Hmm, maybe it's just my input that isn't as...ahem...impacting, but my poor neglected 3rd child is my PG contender, LOL! I too had all three of mine within (roughly) 4 years, and I don't really remember a first year milestone from number 3 to speak of.

I do at times credit DD#2, as she really took him under her little toddler wing when he was born, and taught him everything she knew.

All three of mine have tested gifted, but there is still a pretty good sized difference between my DYS kid and his siblings.

As said. Every family is unique .... or maybe your DS could have been even more brilliant if born first ...... ! We will never know, but we can all be sarcastic. Lets try not. All the data I know of, does suggest that it is single and first born children that are more often recognized as gifted - the key word being 'recognized'. This, of course, does not mean to say, that younger siblings are not as smart, but that in many case their intelligence is not as readily recognized and nurtured- even by their parents.

Oh goodness, I hope you didn't mean I was being sarcastic! Well, I mean perhaps I was, but I was aiming for light-hearted. I apologize if I didn't come across that way.

All's good.

In our case, it is one set of grandparents who keep prodding about the development of our 2nd in relation to our 1st.
"Well you didn't spend as much time reading with #2 as #1!" and so forth. Drives me up the wall.

I've tried explaining that our reading time with #1 was prompted primarily by him. We read as little or as much as he wanted. Same with #2, only she doesn't go for the marathon sessions like he did. I love reading to the kids and when he'd ask me for the same 50+ page book three times in a row... in one evening... I would generally oblige. But I can't possibly *force* this same qty on #2 -- it would only kill the joy of reading.

I spent my whole academic career three years behind an older sister who was off-the-charts, crazy-smart in every subject, and had to deal with a ton of comparing & contrasting from relatives and teachers as a result.

Perhaps I am a *little* cautious about attempts to compare or suggestions that we push her along. But right now she seems appropriately challenged and is happy as can be -- that's all I need to see. If she shows GT traits later on, we'll be there to help -- but I'd hate to saddle her (or us) with false expectations.

It was the same for us. I did nothing more or less with the child that is highly gifted than I did with the child that is not gifted. They just are who they are. Some siblings are within 10 IQ points of each other, some are not. I have no problem accepting this, but like you've experienced, others do.

we're going for assessments in the next 10 days with our two boys 7 and 9. DS9 is, from what I can see, at the very least EG and his brother ... well, they interact as peers and DS7 is extremely competitive with his brother, but I just don't get the "wow" from him.

He is a marvelous person and a number won't do anything about who that person is, I'm just curious to see how different (or not) they are.

wish us luck!

DS7 is going first so as not to be under DS9's influence so to speak.

I've personally noticed that milestone wise, DS5 reached the "did he just do that?" ones way early... whereas, DD3 didn't. But DD3, who we obviously and stupidly thought was our normal kid, is showing us each day that she is ahead of the norm and her big brother in other areas. Now this may not show us that she is gifted by test scores (and we still haven't had DS tested officially), but she is definitely more than just normal. And looking back, I'm the first born, easily labeled as gifted, and my brother (only 2 of us) was labeled as "normal"... yet as an adult, you can see that he is a lot brighter than "normal" and not just "smart", which is obviously different than bright or gifted. I think personality plays a huge role as well as the whole birth order, time alone with parents to "work on things", etc...

For those of you with perfectionists and non-perfectionists, which order are they? DS5 is the perfectionist (child #1 obviously), and DD3 is so not. I would think that parents would recognize giftedness in the perfectionist before the non-perfectionist too... thoughts?

We are in waiting mode. The twins just finished their testing today. Now the two week wait for results. It will be very interesting to see how they are in relation to each other overall since they each have their own stengths and tend to mirror each other. It will also be interesting since the tester isn't as used to GT kids. She tested my older DD and is the only tester that our insurance will cover right now. My oldest twin is more of a handful so I'll be interested to see what her scores look like.

Results are in! Tenative since I don't have the full report but the twins SB was 2 points difference. Different subtest results but similar end result. Interesting. I am very relieved since we had worried about my youngest twin because of her cerebral palsy being more severe than her sister. She also had a loss of oxygen after birth that had us all concerned.