I have three children who all seem to be gifted some have different strength/weaknesses then the others they are all three very different...

however my youngest who is 7 1/2mo. old has just blown me away these passed few months and im just wondering when everyone elses gifted kids started doing things??

DD7 1/2mo.

smiled at 4wks
rolled over at 2mo.
sat unassisted at 4mo.
said "BABA" and "DADA" at 4 1/2mo.
crawled at 5mo.
pulled up at 5 1/2mo.
crusing at 5 1/2mo.
letting go and standing alone 5 1/2mo.
started saying "I DID IT" at 6mo.
also started "ALL DONE" AT 6 1/2MO.
getting into standing alone in middle of the room 7mo.
said "Good" "Hey" and "Yes" 7mo.
walking 7 1/2mo.
saying "got it" 7 1/2mo.

she also insists on being treated like the older children with her everything must be fair and equal and if the older kids have something she will pitch a fit if she does not get the same
if they have a snack she must have one too, if they are in the bath she must get in too, if i put thier shoes on she has to have shoes too you get the idea..
shes always alert constantly listening to our conversations and paying a large amount of attention to her surrondings

the other day she climbed up on her brothers bed then instead of falling down sat on the edge and cried till i came and got her then when i asked her brother and sister if they put her up there they said "no" and she said "i did it" so i put a toy she wanted up there and sure enough she climbed up there

so anyways is this normal for gifted kids?? when did your kids do these things??

At 13 months our dd-now-3 pushed a small chair over to her brother's bed, which is fairly high, got up and climbed into this bed-tent thing he had. She sat there for a while without my knowing this was going on, but she finally started calling for me when she noticed a scary spider (plastic) in the corner of the tent.
I thought 13 months for this was pretty early so 7.5 months would have completely freaked me out!
First word - 9 mos ("up!"). Correct 3 word+ sentences 11mos.
Playing with books: hiding them behind her back and playing peek a boo with them - 6 mos.
Sitting up 5 mos.
She did all her transitions to solid food/real cups way early, very well coordinated, etc.
We have no real idea of log at this point, just pretty sure she's gifted. She now (at 3) has some sight words, will name off some letters for words like 'stop', 'cat'. Reads her numbers, even jumbled up at least to 5, and can count well above that, individual objects. She is branching out into adding and taking away. A group of five objects she doesn't have to count anymore, just knows it's 5 by sight. Especially if objects are shown in a set of 3 and 2...not sure if that is adding.

Some of this I chalk up to trying to keep up with her brother.
Some of it must be my higher awareness of these milestones than with my first child.
But in the end I can't deny she's different than other 3's I meet.
She is really a big girl, 95% height/weight so she blends pretty well. Mostly other adults don't say much, but kids I meet will ask her age and then just be astounded by her speaking and the questions she asks, especially ones with little brothers or sisters around the same age. I think this is an interesting gauge.

she sounds A LOT like my oldest daughter iv gone back and forth on wheather or not she was gifted because while she reached her early milestones early (crawled at 5mo. walked at 8.9mo. sat an looked at books at 6mo. and brought me stacks of them to read her at 9mo.) at about 15mo. she actually stopped talking and didnt talk again till 2 then she started talking in sentences and using large words and at 2 1/2 she just randomly started saying her ABC's one day then another day we just heard her in her room counting to 10 (we had not even really said abc's w/her or counted)but then after that when she was 3-4 everything seemed a little less impressive she wasnt reading like some other young gifteds she wasnt doing math she actually rejected numbers at 3yrs old (she does simple addition now)then wouldnt even count passed 2 she just refused she new letters and letter sounds at three and could do 24+ peice puzzles

we have gotten passed that time where i doubted her giftedness because now she has started sounding out words at 4yrs...

as you said about your daughter iv just always known she was different you can tell she is gifted more by talking to her and watching her play then by asking her to do school stuff...

It is true that some gifted kids pass many of the traditional milestones early but sometimes they don't or sometimes the clues are not so obvious as walking/talking etc. I think problem solving issues such as using objects to reach things, early learning of object permanence etc. are not as obvious to parents. Also I find that a sense of humor can be very telling as well. Humor requires advance knowledge in order to see the twist or comic "wrongness" of things.

As for reading...my brightest of children was not even reading as he started Kindergarten. However, in October we went on a trip and I brought some very early readers (The dog is big.) and by the end of three weeks he was reading Magic Treehouse Books and by December, Harry Potter. It was wild. I have four kids and all are very bright but that experience blew me away.

Kids don't necessarily progress in a straight line. I also find that the really bright ones get into a topic or area of development and really progress and then out of nowhere drop that area and pick up another. And THIS is why I don't understand how they can say these kids are fine in traditional classrooms where you spend 25 minutes a day on each subject. But that is a rant for another post. ;-)

Not sure I can be of much help. DS4 was our first child and I assumed everything he was doing was normal. I do remember that he was cruising around 7 months but he didn't walk until 11 months also he did not speak early from what I recall. It took a family friend pointing out that DS knowing all his colors at 18 months was advanced before we really started to take notes on things.

Mr W (17mos), born 6 weeks early, was standing on his own at 4 mos. Pulled himself up at 6 mos. And walked at 9 mos. He ran at 13 mos.

He spoke single words clearly at 6 mos and speaks in complete sentences now (subject-verb-object) and can ask simple questions about what he sees or hears in both English and Spanish. He can follow complex commands, ie get x and put it in the trash. He is not a verbal kid, though.

My sister recently found some notes and pictures that my mom made when I was Mr W's age and, correcting for his early delivery, he is about 4 weeks behind me on the physical stuff but well ahead of me on the other things. I was a term baby.

yes you are absolutly right and i should have explained more about my 7mo. old daughter.. she understood object permanence very early and around 5 1/2mo. she would crawl to find us if we were not in the livingroom checking in each room for us.... and yes she sees the humor in things and laughs at silly things (at things that seem out of place).....she climbs up on things and doesnt just fall off like other babies she goes to the edge and looks over the side and cries waiting to be gotten down.....she knows/remembers facial features if i say wheres mommy's nose (eyes, or mouth) she touches it with her hand..... she doesnt just randomly repeat words she uses them properly (when she stood for the first time she said "I DID IT" and she says that everytime she acomplishes something and claps her hands in excitement......

and yes she is just a baby but a very odd baby and i cant ignore her advanced abilitys and personality anymore then i can ignore my 4yr olds gifted seeming behaviors
lol its really hard to ignore the elephant in the room if ya know what i mean...

My daughter was saying complete words at 6 months duck quack quack was her favorite. She progressed very quickly from one or two word sentences to complete sentences. She knew all her colors, body parts ABC between 12 and 18 months. She walked at 9 months. We also had a scoot a chair and climb up episode when she was very small. When she was very small she would take books or other long objects to turn lights on then she figured out how to move objects over to climb on so she climbed on all kinds of things. She started reading at 3 just picked up a book one day and there she went. I questioned for a long time if she was gifted even though I have been around tons of children and even worked in a day care when I was in college. Like another poster said people pick it up I've had classmates parents make comment like surely you know she's a little advanced of the others and a friend with a child the same age nicknamed her the Harvard baby before she was a year old. Hope this helps.

I completely agree with no straight line and is why a lot of people argue against gifted identification of infants/toddlers and specifically against Ruf's book with the telltale signs. I, however, have the poster child for Ruf's book and it was comforting to read the book and realize that I was not crazy.

For the most part DD was advanced on all levels. Her gross motor skills were the weaker group. She could sit up by age 4 mths but crawling and walking was fairly on schedule and not really advanced.

As for fine motor skills, they were to the extreme with the ability to write some letters and draw noticeable objects by the time she was 11 mths. She was also able to use a spoon independently and with hardly any mess by 7 or 8 mths.

As for verbal ... hers were through the roof: she had complex words by 3 months and complete complicated sentences by 6 mths including proper pronouns. We stopped counting words before she turned 1 because she was way over 100 words and all clear precise ones. The only baby word she had was wawa.

Numbers: Before she turned 1 she was able to count to 10 b/c she was fascinated with a row of buttons on her grandmother's shirts.

ABCs: Due to her discovering some block books she knew all the ABCs by 9 mths.

Body Parts: Knew all major and some minor ones by 4 mths.

Object Permanence: Our pediatrician was shocked that by 4 mths DD clearly understood this concept.

Sense of Humor: Has always been a funny baby and by 6 mths was hiding objects in her carseat asking people where it went and then pulling it out as if she did a magic trick. And as she grew her wit and humor matured even more. She is not even 3 and loves puns.

Anyway ... I just wanted to give you a breakdown for DD up to a year.

DD4 started talking around 9 months with two word combinations at 13 months. S-V-O sentences started between 15-18 months or so. It was hard to tell because during that time, some "words" in her sentences were babble and some were real words. But she knew what she was saying! That much was really obvious. She had a repertoire of songs at 18 months. She could hit the notes.

DS9 was my latest talker (S-V-O sentences at 2 years and 2 or 3 days). But he's skipped a grade already with another skip coming up and has extra extra acceleration in math. School was still easy for him after the skip last year. We'll see this coming year.

All my kids were late walkers (~14 months). But DS7 stood out: he walked at 14 months exactly and started running two weeks later. So: late walker, early runner. Talk about learning that stuff in a hurry. He never had the balance and direction control issues that new walkers have. It was bizarre. I used to wonder if he was practicing in his crib when no one was watching. (He has some perfectionist tendencies.)

Val