Do your kids show giftedness at the same age?

[LittleIzumi]

For some reason, for my kids it's almost always right at 24 months (one a little earlier). That's when they go from delayed to suddenly doing things that make me think I'll never be able to teach them properly and holy cow what have I gotten myself into, lol. Then they slow down and it's much more manageable, but for some reason they have a huge surge at 24 months. (Stuff like going from knowing zero letters in any fashion to knowing every letter, upper and lower, and their sounds in two weeks, or going from knowing zero numbers at all to accurate one-to-one correspondence counting in a few weeks, etc. Eeeeeeeek! Then they settle down and follow a more sedate path.) I almost feel like I should set a clock for the next kid. 24 months of delayed development and he or she will suddenly access the brain and terrify me, lol. When do your kids start to act differently?

[Embassy]

Not at all.

 

Child 1: Evidence in babyhood, but not acknowledged until school age.

Child 2: School age

Child 3: Toddlerhood

 

At least that is when I saw things. My kids weren't different at other ages. It different amounts of time for me to acknowledge that something was up.

[Crimson Wife]

No.

 

My verbally precocious child was the type to show off what she knew very early on.

 

My 2nd was a late talker and Mr. Independent. With him, there were some subtle signs as a toddler but it wasn't remotely as obvious as with his big sister. He didn't really start getting comments about it until he was 4 1/2 to 5.

 

My 3rd has autism and it takes someone working closely with her over an extended period of time like her teachers and therapists to pick up on the clues because they are masked by the disability.

[SKL]

My kids always acted delayed as far as outsiders could see. In many ways they still do. They were late or very shy about most of the major milestones people tend to look for. But there would be a spark here and there, especially with my youngest. My eldest - she still has so many issues, it's impossible to say what her IQ might be. I think it's over 100 but that's all I'll venture.

[JenneinCA]

No.

 

My daughter was very obvious about it at about three and a half.

 

My older son... I didn't know until after we tested at age six.

 

My younger son is very like his older brother and I finally decided that our version of normal isn't normal at all. So when he was very very little.

[serendipitous journey]

My children are just not early bloomers like that. Button was a delayed talker -- after a start at 18 mos, when he tried talking and got totally angry at the inadequate sounds he made and then clammed up for another year -- and wouldn't tolerate stories (neither being read nor just being told) and detested most music; though he insisted on being taught the names of letters from some Met art blocks I bought for art exposure. Wouldn't: color, cut, paint, or draw.

 

Bot-bot is very laid back, is sort of interested in letters but not at all interested in going to any effort to learn them and isn't spouting their names. Also not incredible speed on the counting front. He's about 27 mos now.

 

But both are obviously quite bright to us -- they think well for their ages, and have excellent vocabularies (Button did once he started talking), and are curious and interested.

[a27mom]

Yes and no.

 

With the first I was a bit oblivious. I do remember my pediatrician asking how many words she had at 18months. I remember his initial look of concern at my look of confusion, Ped: " does she say at least 10" Me: " oh sure, I was trying to decide if it was closer to 50 or 100". (Went home and made a list stopped counting at 100) That might have been a tip off. My oldest is very quiet and shy so people rarely mentioned how bright she was. We also didn't have other children her age around much to compare. Didn't hit home until I started k w/ her and realized she already knew all the k material, and part of first grade.

 

With my second it Has been more obvious. She is outgoing and talkative people regularly remark that she is very advanced. She also has big sister to copy, and is exposed to what my oldest is learning. I remember being frustrated when the girls started arguing regularly when my youngest was 18 months. Also we are around more kids her age and I now realize it is not normal to independently do jigsaw puzzles and write your name at 2 y/o

 

I didn't really think that much about the "gifted" part. Since I am HG it is only what I was expecting, but I hadn't really consciously thought about it. Retrospectively I guess they both started to show signs in their 2nd year when their vocabulary started to take off.

[LittleIzumi]

Interesting! So maybe I shouldn't bank on 24 months again. :lol: Maybe part of it here is my kids have ALL been delayed talkers, and so except some ASL there's been no indication at all of what's going on in their heads until they finally figured out words. The Love was almost completely non-verbal until 23 months (pretty much "hot," "mama," and "no" plus a few animal sounds), to the point where I debated calling Early Intervention, and now suddenly at 24 months he can communicate about everything, words and phrases and knock-knock jokes and letters and sounds and numbers and counting, so it's a huge jump, and his sister was the same. Oh, that's how you people communicate. I got it now. *takes off like rocket* I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. So far he's seriously like a clone of his sister, in almost every possible way. That sister actually slowed down to what appears to be "bright" by age 5. Hmmmmm....

[boscopup]

I've seen some patterns that were the same and some that were very different. For example, in talking, no one talked before 2 years old. DS2 talked at 3 years old, but he also had ear infections and didn't get tubes until age 2 when we realized he wasn't talking like the others. :tongue_smilie:The other 2 had hardly any words (just the bare minimum to not be sent to speech therapy), and they both started talking right at 2 years old. My oldest went form 5 words to speaking multiple word phrases in 3 weeks. My youngest was speaking gibberish "sentences", and suddenly at 2, they became English. He was one that would have a conversation with you, but you had no clue what he was saying. :lol:

 

They all did major motor things about the same time - crawling, walking, etc. DS1 was a 29 weeker preemie, so he had adjusted age going for him, but his crawling and walking were still at the same actual age as his full-ish term (36w6d) brothers. Go figure.

 

Fine motor has been very different. DS1 and DS2 have been similar, though DS2 has had slightly better fine motor skills than DS1 at the same age (writing is not his boogey man). DS3 has been crazy early with fine motor. At just turned 3, he was able to button his own buttondown shirt and buckle his own carseat. The other two couldn't do those things until age 5. DS3 also can trace like you wouldn't believe... with either hand. It's funny because he'll do half the page with his left hand and half the page with his right hand. :D He's technically left handed, but still ambidextrous in most things, including writing.

 

In academics... Reading has been all over the map. DS1 could blend at 4.5 and his first book to read was grade level 1.5, so he was insta-reading. No sounding out stage (though he could sound out). DS2 could blend at age 4, but it's taken him a LOT longer to really get to reading. He's still not ready for Dr. Seuss books yet, and he's about to turn 6. He can read Bob books and the first couple "Tim the Dim Cop" stories in Dancing Bears. DS3 could blend at age 2.5, and now at 3.5, he is able to comfortably read the first few Bob books.

 

Math has been interesting. DS1 could add/subtract small numbers at age 3. DS2 couldn't even count past 10 at that age. DS3 is not quite ready to do much adding/subtracting (he can do it with manipulatives, and I think he knows 1+1 and 1+2 now, but that's it). So DS1 was the most advanced of the bunch at age 3. DS2 was very slow to learn math at that age, but then he made a jump at age 5. He's happily doing 1st grade Singapore, and he even did the infamous adding across tens with zero problems - understood it right away! It's easy for him! DS1 struggled with that concept for at least a few minutes when I first taught it at age 6.5. :tongue_smilie: Now the neat thing I've noticed... Both DS1 and DS2 figured out basic multiplication at age 5. They also both learned negative numbers at age 5 (basically asking some question that segued into me drawing a number line and showing negative numbers). So there is something magical about age 5 and multiplication and negative numbers (and I've noticed a lot of kids on this forum have done the same thing).

 

Now DS2 may have other things going on that slow him down. DS1 and DS3 are very similar, but DS1 seemed a lot more math oriented at a young age, whereas DS3 is more language oriented. Both will probably be good at math AND language when they're older (DS1 certainly is). They just learned those subjects in a different order. DS3 is by far my most verbal child, speaking in sentences and using words that I don't expect of him based on my previous experience with his brothers.

[EKS]

No.

 

My older son seemed mildly delayed from age 1-7. We now know that he is 2E.

 

The younger one seemed very advanced early on (age 1 or so).

[FairProspects]

Ds 1 was making extrapolations at 2 and building things at 4 that had 20 yr. preschool teachers shaking their heads in amazement. However, at 5-6 he looked way behind because he struggled in reading and with math facts/remembering operations. He is extremely 2E and dyslexic.

 

Ds 2 could complete his brother's WWE 1 and do better narrations from SOTW 2 at age 4 than his 7 y.o. brother, so he clearly has amazing language processing, but has still not taken off in reading. We are currently trying to determine if he is slightly dyslexic as well, or just an average age reader.

 

Both of my boys are part of the 20% of students who would not pick up reading without phonics, and neither has cracked the code early, but both have crazy strong processing skills in some regard whether spatially or with language.

[blondeviolin]

I just wrote it all out, but what it really boils down to is that it's hard to tell. My perception of normal when my older kids were babies and toddlers was way off. It's a little better now, but I'll guaranteed its still skewed: :001_huh:

Edited October 18, 2012 by blondeviolin

[Tanikit]

My first showed signs in babyhood, my second is showing a few signs now at 20 months but her speech is very average so its been much harder to tell.

[mathwonk]

our older son was obviously gifted from the get go. alert as a baby even before speaking, and it never stopped, the kind of child who remarks from the back seat that we missed our turn on the freeway at night in a storm. the second one seemed the opposite, laid back, slow to read, not a big talker.

 

when we took the older one to be tested by the gifted and talented program, we just brought the other one along because we had nowhere else to leave him, but assuming he was a little slow and certainly not gifted. i forget how old he was, 3? 5? 7?

 

That's not what the test showed. It seemed he was more the creative gifted type, the kind that thinks up new ideas quickly and in tremendous diversity. the older one remembers everything and analyzes things quickly. on the stanford binet test the younger one actually scored a couple points higher (both over 150 IQ). All of a sudden i got very excited at this shocking news from the professional, and started trying to stimulate him more.

 

they are still very different years later, one more mathematical, one more artistic, both athletic with the younger one at the semi professional level. more important both are nice considerate people.

 

by the way, if you suspect you have a creative gifted child, the guru of that topic is paul torrance, and he has a series of excellent guides and books for understanding and nurturing it. e.g. ask a kid how many different uses he can think of for a wrecked car. the traditionally brilliant ones who memorize easily will have trouble keeping up with the creative gifted ones in generating ideas.

Edited October 21, 2012 by mathwonk

[bakpak]

My little one (3yo) hasn't been tested yet, but her giftedness has been obvious since she was a baby. She's been an obsessive reader since before she could hold a book. I think we were in an airport when she was about 8 or 9 months old and a mother was shocked to see her avidly listening to me read and easily turning regular pages (not a board book) by herself at the appropriate time. Her language skillls were awesome and so much fun. I feel lucky having known from an early age.

 

One of my favorite memories was on her 1 yr birthday someone gave her a little stuffed owl and when she opened it, she exclaimed 'Owl!' and shocked everyone. I was shocked that she could tell the zany looking purple spiky sparkly thing was _supposed_ to be an owl ;)

[mathwonk]

in the grocery store today a mother pushing a basket with two small children aboard seemed weary of their chattering, with one saying "I can spell oatmeal - o-a-t-m-e-a-l!"

 

It was all i could do to not run back and ask; "can you spell boatmeal? and goatmeal?"

 

obviously gifted, big time. and tiring out their mom.

 

but i restrained myself.

[La Condessa]

No, my second was earlier than my first, and she was also younger than my baby is now.

 

Congratulations on expecting your new little one! So, just what has the Love been doing lately that surprised you so much?

[LittleIzumi]

No, my second was earlier than my first, and she was also younger than my baby is now.

 

Congratulations on expecting your new little one! So, just what has the Love been doing lately that surprised you so much?

 

Thanks! I blabbed a lot about The Love in post 8, lol. Going from almost completely non-verbal to knock-knock jokes, counting with 1-1 correspondence, and letter sounds/words they start with in just one month is a little unsettling. :lol: That was his 2nd birthday present--he found his brain all at once! ;)

Edited October 20, 2012 by LittleIzumi

[Greenmama2]

No, my second was slower to speak so it was less obvious. Despite having skewed version of "normal" with number 1, DD's complete sentences and head-scratching questions from 14 months stood out.

Congratulations :)

[Runningmom80]

Mine all showed signs in late infancy, although with DS 1, I wasn't aware that was happening. :lol: my twins had a speech delay, but they are caught up now and taking over the world. ;) even with that they were able to communicate in ways that scared us. Lol.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Runningmom80

[Mélie]

Looking back, it's likely that they both actually showed giftedness at about the same age, but we noticed it at different ages. My younger son read at an earlier age, so we noticed earlier for him.

[serendipitous journey]

okay, reading this thread ... argh! what is it with you folks and your early readers???? :) my boys have 0 interest in reading. Even the one who is accelerated in it. !!! (well, he's not at 0 interest. more like .0000001) ... jeesh.

 

half the time I only know how smart they are 'cause of what a surreal pain in the tushie they can be :D...

[8filltheheart]

okay, reading this thread ... argh! what is it with you folks and your early readers???? :) my boys have 0 interest in reading. Even the one who is accelerated in it. !!! (well, he's not at 0 interest. more like .0000001) ... jeesh.

 

half the time I only know how smart they are 'cause of what a surreal pain in the tushie they can be :D...

 

This made me :lol: and induced me to post in a thread that I would normally avoid. ;) I have never had my kids formally tested, but the ones that I consider gifted that are older (now 23, 16, and 14) I would say that their level of performance is "beyond" just being accelerated or bright. (assuming that "bright" can accelerate you only so far and that a 16 yo making one of the highest grades by a significant margin in a university multivariable class full of STEM majors is an indication of more than just "hard-working acceleration".) Also, I do suspect that my 2 yr old will end up being more advanced than them.

 

Anyway, being the horrible teacher that I am, I don't teach pre-school and early reading is not part of any of my kids' scenarios. My sons' interests in books when they were babies consisted in eating them or ripping them apart. :D The only books they every found useful when they were little were LEGO manuals when first received a new model! ;)

 

All of my children have been completely individual in almost every respect when it comes to development. I have not been able to generate blanket expectations of progress to project onto any of them. The only recognizable trait between any of my kids, unfortunately, was how my oldest and youngest ds both struggled w/reading and spelling b/c they are both dyslexic.

 

Neither of boys were early talkers, most definitely not early readers. However, when they were barely toddlers they would watch things like a toy train set and find a screwdriver and attempt to take the engine apart to figure out how it worked. ;)

 

My current 2 yr old's language skills have people asking me how old she is. She actually did sit and read books when she was an infant. But now at 2, she is too busy and just wants to go, go, go all the time and not sit still and listen while looking at a book. But, she does listen to everything that goes on and interjects herself into conversations while playing in another room. :tongue_smilie:

 

But our family also does not match what is discussed in terms of siblings matching fairly closely in ability. My kids are all over the place and I would guess only 4 of the 8 are gifted. Our Aspie, who I would not classify as gifted, has an almost literal photographic memory. His ability to memorize huge amts of material in an hr is uncanny. (in classes that rely heavily on that type of testing, he normally had a 100 avg though he may not even pay any attention to the material until just right before the test. Don't even begin to ask me how that matches the fact that he scored in the 3rd % (59 IQ range) for visual processing speed.......he is the one child who has had formal testing!!) Conversely, I don't think any of my other kids have that sort of skill and our 18 yr old dd definitely struggles w/memorization. My 5th grader seems bright while my 1st grader seemed quite delayed until recently (she couldn't learn her colors, etc). All of a sudden she seems to be taking off and her reading is rapidly advancing and she is appearing strong in math. (math is the one area of strength I would say I have seen across the board in my kids......though definitely a VERY broad range of what that strength means. Some of them are incredibly gifted in math while others are more on avg. I guess it would be more accurate to say that none of my kids struggle in math, but some are just strong avg math students.)

 

ETA: FWIW, I wanted to add that, honestly, classifications are just not important to me so I don't normally even think in terms of gifted/not gifted.

Edited October 22, 2012 by 8FillTheHeart

[Greenmama2]

okay, reading this thread ... argh! what is it with you folks and your early readers???? :) my boys have 0 interest in reading. Even the one who is accelerated in it. !!! (well, he's not at 0 interest. more like .0000001) ... jeesh.

 

half the time I only know how smart they are 'cause of what a surreal pain in the tushie they can be :D...

:lol: DD's reading level tests at upper high school, yet she is still to complete her first easy chapter book. Science is her thing, mathematics comes easily to her (apart from a weird problem with place value which now seems to have passed) but reading...meh, she's not really into it yet :glare:

[lisabees]

our older son was obviously gifted from the get go. alert as a baby even before speaking, and it never stopped, the kind of child who remarks from the back seat that we missed our turn on the freeway at night in a storm. the second one seemed the opposite, laid back, slow to read, not a big talker.

 

when we took the older one to be tested by the gifted and talented program, we just brought the other one along because we had nowhere else to leave him, but assuming he was a little slow and certainly not gifted. i forget how old he was, 3? 5? 7?

 

That's not what the test showed. It seemed he was more the creative gifted type, the kind that thinks up new ideas quickly and in tremendous diversity. the older one remembers everything and analyzes things quickly. on the stanford binet test the younger one actually scored a couple points higher (both over 150 IQ). All of a sudden i got very excited at this shocking news from the professional, and started trying to stimulate him more.

 

they are still very different years later, one more mathematical, one more artistic, both athletic with the younger one at the semi professional level. more important both are nice considerate people.

 

by the way, if you suspect you have a creative gifted child, the guru of that topic is paul torrance, and he has a series of excellent guides and books for understanding and nurturing it. e.g. ask a kid how many different uses he can think of for a wrecked car. the traditionally brilliant ones who memorize easily will have trouble keeping up with the creative gifted ones in generating ideas.

 

Thank you for this. I will check out Paul Torrance. My dd is very creative - much different than the boys. She is not the perfectionist like they are - she loves artistic risks, creative risks, fashion risks. Doesn't matter. She sees the world differently and has a sophisticated sense of humor.

 

She informed me the other day that she has another mother and wanted me to guess who/what it was. She then corrected herself and said, "Well, actually I have another set of parents, because it has no sex." Eventually, she gave me a hint - starts with a B. The answer was books, because they teach her about life and its lessons. Funny girl. ;)

 

 

ETA: No early talkers or readers here! Like 8, my kids are so different. The boys didn't talk early - and not even on time. DD talked at 9 months and hasn't stopped! All, except for my dyslexic, read on schedule. When did I know? I would say in preschool, by the age of five. They thought differently; teachers made comments; they were different than other kids, wanting to spend a lot of time on their interests and projects.

Edited October 22, 2012 by lisabees

[Allearia]

My older son I was sure was gifted but he did not speak even one word before he was two. He had a couple of signs. We did go and get the ball rolling for some testing at that time. Right after he started saying a lot more words so we held off. He hasn't stopped talking since and is exceptional verbally. 6 months later at 2.5 when the preschool was teaching kids to recognize the first letter of their own names, ds learned to spell all the other kid's names. Currently at age ten he is studying high school and college level Latin and Greek.

 

My younger started talking a lot earlier but he didn't develop as quickly and was having difficulty communicating for a few years. I wish I had looked further into some intervention but after our experience with older ds waited a bit long and we caught up but it would have saved frustration and helped socially. Now he is definitely a different kid but amazing with math and building stuff and last week he wrote a truly amazing story in around twenty minutes.

 

So I always hear about the first sign of giftedness being early talking but we didn't have that here. Don't have a preconception about their gifts too early!

[Embassy]

by the way, if you suspect you have a creative gifted child, the guru of that topic is paul torrance, and he has a series of excellent guides and books for understanding and nurturing it. e.g. ask a kid how many different uses he can think of for a wrecked car. the traditionally brilliant ones who memorize easily will have trouble keeping up with the creative gifted ones in generating ideas.

 

Can you point me in the direction of where I would find these guides? I'm always seeking ideas on how to educate my creative child in a way that suits him.

[LittleIzumi]

okay, reading this thread ... argh! what is it with you folks and your early readers???? :) my boys have 0 interest in reading. Even the one who is accelerated in it. !!! (well, he's not at 0 interest. more like .0000001) ... jeesh.

 

half the time I only know how smart they are 'cause of what a surreal pain in the tushie they can be :D...

 

:lol::lol::lol: My oldest figured out CVC on her own at three, then refused to even look at a book for six months. :lol: She did not read voluntarily until she was about 6, and she's in remedial phonics. We won't talk about spelling. She has no interest in chapter books. She stops after a chapter or two and switches to something else, preferably easy readers or easy picture books at 7. Her focus was more of dissecting animals at five. :tongue_smilie: And remembering everything I've ever said, except phonics rules and spelling rules.

[nitascool]

My oldest and youngest are the obviously gifted types. I didn't realize my oldest was actually gifted at 1 and 2, because I didn't know what gifted was.

 

My ds12 said his first word at 3 months (Ummy), and was talking to me and dh at 6 months and to strangers by 9 months. There was never a problem with understanding. At 6 month he was saying Ummy, cook (cookie), drink, and a dozen other words, but refused to speak in front of others (because they reacted amazed at his ability). At 9 months he began speaking in complete sentences. "Actually mommy I'd like some milk with my cookie, please." Everything intellectual was months and years early compared to the milestones found in books. He did have some minor delays in his gross motor skills. His IQ scores say that he is Highly Gifted as of age 7 though having a processing speed and working memory delay. (At 12 when he is feeling sick or overly tired he will say, "Ummy will you hold me.":001_smile: )

 

My ds10 was delayed at everything physical (fine and gross motor) and still is delayed. He walk-crawled at 9 months and didn't learn to walk correctly until 14 months. His first word was Siah (nickname for big bro.) at 10 months. His first sentence was at 14 months which was "Mommy, can I play also." If you looked at his overall IQ score you would be lead to believe that he was average. But he has severe delays (as in 1%) in processing speed and working memory. Ask my 12yo and he would say that his brother is VERY smart... his words "M. is a Genius". His verbal language was the highest score that the proctor (who works exclusively with gifted children and adults) has ever had. M. has Sensory Processing Disorder, ADHD and Aspergers.

 

My ds8 didn't talk early, but signed 150 words by the time he was 9 months old. His first word was at 11 months, "Onion" (his word for Junior or cat). He started talking at a year in complete, perfect (grammatical correct) sentences, but he had a lisp and was often annoyed at people asking "What did you say?". All milestones except 1 were met early, but not super early. At 8 we are still working on potty issues, that we have only this year found are related to his diet. He hasn't yet been tested, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see that he is HG even though he chooses to only go slightly above the norm in his academic life.

 

My dd5 is much like my oldest in her desire to learn and has a near photographic abilities. She said her first words (daddy, nana, nus...nurse, papa) at 5 months and was talking in complete sentences at 7 months. She mastered letters (and sounds), numbers and shapes all in the same week at 9 months. She is doing a K-1st mix of school this year because it doesn't require too much work on my part. Penmanship is the only grade level work that she actually does. I suspect she'd be ready and willing to do more formal work if I had the time to invest.

[Esse Quam Videri]

I've never had my kiddos tested, but I always tested in GT programs in school and I know my kids are brighter than I am/was. I would consider my older two children gifted, probably somewhere between MG and HG. They both showed signs early, but in completely different ways. DD had an incredibly memory and very early literacy skills. She can memorize just about anything very, very quickly. This makes her a great student, easy to teach with a great attention span.

 

DS was completely different. He spoke early, but was not as quick to read. However, he was extremely passionate about certain interests. At 18 months he was obsessed with animals, and could differentiate between species of whales, birds, etc. Then when his older sister was studying the Revolutionary War, he wanted to learn all he could about it. After two years, he still knows far more about American battles/generals/Presidents than most adults I know. He's also very quick with numbers, though I'd never thought about accelerating him until this year (still very much trying to break a PS mindset). His attention span, however, is not like his sister's, so teaching him has been more of a challenge.

 

Then youngest DD came along and I didn't see any signs of giftedness, except she's physically very skilled. Her gross motor skills are better than both her older siblings, and her fine motor skills are about equal to DS. I figured she would excel in athletics, and be above average in academics, but not gifted. Lately, however, she's doing some very strange things... like teaching herself to play the piano. She uses all five fingers on both hands and makes beautiful melodies. I'm wondering if she is perhaps more creatively gifted... I think I'm going to try piano lessons and see what happens.

[Reya]

My son was a preemie, so it took him a couple of months. My daughter was obvious at birth.