Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school New here, any suggestions?

Thanks Austin. My Ped admitted to not having much experience with this but offered to refer to a child psychologist. R is having some obsessive issues and up until recently the ped thought Asperger's. We are now clear of any autism suspicions. The only time I really see her with kids close to her own age (she is the youngest by four months) is in gymnastics. I really have no idea if they know the same things as her since thats not what the class is about. She is not advanced physically and the only glaring difference is that she understands/follows directions better than anyone else.
The ped said most two year olds can identify 1-10 pictures in a book. That is extremley hard for me to believe, R was doing that as soon as she could point. She just seems normal to me... I need to stop worrying about it I guess, but I'm concerned mainly about her fitting in with peers. Like all parents I just want her to be happy.

LOL - most parents would say the same.

I'd read Ruf's book to give you the basics then come back here to read the forum.

I think if the rest of us replied to your comments it would just get you worked up!!

She will fit in with her peers just fine...once u find them, which can take some doing! Just dont expect her agemates to nescessarily be her peers. Start meeting the local homeschoolers and local giifted community...that will help with finding the peers.
Smiles
Grinity

I know it is shocking to realize that what your kid is doing is so not within the normal range. Take a deep breath...take it day by day. You are on your way to taking the most amazing ride. Yes, it is very frustrating because society is not at all geared towards dealing with highly gifted children. But as far as dealing with your daughter's abilities you will do just fine.

Make sure you start to read up on all things gifted including the possibility of "overexcitability". Since learning about that I can be so much more supportive of my DS4's sensitivity to noise etc. Whereas before knowing it is part of his giftedness it made me extremely frustrated. You have a highly gifted child, what a blessing! What we need to do though, I feel, is to learn everything there is to learn so that we can nurture them, understand them fully AND advocate for them.

I am with you. My mouth drops when I hear about what kids are "SUPPOSED" to be doing at a certain age. My DS,23 months (don't know yet if HE is gifted) is currently obsessed with learning the sounds of the letters since he already mastered the alphabet, upper/ lower case.. this is what my DS4's classmates are doing in PreK at the moment....Ds4 was never physical. As a matter of fact he couldn't even jump until he was beyond 3. Needed help stepping down from a 5 inch ledge for the longest time (DS 23 months is the same). They are just so focused on the intellectual areas to bother with the physical.

And about the talking, DS4 was not an early talker. At age 2 he would say 6 word sentences but he didn't really start to talk until about 18 months. Being bilingual MAY have had something to do with that though.

Sorry, this is long. All I really meant to say is, you'll be OK. Get the recommended books, read up and enjoy the ride!

Annie

Annie- thank you very much for your helpful, supportive response. I am a bit calmer now. I realize that she's the exact same kid she was two days ago when I was proud of her love of geography. There is no need to label or do anything drastic at the moment. I'll do research- thanks everyone for the links and books- and I'll continue doing what I'm doing.

Good, because what you're doing is raising her like she's your own. Lol. What kind of things have you not heard about yet? "Asynchronous development" is a good one. Some people say it means that different skills develop at different times, like, the reading comprehension may be ahead of the emotional development or writing. I think gifties have a wide developmental range at any time, kind of like an agelessness. Yup, they march to the beat of their own drummer.

When DD was 3, we took her to a Doodlebops concert, and we were there for maybe three songs before she asked if we could leave, because her ears were hurting. DW was furious, because we'd spent all that money on tickets, plus drove an hour. I just hugged DD and told her it was okay, because my ears were hurting, too.

DW does not share our sensitivity to sound, but foul smells make her physically sick. I could never understand why she'd run the bathroom fan 24/7 if I let her. Now, we all understand each other.


Definitely. There is tons of research that supports the idea, because bilingual kids are simultaneously absorbing two different linguistic sets, with all the sounds and grammatical rules those entail. They typically speak later, and then they take off like rockets in both languages. This is true of normal children as well as gifted children. My wife's brother has a whole brood of bilingual gifted boys, and we've seen it in all of them.

In fact, I'd attribute Cheri's observation of apparent non-giftedness in speech to bilingualism, because if Rory can make herself understood in sign language, that means there's less urgency to work on spoken language. Rory is absorbing the concepts of both, and will likely take off in spoken language very soon.

My DD went the other way... we originally planned to start teaching her baby signs at 6 months, but by the time we got there, she already had spoken words for everything she needed, so we threw away that plan.

YES! Reading up on overexcitabilities answered A LOT of questions about my girls! It was like a sense of relief to know that these are "normal" quirks in gifted kids.

Welcome to the club =)

I agree about checking into overexcitabilities. It was like the world made a little more sense when I realized there was such a thing.

I wouldn't worry just yet about the language, especially if she is doing so well with signing. She could be asynchronous like someone else suggested. My DD wasn't speaking at 2 but could read. He does have ASD but, it was also very apparent something was wrong besides lack of speech. It sounds like your daughter has no issues with receptive language which is a good thing! If you want to talk any more about concerns related to ASD, I'm more than happy to chat with you. =)

Starting points... this "place" is terrific! Starting reading points, I loved starting with Your Gifted Child (may help push you to seeing even with in gifted you are out there), Ruf's Five Levels of Giftedness (ppt online and I know grinity posted a service site), and Genius Denied is great to read now so you are mentally prepared for how the educational system is set up (to not serve gifted kids inherently).

Just my favs.