When did you first suspect?

[Lawyer&Mom]

My soon to be 17 month old DD looked out the window this morning and said "I see a bird." She has a 75+ word vocabulary, but I thought we had a few more months before complete sentences...

 

When did you first suspect your child might be gifted?

[Jennay]

When DS was spoke his first word at 9 months and quickly moved into full sentences.

And then when he started reading at age 2. Fluent by 3.

[shawthorne44]

When DD's 10th and 11th words were "Left" and "Right" while kicking the correct foot.  It was during a diaper change and out of the blue.  She'd heard Seuss's Left Foot Right Foot twice, otherwise the topic was never discussed.  Her daddy only beat her by a couple of years, and that was helped by a hand injury.  

[texasmama]

When he spoke an eight word sentence at 18 months. 

[lewelma]

When my older Ds was 6. We had not started any formal math yet and just played around with money, estimating, and oral word games -- just fun first grade stuff. I was an unschooler back then and did not plan to start a math curriculum until he was 7.

So one day I was telling him about how much fun algebra would be some day and he asked me to tell him what it was. So I wrote down something like x+4=10 and told him to find x. Easy. Then 2x + 6=12. Easy. So I explained that eventually you couldn't do it in your head and gave home something like (10x+4)/4 = 2x + 10. And he says well that is easy, you multiply by 4 and then bring the 2x to other side and the answer is 18. He had invented algebra in his own little 6 year old brain.

I still remember that gob smacking realisation that something extremely unusual had just happened.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I love all of these. DD is scheduled to get ear tubes inserted next week, and I've been told to expect a language boom once the fluid in her ears is no longer obstructing her hearing. She definitely needs the procedure, but I was trying to imagine a more verbal kid than the one I already have. Now I guess we have a month to work on eight word sentences! :-)

[Pegs]

Careful! My late-talking DS had a language boom recently, and has become quite adept at swearing and awarding insults. It's like his usual frustrations have now been given a verbal outlet. Hilarious! But not in public.

-_-

 

I suspected giftedness a little before 6 months, because he could crawl to another room and retrieve objects I described to him (red facewasher, teddy, etc.). I knew that was unusually good object permanence, planning, working memory, receptive language for that age. But he didn't continue to develop the way I expected, and I was fairly dismissive of, and even resistant to the idea of giftedness, until fairly recently. In hindsight, the loss of his expressive language between 1 and 3 may have been related to seizure activity. :( For better or worse, we seem to wire brains a little differently in my family.

[EndOfOrdinary]

Ds read his first word at 3 and the word was zoo. I was later told that constructions with complex sounds such as "oo" rarely ever came first. Secondly, all his reading instruction had been in Mandrin as I worked full time and went to. School full time while was with his nanny. She was Malay and did 100 percent immersion. I read to him at night in English, but from classic books he didn't look at much. He had little board books and such, but had received no instruction. It was a "whoa."

 

The "We're not in Kansas, anymore" moment happened at the first rally he MCed. I looked around and he had hundreds of people standing in the rain at a major city landmark to hear what he had to say and what the other kids he had convinced to come had to say. Somehow he talked a local non profit into holding a high media event directed at the governor by kids. At that point it occurred to me that he might just be really in the middle of a movement instead of just talking.

[SKL]

My youngest was into pointing out logos (using the word "logo") when she was less than 1.5.  Also, when she was 21 months old, I was putting together a mini tramp and she walked over, picked up a piece, and stuck it in the correct hole (the correct way).  When she was just shy of 2 and sat quietly through the entire movie Marley and Me (in the theater), and teared up at the end because she understood that the family was about to be bereaved of their dog.  And just the way she remembered almost everything, and she'd make connections.  When she was 3 and had a disagreement with my dad over time to come inside, she informed him, "you're like the Nazi police."  She had recently watched the Sound of Music.

 

My eldest, who is 8 and has never been suspected of giftedness, started speaking in sentences around 15 mos.  around age 1.5 she said, "See, there's a deer.  There's another deer."  Not long after that she said, "it's my turn to beat sissy."  (We used the word "beat" for affectionate pats.)  And she'd make surprising observations about patterns in people's behavior.  But in her case, her output was so inconsistent that I was worried about learning disabilities, not giftedness.  I think she's bright, but I may never know her real IQ.

[Tanikit]

My eldest was very advanced in all her milestones - rolling over at 6 weeks, sitting unsupported by 4.5 months, crawling the day she turned 6 months old, first steps at 8.5 months, running at 11 months. Her speech was also very rapid with first words also around 8.5 months, first sentence around 14 months, knew the whole phonetic alphabet by 18 months and was blending around 2 though moving into longer books took a lot longer and she never had the drive to read by herself - preferring her Mom's company for a very long time - she was quite happy reading, but needed someone to hold the book for her as she could not keep still enough to hold it herself. She had a very good memory too and made connections very early on. She also saw patterns with ease and was building 48 piece puzzles at 2 years of age. I know she could load the dvd player at 12 months of age and get it to play. Keeping up with her has always been a whirlwind.

 

My younger I suspect is also gifted, though she reached her milestones at a slightly more normal age. She has an articulation problem which also makes it harder to be aware of what she knows, but despite these problems she has a very advanced vocabulary and also needs little repetition. She is much quieter and less active though and entertains herself with more ease, but she is also far more independent and will solve problems by herself with less input which sometimes makes it harder to realise. Having her sister to compare her to also makes it harder sometimes to pick up on her giftedness.

 

Neither of my children have been tested. We just deal with them where they are. 

[eternalsummer]

To be honest?  Before we conceived.  Smart + smart generally = smart, kind of like tall + tall = tall.  It is not always that way, of course, but in general, we expected to have bright kids, and they're bright.

 

In specific instances?  DD could say 100-150 words by 18 months; DS understands math concepts with very little explanation much earlier than the average kid.  So far 4 our of 4 kids have walked by 9 months or earlier.

 

Neither of us (nor any of our kids) are what you would call profoundly gifted, or particularly asynchronous.  I think DD9 is probably smarter than me, or at least sharper.  This makes some sense as DH is a good deal smarter than me.  DS6 is still too young to tell.  The rest are babies :)

 

We are more concerned with developing quality thinkers/deep thinkers/ broad thinkers than fast thinkers, though.  DH and I both knew a lot of kids in school and people in life who had a lot of Brain but not much clarity of thought or wisdom, or who focused on/developed very particular intelligences and understand one tree very well, but don't realize they live in a forest.

[MEmama]

I didn't have anything to compare to, so I didn't *really* know for a long time.

 

Yes, he pointed out all the items we'd usually buy at the grocery store by a year or so (and correct me if I picked up a different kind, and direct me around the shop), yes he knew all his colors by 19 months, yes he insisted on learning the alphabet--upper and lower case and their sounds--around a year and a half, yes he was reading middle school books on trains and cars by 3. But it took me a LONG time to realize that those were the reasons other mamas didn't like talking to me, that they just couldn't relate because his development and interests were so off the chart. I knew, of course, that he was different from his friends, but it didn't occur to me to wonder why.

 

After a couple of well meaning librarians posed the question of Aspergers with me when he was 3, I started researching and lightbulbs went off. By the time we were thinking about kindergarten, I knew he would need much, much more than his age mates and started researching homeschooling as an option.

[Pegs]

About 3 months. Grandparent aged strangers would stop me and comment on the eyes and alertness when we were out.

Oh, yes. This here, too. "Old soul" and "been here before" were phrases I heard frequently.

 

Was yours a very *serious* baby, Heigh Ho?

[Runningmom80]

I started suspecting early, when he was 18 months and could recognize all the letters and their sounds because he was constantly pointing to letters and asking what they were, I figured something was up.  He started reading at 2, and I just blamed it on an enriched environment.  I didn't really think "gifted" because he was my oldest and I had no gauge of "typical." He started preschool at 3, almost 4, and the directress was talking about his abilities within the first week.  He apparently read a box on the shelf that said "geometric solids," and she was quite taken aback. :lol:  At that point she sort of clued us in.

 

My twins are a different story.  My DS is turning out to be pretty mathy, and my DD is more of a globally bright/ moderately gifted sort of girl.  It's different with them because their brother came first, so I had different expectations.  It's been a ride, that's for sure!

[lmrich]

My oldest did everything early - rolled over, sat up, crawled, walked at 7.5 months etc.. talked early etc.. but he asked such thoughtful questions at the age of 2. He asked why we did not have capital numbers; we have capital letters how come not capital numbers. He also could "play" or be really focused on a task. He is not profoundly gifted, but he has certainly needed a different path than other students. He leaves for college in the fall, but I still remember being so impressed with his intellect before he was one. I think it was after his first birthday he asked for the red car so he could put with the other red cars. Later that year he organized his race cars by how far they traveled after they zoomed down the ramp he had made. 

[Jackie]

Like a pp, we sort of assumed DD might be gifted because DH and I both are. She then hit most milestones very early. I remember having to flip quite a ways ahead in the development charts to find where she was. She didn't sleep and was very alert. The most obvious signs a little further along were her speaking in full, lengthy, complex sentences around 18-20 months and starting to read at 2yo.

[Crimson Wife]

I was expecting my kids to be bright, but I wasn't expecting my oldest to be as strong in the verbal domain as she turned out to be. We knew we were in trouble when at 14 months we were going around the dinner table at an event with extended family and she could name each relative, including calling my parents (whom the kids call "Grammy" and "Grandpa") by their first names.

 

DS was not as verbal as a toddler but he could stack blocks, do puzzles, and figure out how to work machines like our DVD player in a way that was unusual.

 

Youngest DD is suspected 2E and the story I love about her took place at around 3 1/2 when we had signed her up for a research study on a treatment being studied for autism. One of the qualifications is that the child had to have an underlying IQ in the normal range. So the researcher did some of the non-verbal subtests of the WPPSI including the block design one. DD2 was flying through that subtest until she got bored and decided that instead of copying the tester's design, she was going to build her own design and change the tester's blocks to match hers. The tester had built a 3x2x1 checkerboard pattern. DD2 quickly built the same pattern only rotated 90 degrees so that it was 1x2x3 and then re-arranged the tester's blocks to match- faster than I think *I* could do it!

[MinivanMom]

My oldest did all the usual gifted things (long attention-span, hitting milestones early, talking in sentences and spontaneously recognizing letters before 18 mo, big imagination, reading early and well), but I assumed she was just bright. I come from a family where all the kids were gifted, so those things just didn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

 

It was when she started asking big, existential questions as a preschooler that I really started to think, "There's something different about this child." It was the originality and depth of her questions that really surprised me. You just don't really see that from most preschoolers, even bright preschoolers.

[Dmmetler]

I didn't suspect until about 15 months when we were at the park, she looked at a sign that said "all dogs must be on a leash at all times", looked around, and then asked "where's the dog?". Later that same day she read several signs at the grocery store. Didn't take a grad degree in early childhood education to tell me that this was more than a bit out of the range of typical development!

 

However, in retrospect I should have suspected earlier. She was carrying on full conversations by 8-9 months, and had comments about how alert and focused she was by 3 months. However, I was more concerned with the lateness of her physical milestones and her feeding and reflux issues, so I never really picked up that her cognitive and verbal development were so far ahead of the norm.

[chiguirre]

To be completely honest, I didn't realize T was all that accelerated until I was planning classes for this year. I signed her up for a bunch of high school classes because they were the next step. Since they've gone well, we'll stick with this path. I think she'll want to do APs and DE in high school so she won't get bored. 

 

She didn't talk, walk or read early, although neither did any of her parents and grandparents and we've all done well in college and grad school.

[SeaConquest]

My oldest was doing full sentences in two languages by 18 months. My youngest is 19 months, and only has around 50 words (all in English), so I'm convinced he's a moron.

[The Governess]

About 3 months. Grandparent aged strangers would stop me and comment on the eyes and alertness when we were out.

I always got comments about this too. Everyone that met her would says something about her alertness. I didn't really know what they meant though, since I didn't have much experience with young babies at the time.

 

I knew for sure when she was reading fluently at three.

[quark]

.

[Sarah0000]

Quark, what did you read that explained the link between noise and texture sensitivities and giftedness? I am sensitive to those things too, and although I was pegged as gifted in the public school system, I honestly didn't think there was any huge difference between my peers and I except for a greater drive to excel. Well, now that I'm a parent and I can see from the outside the differences between my son and his peers I now understand there is something more to giftedness.

 

Anyway, DS showed some of the same signs as many here: spontaneous reading before two, bigger jigsaw puzzles before two, greater emotional awareness, highly imaginative, asks insightful questions and makes theoretical connections regularly, etc. I did expect to have bright children since DH and I were both recognized as gifted at school, but I didn't really think about it with my son until he picked up a pencil with proper pencil grip and drew a series of circles and lines at 14 months, and started writing words (with good spelling of simple words and asking me for harder ones)at around two years old.

[quark]

Yikes, I went back and deleted my reply because I am always concerned about TMI. :) Didn't think anyone would have read it so quickly.

 

The first book I read that explained anything at all was Miraca Gross's case studies on EG and PG kids in Australia. I think it's called Exceptionally Gifted Children. She describes not only their intellectual giftedness but also how some of the children reacted to stimuli and one of them used to curl up her toes because of the seams in her socks. Reading that just opened the floodgates here because that was me. Maybe it's not connected to my IQ or anything but identifying kiddo's giftedness was an emotional period in my life, and it felt like I was only just realizing what my own quirks could have meant.

 

After reading that book, I sought articles online. Can't point to any specific ones because it was several years ago but maybe if you google giftedness and SPD (sensory processing disorder...but I never really thought of it as a disorder) you'll stumble upon some good links.

 

ETA: yeah, that was DS too re circles, lines. One time his grandma, uncle, dad and I were watching TV and DS took his magnetic drawing board and drew four circles in front of a square and pointed to us watching the TV. He was about 18 months I think at that time. I don't know if that indicates anything but I thought it was pretty cute. :)

[texasmama]

Oh, yes. This here, too. "Old soul" and "been here before" were phrases I heard frequently.

 

Was yours a very *serious* baby, Heigh Ho?

My gifted one is an old soul.  I've always said he is ___ (current age) going on 50.  He really is.

 

ETA:  Not Heigh Ho, but mine was serious until he learned the fine art of sarcasm.  Now he's a stand up comic.

[SKL]

I have an "old soul" over here too.  I recall telling people how "deep" my kid was when she was 4yo and I was pushing to get her into KG early.  People were like, "um hmmm...."  From the time she was a baby, she would look for a unique way to bond with each person she cared about.  Always looking deep in people's eyes etc.  We also called her "little buddha" because she never let anything disturb her content nature.  She almost never cried.  After experiencing something moving, she wouldn't say too much until days later, when she'd ask a thoughtful question out of the blue.

[imagine.more]

Since our son was our firstborn we didn't realize anything except that he was a bright kid until he was 2.5 and he learned how to read real words and suddenly was not only sounding out all sorts of CVC words and such but also sight reading signs like "Veterinarian". We were both in honors classes and such and SIL is incredibly gifted (Ivy league, near perfect SAT, talented gymnast, etc) so we figured our kids would be smart. But we weren't anticipating a truly unusually gifted one and it's honestly a little overwhelming and isolating sometimes. Looking back I suppose the earliest signs would include alertness as a baby (many comments on this, but we also are a sleep training family and all our babies are very alert because they're well-rested quite frankly). He didn't learn to talk particularly early but when he did it was in phrases. One of his first 'words' was "Here you go" at maybe 15 months. Mostly he just picked things up easily and learned mostly by osmosis. He doesn't need direct instruction in much. I think now having one gifted and one intellectually disabled that direct instruction is the biggest difference....intellectually disabled means I have to teach my daughter absolutely everything, she doesn't pick up anything except a few hands-on skills by osmosis. My son could honestly educate himself given the right exposure and direction towards materials. 

 

It'll be interesting to see how my younger two (three once baby is born) turn out. I suspect DS (4) will be bright but more in the right-brained, mechanical kind of way....an engineer like his grandpa. I think DD (2) will turn out to be in the gifted/advanced learner range for sure, she's been slow to start but that was DS1's MO too. They watch quietly and then explode with language and new skills randomly. 

 

Someone above mentioned Sensory Processing issues and my older son definitely has those though we never pursued a diagnosis. I fit every criteria for SPD myself so I'm not surprised by that. The biggest help we've found for that is early sports involvement and specifically gymnastics. Half the stuff they do in gymnastics is stuff my friend's OT does with her SPD child. Especially for toddlers/preschoolers. 

[pehp]

This is fascinating!  I would not actually label my son "gifted", but he's unusual.  He was also a 'serious' baby (my secretary called him "intense" and that was true).  He had severe auditory processing issues and could spot flagpoles and basketball goals from extremely far distances--his ability to hone in on something was just weird. I didn't realize it then, b/c he was my firstborn. My daughter is not like this!  

 

He was a late talker, late walker, and late-ish (7) reader.  But he is extraordinarily artistic and can translate something he sees to paper with such focus and skill that it astonishes me.  He's also amazing at building things w/ Legos and K'nex--he sort of has this design sensibility that is beyond his years. HIs gross motor skills developed very slowly, but his fine motor skills were overdeveloped at a young age--he was drawing fairly well at the ages of 2-3.  He colored perfectly in the lines when he was a young 3.  I did not really internalize that this was unusual until I started to see how other kids his age wrote (his handwriting is perfect, better than mine) and drew.  He draws and builds for hours every day.  I will be interested to see where all this goes as he grows up.  

 

But looking back, I just thought he was an intense, serious, detail-oriented, noise-sensitive little guy who didn't talk!!  And the cutest thing in the world. Of course. :) 

[kbutton]

I started taking the gifted idea seriously when I couldn't give my older one enough mental stimulation and information to make him happy. He is 2e (PDD-NOS), but not diagnosed as such until about 9 y.o., so that explains some of the "is he or isn't he" we experienced when he was little. Some of the fun things--he would initiate games with other caregivers as a young infant (like peek-a-boo), and they would comment when we'd pick him up by saying things, "it's almost like he's trying to do x, but of course, that's impossible." He would tell us, in detail, how to do things he'd seen someone do. In some cases, he had to pantomime as well as use short sentences, but by 18 months old, he could tell us step-by-step exactly how to light a fire in the woodstove. His improvisations for words he didn't know were fun as well--"Daddy 'booms' [splits] the wood..." As he has aged, his learning by watching has been a huge help--he fixes things around the house (and around other people's houses). He was also one that met his movement milestones early (rolling over at 2 weeks) and very early on, he could follow multi-step directions, find things where he'd left them, and know by looking at the quantity in front of him if one of his snacks had rolled into his lap or under a chair when he was trying to pick them up.

 

My younger one is more contemplative--he was the toddler that soothed younger children by watching what they liked to do and then bringing them toys they liked when they were upset or anxious about their new environment. As a result, he was the unofficial "new kid" soother in his toddler Sunday School class--he could calm them as well and sometimes better than the teachers could. He asks the big questions and focuses on relationships of all kinds--people, numbers, whatever. He's a slow but deep thinker--very visual/spatial and a slow processor. As a toddler, we'd think he was off in la-la land while his older brother was in information-seeking mode, but later, he'd work the information he learned into his imaginative play.

[EndOfOrdinary]

[quote name="MinivanMom" post="6241780" timestamp="1426429105

 

It was when she started asking big, existential questions as a preschooler that I really started to think, "There's something different about this child." It was the originality and depth of her questions that really surprised me. You just don't really see that from most preschoolers, even bright preschoolers.

 

I hear this. There was the existential crisis at four and another around 8. Not exactly one of those concerns you can bring up at the local homeschool group.

[ebrindam]

When DD was 17 months old and we had a logical discussion about why potty training might be a good idea. And when we concluded that it was a good idea, she potty trained that day.  (she had had a large bladder and frequently peed through her diaper which was inconvenient for both of us ;-) )

[pehp]

I hear this. There was the existential crisis at four and another around 8. Not exactly one of those concerns you can bring up at the local homeschool group.

 

My son did this too!  I didn't realize it was unusual (again, my firstborn).  He has asked me some HUGE questions, many of them before the age of 5.  He had an existential-ish crisis around the age of 4 also.

[Jackie]

When DD was 17 months old and we had a logical discussion about why potty training might be a good idea. (she had a large bladder and frequently peed through her diaper which was inconvenient for both of us ;-) )

Somehow, despite figuring out DD was likely gifted younger than her potty training at 19 months, it took until much later before I realized her being able to rationalize wanting to potty train was a big deal on its own. She hated having her diaper changed, was going through an age-typical stage of running away from diaper changes, and I simply told her that the choices were diaper changes or potty training. She decided on potty training, and was nearly fully potty trained within a weekend.

[rocassie]

I'm not sure DD is "gifted" but bright was evident very early.

 

I remember one time my BFF and I were driving in the car, and DD was about 6mths,no more than 8mths,in her rear-facing carseat.  My BFF and I were having a conversation in the front of the car, and we both have a dry sense of humor and are sacrastic.  So there was a lot of quips and humor going back and forth between us, but neither one of us was laughing or even giggling.  What we had thought was a coincidence when DD laughed the first time (and it was a laugh that sounded like a laugh that escapes your lips), was DD listening to our conversation and getting the humor.

 

Another time she was about 1yr, and wanted something but I couldn't understand what she wanted (she was a late talker, and wouldn't try to say anything until she thought it sounded correct.).  She grabbed my hand went over to an alphabet puzzle, touched the "O" and then touched the "J".  She quickly got what she wanted.

 

The dirty looks she gave people who talked babyish to her were priceless.

 

Ah, the joys of having a gifted or bright kid.  :)

 

[Arcadia]

We still think our kids are just bright despite what their recent WISC scores says (ETA: I still think there is an element of bias in the test structure towards enriched environments) :p I do come from a big family of eccentrics. Older boy stared down all the doctors and nurses that tended to him since he was newborn, luckily the medical staff found that interesting rather than annoying. My older is an early talker but he would not talk to his pediatrician but would talk to his sibling and the fishes in the waiting area. That was how the pediatrician and the nurses knew he could talk but won't.

 

If anyone is curious about siblings statistics, their FSIQ is 6 points apart, they are a year apart. (oops, it is 16 points apart, extended norms. Filing the reports now. Never post before a coffee refill :lol: )

 

ETA:

Our neighborhood is also filled with very bright kids. Kind of make us wonder what happen if IQ testing was offered free to all kids in the neighborhood, would it affect the norms.

[Grover]

If anyone is curious about siblings statistics, their FSIQ is 6 points apart, they are a year apart.

 

I have a pair one point and 2y5m apart.  I was actually surprised because DS *looks* much more gifted than DD, but it appears she just has different super powers. 

[ebunny]

My soon to be 17 month old DD looked out the window this morning and said "I see a bird." She has a 75+ word vocabulary, but I thought we had a few more months before complete sentences...

 

When did you first suspect your child might be gifted?

 

I did not suspect high IQ at all.(Disclaimer: Over the past few years, I've grown to be quite wary of the value judgement associated with being 'gifted', I'm going to refer to IQ alone). I thought whatever DD did or said was fairly normal/average, and it was...for our family( including my/dh siblings and their children). It took a school principle and then a psychologist to point out that she is far away from what they call the norm.

 

There are moments when I still think "Are you sure other children don't do ____?!..How do you know?" .

[Arcadia]

I have a pair one point and 2y5m apart.  I was actually surprised because DS *looks* much more gifted than DD, but it appears she just has different super powers. 

 

Their GAI scores are 18 points apart though.  My younger does let my older do all the "hard" work, but he is more of a risk taker.

[Grover]

GAI difference of 3, lol!  But to meet them you would NEVER believe that.  Then again, those aren't terribly accurate numbers because they both hit almost all the ceilings.. maybe he really has 40 points on her and we just can't measure it.

[MEmama]

I think it was after his first birthday he asked for the red car so he could put with the other red cars. Later that year he organized his race cars by how far they traveled after they zoomed down the ramp he had made.

Oh yes! My son has been car obsessed since he received his first Hot Wheel car at 2. He would categorize them by all kinds of criteria; by 3 or 4 it was by fuel efficiency. He also designed a wind powered car at this age. I remember him explaining fuel cells to us at the dinner table at age 3, before he'd ever heard of them. He explained GPS to us before hearing about it, too. He worked, mentally and obsessively, on that car from 3-5 and still wants to engineer cars. His plans were incredibly detailed and thorough, down to innovative safety features and production and marketing plans (community based, for environmental and economist reasons). He even decided then his life path, most of which he still wants (I'm sort of encouraging maybe not holding on to the idea of attending MIT or interning in Korea, though. Lol).

[Wheres Toto]

Ds was 12-18 months when we suspected.  He learned his alphabet and short words by 18 months, learned right, left, north, south, east, west from driving in the car, used to do wooden puzzles one time, then turn the boards over and do them again without the openings.  He would learn a long password of letters and numbers after seeing someone enter it once when he was 3.  He would questions things with logical arguments, recognized math patterns.    All school comes easy to him except writing.

 

He's always been sensitive to loud noises, bright lights, textures and tastes.  He also had a few funny little quirks, like when he was a toddler he would lie down and put his head on people's feet.

 

He didn't talk until he went to Early Intervention at 3, but he used to "talk" in his own language - the cadence, inflection, etc. were proper for speech. It just wasn't English.

 

I was still not sure if he was really gifted or just did well thanks to one-on-one attention.  He always scored well on standardized test but we just did the CAT at home so I wondered how valid that was but he just qualified for the G&T program at our local college by taking their screening test.  He just started his first class through the program.

 

 

[Space station]

I didn't suspect until about 15 months when we were at the park, she looked at a sign that said "all dogs must be on a leash at all times", looked around, and then asked "where's the dog?". Later that same day she read several signs at the grocery store. Didn't take a grad degree in early childhood education to tell me that this was more than a bit out of the range of typical development!

 

However, in retrospect I should have suspected earlier. She was carrying on full conversations by 8-9 months, and had comments about how alert and focused she was by 3 months. However, I was more concerned with the lateness of her physical milestones and her feeding and reflux issues, so I never really picked up that her cognitive and verbal development were so far ahead of the norm.

This was my experience with my younger dd. I was so concerned about her late physical milestones and food issues that I missed the early cues. Her sister had been very verbal, so it didn't strike me as odd that she was too, albeit earlier. I also now know that she hid the fact that she could read from me for quite a long time because she thought that I wouldn't read aloud to her if I knew. It wasn't until she was almost 4 that she slipped and accidentally read something in front of me. Math clue was quickly figuring out at 3 what day of the week a certain date would fall on in the distant future or past.

[Crimson Wife]

I did not suspect high IQ at all.(Disclaimer: Over the past few years, I've grown to be quite wary of the value judgement associated with being 'gifted', I'm going to refer to IQ alone). I thought whatever DD did or said was fairly normal/average, and it was...for our family( including my/dh siblings and their children). It took a school principle and then a psychologist to point out that she is far away from what they call the norm.

 

There are moments when I still think "Are you sure other children don't do ____?!..How do you know?" .

 

It also can be misleading if you live in a place where there are lots of bright people. In the affluent suburb where I grew up and where we lived when DD was a toddler & preschooler, about half the kids entered kindergarten already being able to read fluently. So I was shocked when I came across a statistic in one of the Natl. Center for Educational Statistics reports that only about 3% of entering kindergarteners nationwide at the time could decode and only 1% were fluent readers. Something like 1/3 didn't even know the alphabet. Those statistics were from the early 2000's so they're probably a bit different now, but it really opened my eyes that the little bubble I was living in of high-achieving kids was far from the norm. And that meant that DD was even more ahead of the curve than I'd realized living in this bubble.

[ebunny]

It also can be misleading if you live in a place where there are lots of bright people. In the affluent suburb where I grew up and where we lived when DD was a toddler & preschooler, about half the kids entered kindergarten already being able to read fluently. So I was shocked when I came across a statistic in one of the Natl. Center for Educational Statistics reports that only about 3% of entering kindergarteners nationwide at the time could decode and only 1% were fluent readers. Something like 1/3 didn't even know the alphabet. Those statistics were from the early 2000's so they're probably a bit different now, but it really opened my eyes that the little bubble I was living in of high-achieving kids was far from the norm. And that meant that DD was even more ahead of the curve than I'd realized living in this bubble.

 

Possibly.

I also wonder how much of the phenomenon (High IQ) is due to cultural habits...you know, family focus on achievement, highly academic, enriched environments etc. And smart (using the word loosely) people seek out smart people to marry...and they tend to have smart children. And this could lead to high-IQ clusters in the population. .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lewelma]

Boy some of you guys knew early. I just thought all the other kids we knew were, well, stupid. (Ducking for cover)

When my ds was 16 months he ran SIX MILES to the river. That was when the doc said ' just because he can, does not mean he should' :tongue_smilie:  But I never connected that to anything but being seriously stubborn!

[Pegs]

Boy some of you guys knew early. I just thought all the other kids we knew were, well, stupid. (Ducking for cover)

 

I just snorfled! I can definitely relate to this.

 

Last year a friend asked me if I have an aversion to the gifted label, and I told her that I don't - it just doesn't apply to my DS. So she started pointing out all the things that my kid could do, which hers couldn't. I was too polite to tell her that it wasn't a meaningful comparison, because her kid was probably just a bit dim, and she wasn't doing him any favours by comparing them. Good thing I kept my mouth shut!!

[bakpak]

Like others, I assumed my DD would likely be gifted, but it's hard to tell with babies sometimes and I didn't have many around to compare her to in remote Alaska.  I crawled at 6 months, walked at 9 months, and was fully potty-trained at 18 months, so after hearing those stories I always thought she was a bit behind, except for fine motor skills which were ahead. Funny the earliest signs of giftedness related to language and reading, both still her strongest areas, and she tends to rise to the top in groups due to quick learning and a long attention span. Even as a baby she followed directions well - e.g., I didn't have to tell her more than once or twice not to go near the wood stove. She was always very focused and intense as a baby, and others would comment on it for her age, as well as her early language skills. I was surprised when at 10 months she correctly filled in the word "bear" for a book I was reading when I inadvertently paused for a moment, and she easily turned regular pages by then too. People were astounded at her first birthday party when she said 'owl' and 'ostrich' very clearly while opening said presents. She asked to learn a 3rd language before she was 2 and was reading at age 2. Also by 24 months she was asking existential questions and putting together concepts that had never been explained to her (you know, those freaky moments when you wonder who your child was BEFORE she was your child). I thought it was interesting that at 2 & 3 she didn't ask a lot of why questions as she usually intuited those answers, but tended to ask 'how', wanting to know the mechanics of everything she encountered. The why questions showed up more at ages 4 & 5 and usually related to understanding complex behavior and social issues (slavery, why aren't there any women presidents, etc).

[shawthorne44]

I just snorfled! I can definitely relate to this.

 

Last year a friend asked me if I have an aversion to the gifted label, and I told her that I don't - it just doesn't apply to my DS. So she started pointing out all the things that my kid could do, which hers couldn't. I was too polite to tell her that it wasn't a meaningful comparison, because her kid was probably just a bit dim, and she wasn't doing him any favours by comparing them. Good thing I kept my mouth shut!!

 

Yeah, I remember that moment.  My bff had a boy a couple of months younger than DD.  So, she watched DD's milestones to know what to expect.  And her son wasn't doing things at the same time.  Because he was younger, I hadn't hesitated to tell her when DD did stuff, because her son was younger so of course he wasn't doing them yet.  I think both of us were worried her son was dim.  

 

Then another clue for me was the shocked looks I'd get from every Tiger Mom when DD would play with their kid.  DD was born at the low end of the height percentile and then dropped below the chart.  So, she looked much younger than her age.  So, when people commented on how advanced DD seemed, I'd tell them her age.  At first, people would nod like "Oh, that makes sense".   Then they started to look at me like the two things weren't connected.  Although, I confess, there were a few Tiger Moms who said things with a racist basis.  Theme being that DD couldn't be smarter than their kid because we're white and they're Asian.  With those, I let them them think DD was younger than she was.  

[Guest]

With all except my youngest daughter I saw no obvious signs of gifteness emerge before we began homeschooling. It was just the way my kids were they seemed very normal and were all late-ish on their milestones. The leaps and depth where I noticed their intellect came out in their schoolwork and comprehension. The rest I'd just chalked up to 'our family's norm'. However my husband and I are both rather up there in IQ so we didn't think it would be odd to see that in our kids.

 

None, except the aforementioned daughter, are profoundly gifted (she is frighteningly adept, and not quite two). But theyd be poorly served by a public school scope, too :)