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

DS5 talked early (more than baby talk) at around 6 months.
Walked 10 days before his 1st birthday.

My Ds was a month early and was supposed to be "behind" for a year to three years while he caught up. We didn't pay much attention to traditional milestones because the docs always gave us the ones that were a month to two months earlier. They laughed at me when I asked if it was normal for a 3 mo old to turn pages in a book. I think they thought I was genuinely nuts.

DS walked his first steps at 10 mo and walked well by 10 mo 2 weeks. He had maybe 5 words on his 1st birthday but a huge receptive vocabulary and was understanding close to 100 signs and using probably 15-20 regularly on his own. By 14 mo, he was speaking in complex paragraphs that were at least 75% intelligible by strangers. People constantly snapped their heads around to see who was talking in the baby voice with adult words.

He has what we call "light bulb" moments where things just turn on- they don't build up, they just switch.

Hi guys, very interesting discussion. I was reading an article earlier this week and I thought some of you might be interested in reading it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16138...Pubmed_RVDocSum

Dd#1 said her first word at 6 months (cat) and started adding a lot of single words shortly thereafter. However, she was not walking until 15.5 months.

Dd#2 said her first two words at 5.5 months and combined them into a two word phrase of sorts [mama, a bat (bath) -- while pointing at the tub] within days of begining to speak. She was walking at 12.5 months.

All in all, both of my girls were early speakers, but not early with their gross motor skills. Dd#1 did have crazy small motor skills, though. She could spend 20 minutes taking the caps off of ballpoint pens and putting them back on by 9 months of age. We used to joke that she'd be our neurosurgeon.

Our experience was quite different. We saw very significant delays in development of motor milestones. And, I look back at the kids who were earliest in motor development among kids we know and none of them are gifted. I would consider attention span, level of attentiveness and ability to follow commands, etc. to all be stronger signs.

My DD4 did that with reading early this year. She went from sounding out many words and reading slowly to BOOM! reading on sight quickly. She also started sight reading words she's never seen. Example: the other day she sight read "register" in a flyer for some day camps and then had to ask what it meant.


Val

I thought I would be a cool Mom and teach baby sign language. (I started this right when the book suggested.) But my son keep learning the words so I didn't get to; do it. I figured I'm cool anyway.

Sorry I don't remember the age but I thought I'd share. I love when I read other peoples comments and it brings back memories. My son's first word was Duck.

It's a wonderful time enjoy it.

That is funny!
I tried the baby sign language too. I have a VERY independent child that never asked for anything so, although he knew the signs and what they meant he never used them to ask me for milk or more or anything.


To the OP, my Ds walked at 9 mos. as did I and he was speech delayed. He had his first words around the regular time for boys (I am thinking around 10-11 mos?) but, didn't really start talking until about 2 1/2-3 yo. He could read before he could talk I think.

I first read this as 'cursing at 5 1/2 mo.' I thought 'wow that is advanced!' You have to cut me some slack it is 2:30 AM right now. Dh is working late and I can't sleep 8(

Both Wolf and Bear said their first word around 7 months and were walking/running by around-a-bout 10 months. However Wolf didn't say another word till around 11 months and at 18 months was evaluated for delays because he didn't have 10 words (had TONS of signs though). Bear on the other hand flat out refused to learn sign and had over 75 words at 18 months as well as using 2-3 word sentences. Now at 2 1/2 he is talking in full sentences with proper grammar and has a vocabulary almost as good as Wolf (2 1/2 years older), his pronunciation leaves a bit to be desired though...

Haha, me too! DD still uses the sign for CHANGE and occasionally MILK. Although now she mostly just asks for Mama.

She first signed somewhere at 5/5.5 months? At 6 months she said "up" and now at 7 months she's got a vocabulary of maybe 7 words that I think she actually knows and understands the meaning. She's repeated a few others but I think that was more of her just imitating me. She's been cruising for awhile now and I suspect that she'll be walking soon on her own.

DS 9mo:
said "hands" at 5 months, I'd tell him the names of some of his body parts when i'd talk to him and change him in the morning, and some day's he'd say "hands" back to me.
- would say Duck at 6 mo, when he'd play in the bath with his duck, also Dad
(i know there's more but it can't remember)
Anyway about the day he turned 9 mo, he started calling his brother Jacob's name and still does it usually whenever I ask him to say Jacob he'll say "Gacob".
also says "Car" at 9 mo.

DS 3:
-Knew letters by 2, numbers to 10
-reads 3 letter words and simple books with 3, 3 letter word sentances.
-Very good and advancedsence of humor.

DS5:
-first word at 9 mo "Jesus"
-Didn't walk til 13-14 mo
-coupld tell me any and all letters by 19 mo,
-all letter sounds by 20mo
-increadible vocabulary after 1 year and on.
-doing 25 peice puzzles alone at 2 years
-counted to 20 before 2 1/2
-could understand how to sound out words by 2, but not interested
-read spontaniously 2 weeks after turning 3, went through 4 levels of "bob books", the decided he didn't need to read "until I'm 6" he'd say.
-he didn't read again for 7 or mo months after
-then started slowly reading again.co
-Recently tunred 5 and is now at at least 2nd grade reading level.
-counts to 100 or higher, counts by hundereds, 10'2, 5's...
-huge understanding of science at 5 ( cells, DNA, Planets...)
- loves languages and countries (can count to ten in spanish and swahili, can find many countries on the globe... can tell you so many facts about Japanese culture...(and I don't know any of them) (huge memory)

I had to look because I thought you had dug up an old post of mine! I had the exact same experience. Now I can't remember when, but maybe around 8-9 months DS's first word besides mom and dad was "book."

He tried walking the day before his 1st birthday. Took several steps, fell, and did not try again until 14 months, when he walked like he'd been doing it forever.

It's fun to read about all the little kiddos!

DD3.5 -
walked at 12.5 months, and was actually behind for quite some time before that in the gross motor skill area. If you saw her running today, you'd understand why our family is not very athletic!
Did not speak many words until 17-18 months. In fact, 18 months was when she really took off on everything. She's very perfectionistic so I think she held off until she was sure she could do it just right. Now she reads, writes, does math, independent on the computer, etc.

DD15mo.
Speaks more than her older sister did at this age, but nothing outrageous -- then again, I'm not sure if I know what's normal anymore. Said her first words around 9 months (her sister's name).
Took her first steps on the first birthday, then seemed to give up walking for a while. Then learned to walk in one day around 13 months and it did not take her long to get her steadiness. She has to be a big girl like her sister, which includes sitting by herself in a chair at the doctor's office, a picnic table at the park, on the couch, etc. Has the same gleam in her eye that her big sister has, like she knows much more than she can say.
Since around 13 months, when she sees letters in the bathtub, she gets all excited and says, "Eee!! ee!!" - I'm thinking because a lot of the letters have the "ee" sound at the end, like "B, C, D, G," etc. Not sure if that's unusual or not.

My kids did not reach the typical milestones early.

DS12 was always very alert, even at birth, and just seemed "different" from the other kids.

I didn't know that DS9 was gifted until he was 4 and started doing his brother's math homework (three years ahead).

I realize that Ruf's levels work for some kids, but I do somewhat resent the use of the word "always" to describe some of the skills, especially the reading skills. Many kids (including 2E) will not "always" reach the skills at the levels she indicated, even with very high IQ's. My kids do not fit the mold.

I found her book to be too reliant on anecdotes to be really useful.

I was also annoyed by the huge amount of crossover in IQs and accomplishments among kids at different LOGs (eg, Level 3 and Level 5). I don't remember seeing much in the way of explanation about this problem, which made me more dubious about the book's value.

(Someone please correct me if she wrote up a discussion about how two people with the same IQ end up in very different LOG groups).

Val

My Sons (now 7) walked and talked right at the end of the 'okay' range, correcting their age by 2 months for prematurity. If we didn't correct their age they were late with those milestones. First 4 or 5 words were typical "tree" "ball" "owl" "mama" and the next 26 words were letters of the alphabet. More speach was there, but not intelligible.

Walking was a bit different. They didn't walk on their feet until 16 months, when they started within 30 minutes of each other. The big "however" is that they had been walking on their knees since around 11.5 or 12 months. One of them only crawled for a short time before then, and the other crawled on a more normal curve.

Weak pronunciation and gross motor skills as well as extremely cautious personalities have remained constant. Walking and talking are certainly the most obvious things to see in babies and toddlers, and it certainly had most of us fooled into thinking there was a possibility they were, in fact, developmentally delayed. Our views changed very rapidly when their speach (rather suddenly) became intelligible. Other skills were emerging at the same time.

My DD (14 months) has had advanced gross motor skills, and I am more aware of her ability to identify shapes and colours than I was with her brothers, but she doesn't say much. Her gross motor is really good, but not 'out there'. Good neck strength from the start, first assisted steps at 6 months, first unassisted steps at 9, but wasn't really good at walking until she turned 11 months. At 13 months she could climb ladders and started consistently finding things to help her climb, such as her toy basket > piano bench > keyboard in order to try to get at the items on top.

Both my kids walked around 12 months and said first words around 9 months.

DD has always been more physically coordinated, though.

My DS 6 was a bit different on somethings.
He pulled himself up on the side of the tub they put newborns in the day he was born, its true, we have it on video.
Never crawled or cruised,
He walked at 10 months

Didn't utter a single word, No da da, no ma ma, just pointed, I don't know how many times I asked the DR. if there was something wrong, until 3 days before his 2nd birthday. My DS and my dad were playing that game where you have a little fishing pole and you try and get the fish as they go around, well my dad had already been scolded, by me, for says some words not for little ears. Well my DS missed a fish and said "G*d D*mn Stupid fishy" You could have blown me over with a feather. I think I started crying his voice was so sweet, even if what he said wasn't. Hasn't stopped talking since then. What kills me is I had to put that phrase in his baby book in the first word section.

Mostly I remember DS seemed to have been born a little kid already, never liked baby stuff, rattles stuff like that. Watched full length kid movies before 1 and so on.

OMG! That IS SOOOO FUNNY! We have had a few slips of that nature, but really really funny to be his first words worth uttering! Oh dear. Grandma must have loved that!!!

Our oldest is confirmed gifted, so he's the one I'd talk about. He was not all that early a talker (and definitely not an early walker) but it was his rate of language acquisition and the kinds of things he talked about that were amazing.

We also did sign language--took a class when he was 7 months. He picked up on it right away. Even the instructor would always comment on how attentive he was during class. He learned many, many signs and loved to show us things. He was so pleased to communicate. He only spoke a couple of words at his first birthday, and I even asked the pediatrician if it was unusual. He knew a ton of signs though. Then right after his first birthday his language exploded. He was speaking in complete sentences by 15 months. He also spoke very clearly and talked about unusual things early on. At 15 months my grandma was dying and we went back to see her. At that time my son was really into sounds but he didn't call them sounds, he called them "sound/noises," like he was so fascinated that there were two words for the same thing. Everywhere we went while we were visiting he would ask, "What's that sound/noise?," to the point that we start finding things that made funny noises just to entertain him. My sister could make funny noises with a blade of grass and he called that "Aunt Kay's sound/noise." Anyway, I have two younger sons and neither one has been quite as verbal or curious at that early age.

My oldest did not walk until 15 months, my second child walked at 19 months!!, and my youngest at 9 months!, so my children have been all over the map. My oldest was definitely the most verbal, though. I have no idea whether the other two are gifted--they don't show the same level of intensity as their brother but they are also still young (3 and 1). They have different personalities while my oldest was demanding and communicative from an early age.

Both kids had apparent receptive language understanding by 4-5 months. My son spoke early and often while my daughter started conversing late, at 2 ½, when her 6 month old brother started speaking. Although she was quiet, as an only child for her first 2 years with me as her full-time caregiver, she was able to direct us through gestures, eye contact and facial expression. I didn’t keep track of new words. When my son started part-time day care at 14 months, the teachers were astonished by how well spoke and his conversation topics. The director commented that he spoke as well as their most advanced Kers, which was as high as the program went. There was no denying his behavioral differences as compared to age peers when he was a toddler. At the same time, our daughter spoke better, but less, than her age peers so she stayed under the radar more, but her teacher and program director did mention that she was highly mature socially.

They each walked at 9 months and ran by 11 months. We didn’t have stairs when our daughter was a baby, but our son climbed stairs at 11 months.

DD began talking well under a year (like maybe 6mos. or so) and toddled at 11 mos for about two days before running. She hasn't stopped since.

Both of my kids were more noted for their climbing than their walking (stairs and jungle gyms--DD climbed jungle gym all the way to the top at 1 year). Both took first steps before a year, but found crawling much faster and more effective in getting to what they wanted ahead of us DS stuck with walking once he got going, but DD, even after she could run a bit, preferred crawling until close to 14 months.

Clear words for both kids were around a year, but when I looked back at journals I saw that both children sang back at us by six months. If animal sounds count, then DD's first words were probably around 10 months when she would make sounds in anticipation of the next page in Moo, Baa, La,La,La. DS was using Maaaa Maaa along with the sign (one of the few I knew) by ten months to request "more". What we noticed most about language was how rapid the acquisition was once they started. DD was quicker to use phrases (16 months)but both acquired adjectives before their peers and DD's enunciation was always crystal clear. Very few of those cute words most toddlers create by mixing syllables or missing blends.

DS said his first word around 5 to 6 months.

He didn't walk until he was around 16 months.

I have 3 DD's all spoke their first word(s) at 6 months oldest walked before 9 months 2nd(my DYS) walked at 10months and 3rd walked just after 9 months. So all of them were in a hurry