It's ok, I didn't take it as a criticism. There really is no way to classify our kids at even close to 100%! I was sort of trying to say that in my post with all the almosts, but never got around to actually saying it.

This was my DD. She found some little board books for letters and became obsessed with them at age 6 mths. Hours of 'What's this?' and 'What's that?' as she would bring the book over for us to go through. I really had no idea that she was learning the alphabet but by 9 mths she made it clear that she knew all her letters and a few months later she knew all the sounds each letter makes. There is just an intensity with the HG+ kids. Their attention spans are amazing. We would sit in awe over DD's ability to be absorbed in something and wouldn't move from that task for 20 to 30 minutes. And this was when she was still a baby. As she got older her attention span just got longer and with her imagination she can spends hours entertaining herself.

I don't think I could say she showed what your son did with the spinning of the rings because we have a perfectionist and she expects to just be able to do it the first time which I think has been part of our problem when it came to potty training. It was not until recently when I talked to her about practicing and how with practice she will find it comes easier that we turned the corner. And when she finally gave in to that idea she was potty trained in less than a week. But what a struggle it has been to get her to even try.

I also want to say that I think what has been described has more to do with kids that are in the higher range of gifted and if a child does not show this intensity it doesn't mean they are not gifted or even HG+ because it isn't easy to lump them all in one category. I remember reading some posts in reference to Ruf's book and how a lot of parents with HG+ kids did not see the signs during infancy that Ruf talks about which is yet more proof that every child is an individual.

forgive me if this has ben said already, read through all the post but am tired....

one thing that sets my DD 2.8years apart form her peers besides her knowledge of things that others her age have not yet grasped but I guess could be taught threw hothousing is her

sense of humor- DD has had a very witty, dry, and sarcastic ense of humor...very adult in nature, since before she was 2....it still takes us aback and oters definitly have witnessed and commented about that

empethy- dd is very empethetic and compasionate....far more then her peers

imaginative play- this is actually something that highly frusterates DD while playing with agemates.....She as very in deapth imaginative play, creats huge senarios and monologes for the characters and even has moral issues involved
(example: Two of DD dinosuars were playing with each other while another one was watching them....they were talking about how they were friends and did everything together and the other dinosuar could not join them. Then one of the dinosaurs used his tail to knock his friend off the table....the dino that had been left out then asked him "why did you do that to him? I thought you were friends" )
Definitly not what you would see in the play of a ND 2.5 year old. She also does not like parellel play that many kids of 2 do, and she goes up and tries to initiate games and gets frusterated that they do not understand and play along.

Also the way she thinks and can logic....she saw a truck parked not in a parking place but in front of the curb at wal-mart. She asked me why it was parked there and not in a parking spot. I asked her why did she think and she responded "All the parking spots are small, they would fit a car, but not a mac truck, so he had to park there." She uses deductive reasoning on a daily baises, something that develops typically later in development and not something that can really be hothoused.....so I guess I would look at not just knowledge but lots of other indicators in a child that is young. I believe this is where a lot of difference can be seen between gifted children and ND children who have been hothoused.

This is the kind of thinking my kids did on a daily basis that I never thought anything about. At the time, I thought, of course toddlers intuitively know this kind of thing and use logic. They had intensity on certain things and persistence on other things. Lot's of questions and bigger kid anxieties and angst. Neither were particularly interested in words, letters, writing. They had their alphabet sounds somehow. My daughter could write before 3. But really because her brother was in kindergarten and she'd see his homework every night. My daughter was interested in reading briefly at 4 and stopped. They had non-academic preschools experience. And here we are anyway.

This is a really interesting topic. We have SO many early readers in our area that I have to wonder what is going on. Truly, at the beginning of K, I thought my kid would be a remedial student. Sure, he can describe heating duct and plumbing systems in great detail, do lego sets marked for 12+, multiply and divide, but he can't read "Go Dog Go". Turns out he learned to read at that level in a few weeks time after we thought to bring home a few early readers. I think it's great to encourage learning, play games, bring out the early readers, etc. But our kids seemed not to have suffered at all by not having an academic pre-K experience. I kind of wonder if they would have been early readers if I would have let them watch Sesame street, play starfall, introduce phonics, read early readers while they followed along? Who knows. I guess my point is, I don't think it really mattered for my kids. They are who they are.