Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Did you know?

If you are a gifted adult with a gifted child, did you ever sort of have a 'hunch' before any assessment or display of unusual development? Did that hunch influence any decisions? Or did you just keep that hunch at the back of your mind?

Yes, yes, and no. But as you know, I already have some quantitative sense of developmental milestones embedded in my general set of perceptions. And it did influence decisions to some extent, but only in the sense that we had some idea of which direction educational adaptations might need to go. My parenting philosophy has always been to meet the child where s/he is, so that short-term decisions can be fluid, but long-term goals remain the same--namely to grow healthy, happy, whole human beings who contribute goodness and beauty to others.

The practical manifestations have varied in the educational setting, and in the character-building domain, depending on the exact needs of the specific child at that moment in time. I think we would have individualized our parenting to the same extent for any child, as each person is uniquely gifted and challenged.

We kind of assumed our kids would be some level of smart because of apples usually not falling far from trees and all of that. DH and I have never officially been tested so we were a bit clueless in some ways about just how gifted we/they might be but I suspected that navigating the school system was going to be a little extra fun based on our experiences.

As for displays of unusual development - there were a few things that happened very young that seemed to raise everyone else's eyebrows which was our first clue. We quickly figured out to pretty much never talk about the things that our kids were interested in or doing except with a few very close and sympathetic friends. Other than that I can't say that it influenced any decisions. Similar to what aeh wrote above - my aim (regardless of the child) is to meet the child where they are and provide the broadest set of opportunities that I can. We'd try to dabble in as wide of a range as possible and then see what was of any interest (sports, music, science, arts, books, outdoors, etc, etc).

When they started school and we ran into issues then it definitely influenced our decisions around education.

Same here on assuming they'd be smart but not really knowing about giftedness or not. Dd7 surprised us a lot with her verbal/language skills but even then we didn't realize how unusual she was because she was our first. Ds6 surprised us when we realized how intuitive math is to him -- he's average/slightly above avg in reading so we didn't think he was gifted and then we started teaching dd7 math and he surpassed her. The final surprise was their test results. They've never been IQ tested and we think we're all MG as a family but dd7 blew the OLSAT out of the water and to my endless surprise DS6 also blew the NNAT2 out of the water (our gifted coordinator chose nnat for him because I candidly told her he doesn't test well and that I thought he'd do badly on the OLSAT... But I didn't know she switched until we got the results (

Also, I agree with long term goals being the same...I want independent, self sufficient adults. Maybe it's because we're likely "just" an MG family but our biggest challenge academically is just pushing for a bit if differentiation every year but generally keeping them in their grade. I think dd7 would have done well one grade ahead but it also wasn't too critical. It mostly works if our school lets me assign them their own math homework so they aren't stuck doing basic addition at home, but I keep them in their grade level class so they don't miss any crucial math skills I may have skipped over.

It's very possible that they are more gifted than we realize, given dd7's spontaneous reading at 2 and the way Ds6 problem solves, but it isn't something that's too important for us to figure out.

I'd recommend adding a "for now" to that statement

They might be MG or you might come to realize that that doesn't quite fit. It sounds like you're on this path already but from a BTDT perspective, listen to your gut and be open to course adjustments if needed.

(My BTDT story - we thought DS was MG (tests agreed at the time) and couldn't figure out why nothing that the school was proposing/attempting seemed even remotely appropriate for the kid we knew at home. A couple years later we had to retest to confirm some 2e stuff it was kind of a shocker when he tested much higher. The disconnect between the school's solutions and actual need made a lot more sense with the new results.)

i suspected my son was gifted when he was very young (probably about 2yo), before any assessment. and it did influence our decisions, but initially in the wrong way, at least for our son. we enrolled him in an academic day care thinking it would help satiate his need to learn, and he HATED it. lol. so we found a pre-school that met his emotional needs instead, and he was a happy clam. and i filled his shelves with books. and we built things together. and went to maker fairs.

other than feeding his brain, i kept it in the back of my mind, as you put it, and just played things by ear.

also, i've realized that i didn't fully comprehend how gifted he is until the last year or so. (he's 8 now.) he's my only kid, and my friends either had older kids or are just now having them, so the only kids i had to compare him to are family. and apparently we make smart babies because he didn't seem that unusually bright. now that i'm socializing with other parents at school and volunteering in the classroom, i'm seeing the difference far more starkly.

Thanks for the answers.

Chay, what were some of the eyebrow-raising stories? My mom cautioned us, that if DD did something like reading or math at an unusually early age, that we should probably keep it to ourselves. Like you said, without previous experience, it's hard to tell what's defies your expectation as a new parent and what just defies expectations.

When DD was closer to 1, we were playing at the library. On this day there happened to be another child there that was actually close in age to DD. The other child was walking around. DD wasn't walking yet. I asked the other parent how long the child had been walking. About a month. We kept on playing. A little bit later the other parent asked how long has she been pointing at things?

So all kids are different.

Oh boy, this is going back but here's the ones that stuck in my brain. Most are DS since by the time DD came along we were expecting this stuff. Some of our preschool fun -

- DS lifted his head to follow conversations day 1, we thought it was a fluke but he kept doing it from then on. (he wasn't 100% so there were some face-plants into collarbones or shoulders initially but if there was conversation - he seemed to want in) Even now (12) he will gravitate towards adult conversations whenever he can.
- we hardly baby-proofed anything - we would tell them that they couldn't touch something and explain why and they would listen even at 6 months old (we ended up having to do some babyproofing for visitors)
- we did have a doorknob thing on the door to the basement - DS figured out how to open it as soon as he was able to stand (he'd put his hand on the top and use his weight to push the top part down hard enough to turn the knob, we then wrapped the knob with a cloth under the plastic thing to make it harder, he figured that out instantly, pulled it out and repeat his move).
- DD declared that she wasn't going to wear diapers at 19 months old and I think she might have had 2 accidents, ever
- both kids' daycare made a few comments (can't remember the details)
- the recommended ages on games, toys and puzzles never seemed to match when our kids would find them interesting
- we walked into a room at a local museum that had some planets as decorations hanging in random order around the room from the ceiling and DS promptly pointed out that one was missing, we assumed he was talking about Pluto not being there (some of our books were dated) and he said - I know but they are missing Neptune and sure enough he was right.
- at 4 he got really, really mad at a dinosaur zoo exhibit where the parasaurolophus didn't make the right sound (he knew ALL about them and pretty much every other dinosaur)
- the dentist made some comment about brushing your teeth to get rid of the sugar bugs, DS rolled his eyes and said it isn't the bacteria, it is the waste from the bacteria that causes tooth decay (I have to assume he learned that from some tv show???) The dentist looked at me a little weird.
- the games he would try to get other kids to play with him at the park usually got some laughs

I'll also add that while all of that was going on he was in therapy for speech delay so it was an odd mix at times. In contrast, DD had an insane vocabulary (or maybe our expectations were just warped).

Definitely agree that all kids are different.

We were pretty clueless because we only knew our kid and had no real frame of reference. I remember one librarian and one babysitter telling us early on (around age 1) that DS's attention span and love of books were out there, but we hadn't thought much of it. Although I read to DS constantly and bought him things like alphabet puzzles, I fully expected him to learn to read in kindergarten along with the rest of the 5 and 6 year olds. When he spontaneously started reading at age 2, a matter of months after I'd weaned him, it was head-spinning. It didn't help that the very first thing he sounded out, at 2, from his highchair, was a newspaper headline. So, it was more of a "this shouldn't be happening" kind of feeling than a hunch. It's super cool though when your kids far surpass your expectations--even exceed what you thought was possible, right out of the gate. I found it quite humbling and definitely changed my parenting as a result, following his lead much more than I ever expected to. DS's ability to shock and awe also made it relatively easy to trust my gut. We never did pursue formal assessment.