of giftedness run in both sides of the family, so I didn't realize a lot of things were out of the ordinary when mine were babies. That was normal - to US. We joke all the time that our view of normal is very skewed. We have a very hard time guessing the ages of children at co-worker parties and things like that. My oldest started talking at 3 months, and my youngest at 5 months. Other people told us that wasn't normal. We had no idea. I guess that was the first indication.

[roanna]

wow , I can't even imagine, 3 months talking. The hardest part of parenting for me is until they start talking-- and I thought 11 months was great, I'd be in heaven if he had started talking that early!

[boscopup]

I started to suspect when, at just turned 2, DS was learning to talk and recognizing letters/numbers at the same time. Then at 3, he started coming up with all sorts of math - figuring out addition/subtraction, etc. His van math conversations the next few years were always fun. The day that really made me laugh was when we were talking about multiplying by 10s, 100s, 1000s, and he said "So a thousand times a thousand is a million!" Meanwhile, I was still counting zeroes in my head to make sure he was correct. :tongue_smilie: That was at 5.

 

My middle son has taken a lot longer. He had a speech delay, and he tends to be behind in some things, but then some part of his brain will turn on and he'll suddenly know things. What I've noticed about him is that he has a very keen sense of observation, and he ponders the things he notices. For example, at speech therapy, there is a picture of a jaguar on the wall just inside the school door. It's one of those walls that is very narrow before you go around a corner. It's not a noticeable spot. One day, he asked the speech therapist what was in the picture. She had never noticed the picture, and she had worked there for quite a while! She told him it was a jaguar, and for weeks, he was obsessed with jaguars and always asking about them. Another time, we watched the Sound of Music, and a few days later, he said "The yens are far away." It took us about 3 days to figure out what "yens" were. He described the "yens" as being black with white at the front of the neck, a little bit down the sides of the head and the sides of the body, and a tiny bit at the ankles. They lived far away in a building. We thought maybe he was talking about penguins, but then he said "penguins" just fine, so that wasn't it. My DH was still thinking penguins, so he asked if the "yens" swim. DS said "No, they sink." Later that evening, I finally figured it out... He was talking about NUNS. :lol: And he knew they lived far away in Austria. I'm still floored by his description though. He remembered details that I wouldn't have remembered.

 

Time will tell if DS2 is actually gifted or not. He seems to be a problem solver. I'm excited to see how he turns out. :)

 

DS3 is at least bright, but nothing remarkable that stands out yet - at least not that his brothers weren't doing at the same age. He does have a nice pencil grip already, in his left hand. :D He's starting to recognize letters and numbers now. I suspect he'll be a bit like DS1.

 

All of my kids were late talkers and on the late side of normal for gross motor skill milestones (crawling/walking). It's once they start talking that I start to realize what's in their little minds. ;)

[LittleIzumi]

For The Sponge, it was when she was barely 4. She had an endoscopy and got to see the pictures. She became fascinated with digestion, wanted to read (be read to) tons of science books from the library on digestion, remembered & understood EVERYTHING, moved on to the immune system, read tons of books about it, understood & could apply EVERYTHING, moved on to microscopes from there, etc. She just understood all of the most advanced science concepts we read instantly, grasped what they meant & how they interacted with other things she knew about, remembered the terminology, would tell strangers about them, etc. She was over the moon about her microscope/slide birthday present that year, lol. She started reading at 3 & such, but her incredible gift with science is what really made me think there was something special happening in her brain.

 

The Drama was in therapy when she was little. She had sensory & communication issues, speech delay, and she hadn't learned any of her letters or any of that. She didn't recognize a single one, didn't sing the ABC song, nothing. When she was almost 2, she saw the Signing Time ABCs. In less than 2 weeks, she mastered every single letter, recognition of uppercase and lowercase, knowing the names of each. :svengo:

[Guest]

We were at a party when dd was just shy of 18 months, and people were politely and humorously asking her what her name was (they weren't sure she could talk yet). She answered instead with her latest discovery, learned from license plates, which fascinated her: "C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A; that spells California!"

 

When she was that same age, she told her grandmother "E___ would like a lovely carry in Grammy's arms," causing a nearby woman to do a double-take in astonishment.

 

When she was newly two, she was bothered by fairly severe teething pain and she told me, "I just don't want to be E____ any more."

 

For all these things, it was other people's reactions to what she'd said that made me realize this might not just be normal brightness but something entirely other; she was my first child and I took it all for granted.

Edited August 1, 2011 by Guest

[MinivanMom]

When dd7 was a baby, people would accost me at Wal-Mart, because they were so astonished to hear a baby speaking so well. We were living in a very impoverished urban area while my husband was finishing grad school, so I shrugged it off as a socio-economic thing. I thought my baby was right on target for development and that the locals just didn't know what normal development looked like. A friend came to visit one day when she was about 16 months old. My friend was wearing a t-shirt and dd started to point at her shirt and name each of the letters. Afterwards, I pulled out some foam letters someone had given us (that had been put away unused in a drawer). Dd knew every letter. I was more embarrassed than anything else. I had planned to be that crunchy mom that encouraged creativity and free play in my young children. I didn't know how she could just know her letters like that, but I was afraid more people would find out and think that I had been . . . teaching her. Heaven forbid.

 

When dd7 was about 2 years old, she moved on from normal creative play where the salt shaker converses with the pepper shaker to a long stage where her left arm was her imaginary friend. She would let her left arm hang limp like it wasn't a part of her body and then she would move it around with her right arm and talk to it. This went on for many months. That was the point at which I went . . . whoa . . . there is definitely something different about this kid. Everything since then has just been a confirmation of what I suspected at that point.

[MaMa2005]

DS was adopted from China at 28 months. He did not utter one word and exhibited many autistic behaviors. Our guide pulled us to the side after the third day and said she was concerned that he probably had some major learning difficulties/behavioral issues because he wouldn't even respond to anything she said in his native dialect. I wasn't worried as I am a retired special education teacher :lol: so I just figured we had been given the perfect child. I started teaching DS sign language while in China and within 4 weeks he knew and used about 200 signs. Stupid me didn't see this as advanced. At 6 weeks home, I asked him to use his words when thanking me for a glass of water. Out of his mouth came a perfectly worded, precise toned LONG English sentence. I still was clueless and just thought "Yeah, he can talk!" It wasn't until others started pointing out that he was not like other 2 year old children. It finally hit me when he had just turned 4 and learned to read in a matter of weeks, flew through 3 grades of math in matter of 3 months and showed incredible memory for obscure things that the lightbulb finally went off. My DH and I say that God is laughing :smilielol5: and slapping his knee daily as we try to stay up with this profoundly gifted blessing we have been given. Gifted/talented is the ONLY area that DH and I are not certified to teach. :w00t:

[Guest]

 

When dd7 was about 2 years old, she moved on from normal creative play where the salt shaker converses with the pepper shaker to a long stage where her left arm was her imaginary friend. She would let her left arm hang limp like it wasn't a part of her body and then she would move it around with her right arm and talk to it. This went on for many months. That was the point at which I went . . . whoa . . . there is definitely something different about this kid. Everything since then has just been a confirmation of what I suspected at that point.

 

Just curious: does she remember doing this? What does she say about it?

 

I'm curious because a year or two ago dd reached a point where she began to comment on what "weird" kid she had been when she was little.

[zaichiki]

I will not pretend that I knew he was gifted, because it took someone else to tell me. :lol:

 

Same thing here. No clue, really, except the neighbor (former preschool program principal and kindergarden teacher) wouldn't stop with all the comments. About *everything* he did. Then, when he was 5, we visited Kindergardens for our town's school choice program. We were surprised to find out that he could already do so much more than what they would be teaching. Those were our clues.

[zaichiki]

Strangers of senior citizen age would point out the alertness/intelligence they saw in the baby's eyes.

 

We were completely convinced that strangers say this about *all* children/babies. We thought they were just making small talk. Dh still believes this.

[Tracy]

My very first indication was that dd could roll over at 5 weeks old. Then she began to stand just before 6 months old. I kind of blew those off, since they are largely physical milestones. She began to speak at a normal age, but she could comprehend things very early. By her first birthday, I had to explain to her what was happening in order to keep her calm.

[zaichiki]

When my second daughter was born and they set her on my chest, she turned her head and looked me in the eye. And I thought in that moment that this child was unusually aware.

 

When my older dd was born she knew how to nurse immediately. She started as soon as I held her for the first time. She seemed to know where to begin searching and what to do. I was amazed (b/c my first and I had a little learning curve).

 

When she was 2 weeks old and had her first vaccination I knew something was up. The nurse asked me to hold her arms still (normal). But then, at the moment the needle entered her skin, instead of crying right away, she turned her head towards me and gave me this *horrible* look, like "YOU did this me!" I swear! I *immediately* burst into tears. I'm not even an emotional mama. My oldest had had plenty of vaccinations and it never upset me. It was that look. It was scary. None of my other children have ever done this. (And they've all had vaccinations.)

[zaichiki]

I thought that too, but I live in NY where strangers usually avoid eye contact and don't do small talk. I was kinda wondering if I was being set up for a pickpocket/purse snatch as it would usually occur in a convenience store line.

Then there's always the occasion when another baby is present and doesn't get compliments...

 

We were in NYC too. :001_smile:

[zaichiki]

DS was adopted from China at 28 months. He did not utter one word and exhibited many autistic behaviors. Our guide pulled us to the side after the third day and said she was concerned that he probably had some major learning difficulties/behavioral issues because he wouldn't even respond to anything she said in his native dialect. I wasn't worried as I am a retired special education teacher :lol: so I just figured we had been given the perfect child. I started teaching DS sign language while in China and within 4 weeks he knew and used about 200 signs. Stupid me didn't see this as advanced. At 6 weeks home, I asked him to use his words when thanking me for a glass of water. Out of his mouth came a perfectly worded, precise toned LONG English sentence. I still was clueless and just thought "Yeah, he can talk!" It wasn't until others started pointing out that he was not like other 2 year old children. It finally hit me when he had just turned 4 and learned to read in a matter of weeks, flew through 3 grades of math in matter of 3 months and showed incredible memory for obscure things that the lightbulb finally went off. My DH and I say that God is laughing :smilielol5: and slapping his knee daily as we try to stay up with this profoundly gifted blessing we have been given. Gifted/talented is the ONLY area that DH and I are not certified to teach. :w00t:

 

I don't mean to intrude or be rude or anything, so don't feel you have to respond if this feels that way. It isn't meant to be.

 

Do you ever wonder if his birthparents were really brilliant... or do you think his aquiring the skills so quickly had to do more with the way you were working with him/exposing him to things?

[Grover]

We missed a lot of things with DS. The 'uhoh' moment for me was when he pulled a book he'd never seen of the library shelf and read it to me - up until then we thought he was reciting books that he knew. Looking back, it turns out it's *not* normal to be lining up alphabets and numbers all over the house when you're 13 months old, nor to know the sounds and names of the letters. It's *not* normal to realise that letter box numbers skip count in odds or evens on opposite sides of the road and throw a fit because there's no number 13 on the road. Looking back, and paying more attention to DD, they're quite different from young, but it's our normal.

[MaMa2005]

I don't mean to intrude or be rude or anything, so don't feel you have to respond if this feels that way. It isn't meant to be.

 

Do you ever wonder if his birthparents were really brilliant... or do you think his aquiring the skills so quickly had to do more with the way you were working with him/exposing him to things?

 

Not being rude at all. In fact, it is a question we often ask ourselves and are asked by others. DH and I come from a loooooong line of educators - most everyone has a PhD or EdD along with numerous accolades. Three out of four grandparents are/were college professors. DH teaches HS and at the university. So our background is very strong on the importance of education and the bar for achievement - in education and personal goals - is extremely high. It is a question that we will never know the answer to, but it intrigues us daily.

[YourFidgetyFriend]

My daughter isn't as advanced as some of the children here, but I should have knew she at least had an above average memory when she could tell my mom (who gets lost easily) how to get anywhere around the city at 2.

 

She didn't hit any milestone freakishly early as a bitty baby, but she was an odd one. She spent most of her time staring people down and slept very little. She never babbled either.

[peacefully]

.

[Lovin Learnin]

Ds(1) was an early talker but had apraxia of speech, so he was almost impossible to understand. An IQ test at 4 put him in the highly gifted range overall (profoundly gifted verbally). He was reading on his own at 3, but really he is a pure sight reader. Give him a word and you never have to tell him again - he has it in the bank for life. Make him sound it out and, well....we just gave him the word.

 

Ds(2) is dyspraxic with severe sensory issues and never showed any signs of being gifted when he was young. He is, however, my most motivated kid and the only one in our family who is more mathematically inclined. He is clearly as intelligent as his siblings but verbal challenges make it harder for him to clearly articulate his ideas sometimes. We struggle to understand his mathematical thinking because he just doesn't see the world as most people do. It can be fascinating and puzzling at the same time. We seriously wouldn't be surprised to learn he was on the spectrum.

 

Dd spoke her first word at 6 months and was speaking in full sentences at a year. At 2 she would constantly ask for the definitions of words she had heard in our conversations or in songs or books. We would tell her what it meant and then we would all sit and wait. Sure enough, weeks later she would wait for the right moment and then use that word in context. My aunt nearly fell over when dd(2) said the broken blender was being recalcitrant, lol. She began reading on her own at about her 3rd birthday and was into chapter books by her 4th. At 3 I caught her counting marbles in spanish (not sure where she learned that. Probably Dora). She too has tested highly gifted.

 

Now that my kids are older they blend in much more. Ds(1) and dd are very social people, and neither like to stand out so they have been quite adept at fitting in since they were very young. I have enjoyed watching each of them develop into unique, special people.

[roanna]

I think it's funny when it was stated that a mom thought that any kid who watched ASL videos could learn 400 signs :001_smile:

 

when my son was 15 months old doing 12 piece puzzles and then 18 months old doing 24 piece puzzles for hours on end I just thought well he likes to play with puzzles and some kids don't. Now having a second child that does not have a specialty with puzzles I understand that's not normal.

 

It's really fun and amazing to read what some kids have been given talent wise. I especially liked the imaginary friend with limp arm!

[Donna]

Looking back, I guess my very first indication that something was unusual with my oldest was when he was in the NICU as a preemie. All the nurses would comment on how alert he was and the fact that no matter what procedure they were doing on him, he would stop crying and calm as soon as I walked in the room and talked to him. For me personally it was later though when he started talking early.

 

My middle ds sat well at 4 months old, crawled on hands and knees at 5 months, and walked at 9 months. He was so much faster than his brother before him at motor skills. But the real thing that let me know how different he was, personality-wise, was an incident when he was 18 months old. I wanted him to wear a sweatshirt outside because it was cold and he did not want anything to do with it. He pitched a fit because I wouldn't allow him out without it. I finally got it on him and sent him outside. He walked calmly to the middle of the yard then stood for almost 20 min. working to get it off, succeeded, then threw it on the ground and ran out to where his poppop and brother were "working."

 

My youngest, also alert from the very beginning, came out and nursed immediately after birth (which I thought was the most amazing thing because none of the others had done that) though she was 4 weeks early and after that first nursing, I didn't get to feed her again for another 5 days due to intestinal problems that put her in the NICU. I knew when she started crying for "ninny" when hungry at 4 months old (we always called nursing "ninny") and looked right at me when she said, "mama" and right at my husband when she said, "dada." She also never babbled but went right to saying words or using signs.

[MinivanMom]

Just curious: does she remember doing this? What does she say about it?

 

I'm curious because a year or two ago dd reached a point where she began to comment on what "weird" kid she had been when she was little.

 

No, she has never mentioned the left arm thing. I'm not sure if she remembers or not, but at 7 yrs she's right on the cusp of being more self-aware, if you know what I mean. She started echoing herself when she was about 5 yrs old (I think it's called lallalia - like the character Brick on the tv show The Middle). She knew she was doing it and said she just liked to think about the sound of the words she was saying. :001_huh: It finally reached the point where family had started to notice and comment on it. She didn't like the attention it was drawing, so she has made a concerted effort to stop the echoing and has been mostly successful. I can see that awareness of being different starting to grow, but she's just not quite at the point where she can discuss and analyze her own actions. Eventually we're going to have some very interesting conversations!

[Aurelia]

One of the incidents I recall most clearly was as a newborn, I tried to talk to Ariel in baby talk and gave me this look like she was both confused and insulted by the noises I was making. I switched to talking to her normally and she was happy. I figured since I hadn't used baby talk while I was pregnant and talked a lot on the phone that's what she would be used to. She also went through her first growth spurt in the hospital, which confused the nurses. They kept insisting she couldn't be hungry until I demanded formula and she drank all of it. As a newborn, she loathed lying down, and had to be sitting up all the time. Even my mom commented that she had never seen a baby that young want to sit up so much, and she has pretty extensive experience with kids in early childhood.

[Bang!Zoom!]

I would call my oldest daughter unusual in how she developed. She never gave off any warning sign she was going to "do" something. She would just up and do.

 

She decided one day to use utensils (far too early) and that was that. No more feeding her.

 

I can remember the day she decided to not use diapers anymore. She just ripped it off and was done with it, and it was again early. Everything was early and unannounced.

 

She was anti-swing, anti-car carrier, anything confining. Just put her on the floor and she was happy. Car rides were absolute nightmares, all that bellering and carrying on.

 

The day she decided she was going to walk was weird. She never crawled again and didn't have the regular toddler baby gait either. She just up and went like she'd been doing it forever. Same with reading, there was no practicing it seemed. Just up and did it.

 

When she started talking, it wasn't one word, it was a string of words put together.

 

Like everyone else, I had no clue things were early, it took others to point it out. Her grandmother was furious at the whole situation, she "grew up too fast" and I must have been "pushing" her. Then grandma got into "showing her off" and that turned around..you know..bragging rights and all.

 

She is in her early twenties now, and the "flame" has cooled and she's more settled in; yet still seriously driven in a few areas.

 

I think the creepiest part of my memory with her as a infant was how she really really really listened to people around her. I remember telling people to not discuss things in front of her, and they'd say, "Oh come on, she's just a baby.." and sometimes I'd have to up and prepare to leave for them to take it seriously. She seriously picked up on stuff in a way I can't even describe.

 

When she was just about six months old, I removed the television from the house and wouldn't let her near a TV until later in life. She had trouble telling TV from real life. It had to be that way for a long time, with a kid like that, there is no place for regular TV.

[Guest]

She decided one day to use utensils (far too early) and that was that. No more feeding her.

 

I can remember the day she decided to not use diapers anymore. She just ripped it off and was done with it, and it was again early. Everything was early and unannounced.

 

 

Wow, what a strong-minded child! I never knew anyone else's kids did things like this! When dd was 2 and 1/2, the dentist told her she needed to stop sucking on a pacifier. Until then dd very much used it as a calming device and it had been almost constantly in her mouth for over a year. We walked out of the dentist's office, she handed it to me, and she never asked for it or looked for it or used one again. I couldn't believe it -- talk about going cold turkey.

[MelanieM]

Loving all these stories!

 

I think it took having more kids for me to really, truly get it that my daughter's early behaviour wasn't typical. She said her first words (other than mama and dada) at 7 mos, talked in complete sentences that were easily understood by strangers before a year, had a vocabulary of over 300 words at 15 mos (I used to write down new words until I counted them up and figured that was enough!), signed about 100 words by a year... As a young toddler she could also easily follow instructions that had 2-3 steps, knew the alphabet and could read some basic words, could count to 20 (and shortly after to 100), counted to 10 in Spanish and French, etc. etc.

 

When our daughter was around 3 yrs old a neighbour (a sweet woman who was like an adopted grandmother) took her on an outing and she commented that she wished she had taken our telephone number to call and give me an update on when they'd be home. My daughter turned to her and recited our number from memory, and apparently made a big enough impression for it to be one of those stories that people can't stop talking about. lol! Not long after that we had a neighbour who was a second grade teacher who told us it was good we were planning to homeschool because the kidlet was already at about the same level of most of the students in his class. She was also able to identify, by sight, over 40 flowers growing in our neighbourhood after another neighbour helped us figure them all out. So people always commented on how smart and exceptional she was, but we really didn't quite get how unusual and early some of this was compared to more typical development.

 

Then we had more kids, and we started to see more typical toddler behaviours within our own family. Our boys are bright in their own ways as well, but it really is different and we can now see just how advanced our oldest was from quite a young age.

[Embassy]

For one child I had an inkling something was different when he was a baby and needed constant stimulation.

 

My other son was different from my first, but he would amaze me from time to time with something he did. I thought it was a fluke, but when he wrote the entire alphabet in order on his own at age 3 I thought there might be something different about this child.

 

My little girl is 3 now. I know she is different too. I don't think most little girls enjoy spending their days "writing" words and practicing Chinese. I guess I started to wonder when I heard her counting with one to one correspondence at a young age.

 

They have all continued to surprise me in different ways.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

She started echoing herself when she was about 5 yrs old (I think it's called lallalia - like the character Brick on the tv show The Middle). She knew she was doing it and said she just liked to think about the sound of the words she was saying. :001_huh: It finally reached the point where family had started to notice and comment on it. She didn't like the attention it was drawing, so she has made a concerted effort to stop the echoing and has been mostly successful. I can see that awareness of being different starting to grow, but she's just not quite at the point where she can discuss and analyze her own actions. Eventually we're going to have some very interesting conversations!

 

Would you explain this a little more, please? My ds4.5 narrates his life. He says what he's doing, when he's doing it (not all the time, but a lot when he plays.) And he repeats what he's saying 2 or 3 times. Since the comments are often directed at me, I thought he thinks I didn't hear him the first times, since I don't respond to every.single.sentence, but now I'm wondering if it's what you described?

[AndyJoy]

I haven't posted on here about DS yet because I don't want to be one of "those moms" who assumes her firstborn is brilliant, but I suspect that DS is gifted. Both DH and I are, so we figured it would be a strong possibility. I already find myself holding back IRL when I'm with other moms who are talking about their child's latest accomplishment.

 

From the time he was born he hated being in a front carrier because he wanted to see everything. He never let me put him in a sling. When he was 2 mo. old I would support his head and carry him facing outward as we walked around the neighborhood. He was incredibly social from a very young age and constantly got comments about how alert and aware he was even from moms who had kids his age right then.

 

DS was on the slower end with his obvious gross motor skills (rolled over at 8, crawled at 10 mo., walked at 14 mo.) but ahead on fine motor skills. He picked up tiny scraps of paper off the carpet with a pincer grip when he was 5 or 6 months old. At 13 mo. he stopped mouthing all but the occasional small item after we taught him to put coins in a bank. By 16 mo. he was raiding dh's pants pockets for change. At 21 months he was able to hammer 16 nails (standing in shallow holes) into some soft wood without help. He drank from a straw at 6 months (the first time I offered it) and learned to blow his nose at 15 mo.

 

His memory is astounding. He sees something once and duplicates it for the first time a month later! Last night he took an ear of corn off the counter, opened a drawer and found the corn on the cob trays, put his corn on it, and climbed up on the couch to eat it! The last time we had corn on the cob was a month ago and he didn't even use one of the trays--he just saw us with them. At 18 months he knew which drawer each of DH's tools went in and could find the proper tool when asked. He knows where I keep things and though he doesn't have words for many things, he gets his point across. If he wants a smoothie, he points at the cupboard and makes blender noises until I open it, then he grabs the blender and points at the counter where I plug it in. Then he gets a banana off the table and goes to the fridge for the yogurt.

 

At 19 mo. he knew 19 letter sounds (we're still working on E, I, J, O, Q, & Y). He would calm himself by naming letter sounds. One morning he woke up really upset and was screaming as I tried to change his diaper. He instantly stopped when he saw my IDAHO shirt and started saying the sounds for A and H. At 20 months he would scribble and point and declare what he wrote to be "Ssss" or "Puh."

 

He's not an especially prolific talker, but his receptive vocabulary catches me off guard every day. We're constantly having to come up with new synonyms for things we don't want him to overhear.

 

He is very imaginative. Without anyone showing him, he has used his foot as a phone, made his stuffed monkey talk on the phone, made his monkey nurse on me (that one made me laugh!), shared his drink with the bear-shaped bench at the zoo, etc.

 

I'm excited to see how he'll keep me on my toes!

Edited August 2, 2011 by AndyJoy

[Critterfixer]

Would you explain this a little more, please? My ds4.5 narrates his life. He says what he's doing, when he's doing it (not all the time, but a lot when he plays.) And he repeats what he's saying 2 or 3 times. Since the comments are often directed at me, I thought he thinks I didn't hear him the first times, since I don't respond to every.single.sentence, but now I'm wondering if it's what you described?

 

Echolalia?

"The most common form of unconventional verbal behaviors is echolalia (9). Echolalia is when the child repeats verbal information stated by others (e.g., people's conversational exchanges, videos, books read aloud, songs, etc.)."

 

"Echolalia can include repetition of part of the utterance as well as an identical repetition of the entire spoken utterance, sometimes including an exact replication of the inflectional pattern used by the speaker."

 

My son did this when he was young. In his case his echolalia had to do with autistic spectrum disorder.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Echolalia?

"The most common form of unconventional verbal behaviors is echolalia (9). Echolalia is when the child repeats verbal information stated by others (e.g., people's conversational exchanges, videos, books read aloud, songs, etc.)."

 

"Echolalia can include repetition of part of the utterance as well as an identical repetition of the entire spoken utterance, sometimes including an exact replication of the inflectional pattern used by the speaker."

 

My son did this when he was young. In his case his echolalia had to do with autistic spectrum disorder.

 

Thank you!

[MinivanMom]

Would you explain this a little more, please? My ds4.5 narrates his life. He says what he's doing, when he's doing it (not all the time, but a lot when he plays.) And he repeats what he's saying 2 or 3 times. Since the comments are often directed at me, I thought he thinks I didn't hear him the first times, since I don't respond to every.single.sentence, but now I'm wondering if it's what you described?

 

Sorry, I misspelled it. I can never remember the right term, but it's actually palilalia. It is the echoing of your own words, rather than echoing other people's words (like in echolalia). It can be caused by autism, Tourette's, or OCD, but it isn't necessarily a sign that your child has any of those conditions. My daughter would say something to me like, "Can I have an ice cream cone?" and then she'd whisper it a second time under her breath. She also talks to herself, tells whispered stories as she plays, and sometimes narrates her own actions in the third-person as she goes about the day. The palilalia was distinct from these. When I asked her about it she would say, "I didn't know you could hear me," or, "I just like to listen to the sound of my words." When I was first researching it, I found a lot of anecdotal accounts of highly gifted children echoing themselves, as well as talking to themselves and narrating their actions. Since she didn't have any symptoms that would suggest a more serious underlying cause (like autism or OCD), we took a watch and wait approach to it. Sure enough, she has made the effort to stop echoing on her own and appears to just be highly gifted.

 

"Palilalia is the repetition or echoing of one's own spoken words.[1] It can be a complex tic, like echolalia and coprolalia and may sound like stuttering;[2] all can be symptoms of Tourette syndrome,[3] obsessive–compulsive disorder,[4] or autism.[5] Palilalia can also occur in neurological syndromes, such as stroke or epilepsy."

[Guest]

Sorry, I misspelled it. I can never remember the right term, but it's actually palilalia. It is the echoing of your own words, rather than echoing other people's words (like in echolalia). It can be caused by autism, Tourette's, or OCD, but it isn't necessarily a sign that your child has any of those conditions. My daughter would say something to me like, "Can I have an ice cream cone?" and then she'd whisper it a second time under her breath. She also talks to herself, tells whispered stories as she plays, and sometimes narrates her own actions in the third-person as she goes about the day. The palilalia was distinct from these. When I asked her about it she would say, "I didn't know you could hear me," or, "I just like to listen to the sound of my words."

 

Dd did this a lot too. I wrote about it at the time in my journal, speculating that the words were the tail that wagged the dog -- she would do some things just so she could narrate them repeatedly or in slightly varying versions as she played.

 

She would also say certain words over and over as she played because she liked their sound. I remember once when she was preschooler age, she was playing with playdough and for some reason got caught up in the word "saluki," and said things like "saluki hat, saluki shoes, saluki food" as she made little (unidentifiable) things from the playdough.

 

I didn't know anyone else's kids narrated their own actions in third-person format, and I'm really glad to know that dd isn't the only one!

[RahRah]

I'm still not sure what to think with DS - I don't know if he's gifted or not, but he certainly has some strong talents in some areas!

 

I've read here about asynchronous learning, so maybe that explains why he's an average reader, but advanced in math and science?

 

It's only recently that I've learned just how many baby milestones he met months ahead of schedule. I thought what he was doing at various stages was normal.

 

How does one have a child tested for giftedness?

[Critterfixer]

This website seems to have a lot of good information on gifted testing and checklists.

http://www.nagc.org/

[joannqn]

We were completely convinced that strangers say this about *all* children/babies. We thought they were just making small talk. Dh still believes this.

:iagree:

 

 

Am I the only one who was clueless until their child was much older?

 

We didn't see our daughter as ahead and thought the comments we got were just polite or bizarre. When we came across obvious differences, we thought it was that the other kids were behind due to circumstances leading to them not being taught well. Even when my daughter took the 2nd grade CAT-5 at the beginning of second grade and got 97th percentile overall and 99th percentile in all of the language/reading sections, we thought that the test was just stupidly easy. It wasn't until an adaptive test taken at age 8 told us she scored in the 10th/11th grade for language usage (and the questions were that difficult) that I finally got it. No wonder she hated the 3rd grade workbooks I was making her do. I changed all of our curricula, but she was firmly in the "I hate school" mode already.

 

I was less clueless for the rest. DS9 was diagnosed with severe learning delays at age 2 but once we found the dietary cause, he quickly caught up and got ahead. He's now very advanced, especially in math. DS4 seems the most average, though his gross motor skills have always been obviously way ahead. When he was younger, I had to rescue him from well-meaning adults at the park trying to rescue him when he was climbing things toddlers shouldn't be able to climb. DD2 seems to be a mix of DD11 and DS4: good communicator and great motor skills (we get comments in the park).

[RahRah]

:iagree:

 

 

Am I the only one who was clueless until their child was much older?

 

 

 

Well for me, DS isn't that old yet - but it's still only recently that I've really started to look beyond his math skills and see that there is more going on with him that he's ahead in and that others have, for years, remarked about, but I just thought it was normal.

 

The other day, for instance, we went to the library and they were having a book sale...DS picked a pre-calculus textbook up, opened it and was so excited - said to me how much fun it looked! :blink: He's six! Pre-calculus looks fun? OMG what am I in for? Needless to say, it was one of the books that came home with us.

 

But that's math - I'm no longer surprised....but earlier this week, we're digging into our lessons for earth science and I'm starting to go through things like the layers of earth, rock formations, and as I'm starting to explain superposition, DS interrupts me and tells me he already know it and then goes on to explain it and even mentions Nicholas Steno came up with the concept! Good grief, where did he learn this? I'm scratching my head because here I am thinking I finally have some material he doesn't know (CPO Earth Science) and it'll challenge him - so I'm telling DH about it and he remembers that he and DS watched some show, months ago, on Discovery Channel and that DS apparently remembers it really well, like the minutia of the show because Steno was only mentioned once and it was in passing as a brief intro to the rest of the show. It's this type of memory that DS has that just blows my mind. He recalls the most tiny little facts all.the.time, even from months ago...if it was something that interested him. That's not normal.

 

Anyway, I'm rambling - I'm still trying to figure this all out and how to meet what I think are going to be some interesting needs in the coming years!

 

Oh and to put my confusion in some more context - he's starting to finally read fluently, it's been slow but steady progress - and seems odd when compared to other areas that he struggled so much with reading (and still does to a certain degree) while totally blowing other things out of the water right away!

Edited August 3, 2011 by RahRah

[lewelma]

I also was clueless until my son was older. My son was driven, and I mean driven, but gifted? whatever. At 16 months he RAN 6 miles to the river. At 2 3/4 he began reading easy books, but was not interested again until 5. At 3, the preschool teacher said she had never seen a child that age do those types of puzzles -just seemed to me what a teacher would say to please a parent. It was not until he was 6 that I realized. He was interested in algebra, so I was just talking vaguely about it. 2 times a number is 10, what is the number? stuff like that. And he says, "well, why do you need to study for a year to do things like that?" So I decided to give him a problem that he could not do in his head without algebra training. I wrote down: 4x -7 = 2x +5. He looks at it for a moment and tells me the answer is 6. What?!?! How did you do that? Well, he said, "you take the 7 and add it to the other side, and move the 2x over, and divide....." I gaped (and I mean gaped) at him.

 

 

Ruth

[Guest]

I also was clueless until my son was older. My son was driven, and I mean driven, but gifted? whatever. At 16 months he RAN 6 miles to the river. At 2 3/4 he began reading easy books, but was not interested again until 5. At 3, the preschool teacher said she had never seen a child that age do those types of puzzles -just seemed to me what a teacher would say to please a parent. It was not until he was 6 that I realized. He was interested in algebra, so I was just talking vaguely about it. 2 times a number is 10, what is the number? stuff like that. And he says, "well, why do you need to study for a year to do things like that?" So I decided to give him a problem that he could not do in his head without algebra training. I wrote down: 4x -7 = 2x +5. He looks at it for a moment and tells me the answer is 6. What?!?! How did you do that? Well, he said, "you take the 7 and add it to the other side, and move the 2x over, and divide....." I gaped (and I mean gaped) at him.

 

 

Ruth

 

Holy cow! I'm gaping just reading about it -- the six miles to the river even more than the algebra.

[lewelma]

I suppose you would not be surprise that he had weight gain trouble. The doctor said (verbatim), "Just because he can, doesn't mean he should." From that point on, I restricted his desire to move.

Ruth