Oh, I know. His was just unlike any other newborn that I have ever held - including his baby sister. She would push, but not push up to a standing position like he did. Everyone always commented on it. He also rolled early and held his head up early. and of course, I thought something was wrong with DD b/c she couldn't at a few weeks.

I didn't notice anything unusual about my sons (now age 7) until their second birthday. They were given 24 piece puzzles by my MIL (who, of course raise DH, so had some experience with this). I was ready to put them into storage until the boys were older, but turns out to be an appropriate difficulty for them. Then I did some research, and realized other things they did were also unusual. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me that a young toddler's first words usually aren't identifying letter of the alphabet. What stood out was that they were very very slow with gross motor and didn't speak many 'real' words at the time. Thus, we worried they might be slow.

One of the difficulties in understanding that my sons were not, in fact delayed, was the fact that they had very poor gross motor skills (still do) and followed the family tradition (from both parents) of talking late, and then suddenly becoming intelligible when they were speaking sentences - except letters, of course, and a handful of other words.

Looking back, I remember a comment or two from the nurses in the regular nursery (after NICU for prematurity) explaining to me that their eyes tracked better and they were more alert because they had 'more experience' looking around than children who spend the last two months in utero. That comment was 3-4 weeks before their due dates, and she was comparing them to other 4 week old babies so her reasoning for her comparison didn't make sense, but I didn't question it at the time, or think much about it because I didn't know there were any differences and I was a sleep deprived new parent. I remember repeating it to my grandmother when she commented on it.

My youngest is now 14 months old. She is entirely different from her brothers. She doesn't get overstimulated, but understimulated, which drives me batty. She has been physically very strong and advanced with gross motor stuff and also with her receptive language, loves wooden puzzles, knows at least some shapes and colors and a few letters, and has a terrific memory. One thing that is the same, is that she is somewhere on the slow side of things with expressive language and does not seem to want to follow a typical pattern of early speech (her brothers went from incomprehensible to an enormous vocabulary between 25 and 26 months old). She rarely tries to say the same thing more than twice, usually once, and if I don't get it, too bad. I was kinda hoping she would break family tradition there. Nope. I don't know where she will be, or is, on the gifted spectrum, but I suspect she is at least quite bright, but probably not PG. Just a guess.

Hmm...I'm not convinced. My eldest is 9 and has skipped two grades and has further acceleration in 2-3 other subjects. He never put things in his mouth. Ever.

My daughter is 5. She skipped kindergarten and does 2nd grade work in reading and language arts. Today she spent the 20 minute drive home from school barking at me to give her more multiplication problems. She started putting her fingers in her mouth before she was a month old. We had to hide everything from her because everything went into her mouth. She still puts stuff in her mouth!

So: two kids, equally gifted, polar opposites on this point.

Some of the correlations I've seen here are nice anecdotes, but I'm not convinced that a lot of them are causally related to giftedness. I did a couple Google and PubMed searches and didn't find anything to support things-in-mouth with giftedness (not that my searches were exhaustive!).

That said, I'm pretty sure that figuring out how to use your hands is a two-three month milestone (see Physical under months 2 and three on this site.). So using hands before this time could be considered a potential marker for giftedness.

My understanding of neonatal behavior is that alertness in the delivery room is common, but that constant alertness after that in the first weeks of life is not common.

I'm not trying to be a bummer here. This is just an example of the scientist in me!

Val

Yup, I have two kids, one HG+ for sure and one that I suspect is, and they were also polar opposites in terms of putting things in their mouths when they were babies.

One sucked his thumb--usually when he was thinking--but put nothing else in his mouth ever. He stopped sucking his thumb at 3yo, the very second the dentist told him to stop and gave him reasons why. He never sucked his thumb again.

The other child hated pacifiers and was never a thumb-sucker, but he would have put a Buick in his mouth if he thought he could get away with it! Nothing was safe!

I actually love that we can discuss these things as most of us only have experience with our own kids so it is hard to know if something was normal or not.


We genuinely believed at least for 18mo that every kid can does the same than DD. Then now if we look back she was advanced in almost everything but at that point we were just concentrated on her development and not comparing it to others.

LOL - you've just summed up my DS. I haven't a clue what LOG he is. At (almost) 4 DS still tries to put toys in his mouth.

DS7 was like that sometimes. I think he might still put something in his mouth, if I were unwise enough to remind him not to do so. But then, even as a toddler he would also take apart small fiddly things and not put any of the pieces in his mouth. I think it just depends on how the kid wants to interact with their environment and their people.

I like this. DS's affinity for a specific tactile experience has prompted odd looks and questions from past and present teachers. DS engages his environment differently.

We just adopted a son. Yippee! We are surprised at his incredible strength and alertness.

Even though he is adopted, DS knows who I am and quieted to my voice within 3 days (probably because I breastfeed him).

He smiled at 3 days old. He smiled at the same spot in a song I sang him, so that I could get him to do it on demand.

His ped noted his "remarkable muscle tone" at age 1 week and he has been able to stand since birth. (master of none: DS was born early and remains in the 5th percentile for height and weight, but we understood that SGA babies often lack muscle tone, so we're thrilled.)

He rolled over from his tummy to his back at 3 weeks old.

He's been able to sit propped up since birth. Yesterday DH sat DS 2.5 mos. on the couch and he fell asleep for 30+ minutes sitting up.

Last week, as I had him on his belly, DS crawled six inches to the end of the diaper changing table, about four body scooches before I caught him.

I don't know if DS 2.5 mos. is going to be GT but we are very happy he's strong and alert.

Congratulations SeaBlue! That is great news, and great that your SGA baby has good tone. And is already trying to move and is so alert. Sounds like an active life ahead of you!