Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment How long have you been around? Early ID...

1. When did you first suspected giftedness in your child?

From childhood�mine did not sleep at all during the day as a baby. (Thank God she slept at night!) She had a very long attention span and could watch TV for 1-2 hour stretches. (I know that is bad, but mommy needed the break! At least it was educational.)

2. What milestones/traits (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical skills, social) really made you suspect giftedness?
Under two years
� First word � 4 months � �Quack� (courtesy of Wiggles)
� 16 months � knew ABC�s by recognition and sounds and knew how to count to 20
� 20 months � knew nursery rhymes, songs, and speaking in short sentences

2 to 2.5 years �
� working 24 piece puzzles with amazing speed (left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top)
� Memorizing books read to her once or twice
� Could spell simple words
� Was learning 2 foreign languages
� Knew the names of and words to most songs she had heard before
� Placed in pre-school class of kids that were a year older
Preschool recommended testing. PhD evaluated with the Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development and Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration. The results were as follows based on age equivalents.
1. Body parts: 4.5 years (receptive) and 5.0 years (expressive)
2. Colors: 6.0 years
3. Shapes: 6.0 years
4. Qualitative/Quantitative Concepts � 5.5 years
5. Visual Discrimination � 6.6 years
6. Recites Alphabet - 5.9 years
7. Uppercase Letter Recognition � 6.3 years
8. Lower Case Letter Recognition � 6.0 years
9. Number Concepts � 5.3 years
10. Numeral Comprehension � 5.5 years
11. Listening Comprehension � 6.0 years
12. Visual-Motor Integration � 3.0 years

At 3 years
� DD went to Montessori school where she was accelerated into the intermediate class with 4 and 5 year olds.
� VERY curious about everything
� Learned to read at 3.5 years old

At 4 years
� DD was moved up to private Kindergarten class from Preschool. Kindergarten teacher was HG and though DD had an audio visual and selected photographic memory.

At 5 years, she tested out of public Kindergarten and went into 1st Grade.
� Top student in accelerated 1st Grade.
� DD has a very fast processing speed and is a �1st time learner� retains information.

3. Did your child have any delays? If so what area (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?Gross and fine motor skills were the last things to develop, but typically right in line with age level. DD walked 2 weeks after she turned one year.

4. Is your child 2E? If they are did they have other signs besides the obvious, more quantifiable ones? Told us to watch autism signs...doctor seemed concerned over large head circumference. Someone in forum mentioned Asperger�s. After looking at characteristics that may run in the family. DD has problems with implied comprehension. She also is very sensitive to noises. Vacuums, toilets flushing, and fans drive her crazy, but she is okay with shrill noises like fire alarms at school. This has improved with age, but is still there.

5. Has your child been tested?
Yes � Brigance Diagnostic Inventory of Early Development and Development Test of Visual-Motor Integration at 2 years (closer to 3) and WISC-IV at 6 years. Tested gifted to moderately gifted, but examiner said she didn�t push and based on feedback in the results meeting, she suspected that DD�s IQ was higher.

6. Is your child across the board gifted or quite asynchronous? If so what are his/her strengths and were they obvious from a young age? Mine is asynchronous. Very high left brain skills, but has a weakness with implied comprehension (above age level, but not by much). Gross and fine motor skills are only slightly above age level, but rest of skills are typically 3 to 6 years above age level.

7. When your child was young (baby/toddler/preschooler), was their development fairly even or did they excel more in certain areas (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical skills, social)?
Mine accelerated with processing speed, verbal, literacy, and math skills. Social skills were great with adults, but not with kids her age.

Newmom, thanks for taking this on. I can't wait to see how you synthesize the findings, but I don't envy you figuring out the coding....

DD is 4 y, 1 wk, so this is still very much all "in progress" -- if it's not helpful, just throw it out.

1. When did you first expected giftedness in your child?

Hmm... That's kind of hard. At birth, we all knew she was going to be smart. She was very alert from the get go, hit most milestones early (not all the physical ones) so that, like other people here, I kind of started ignoring them because I figured they were red flags for developmental delays. People always used to comment on how intense/observant she was when she was a baby; I don't remember when she first started looking at books, but she was clearly "into" them at 6 months, etc. It was always a no-brainer that she was "smart". BUT it didn't really hit me that it went beyond that until she was 3.5

2. What milestones/traits (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social) really made you suspect giftedness?

At 3.5, I took her out of daycare for financial reasons. I'd been saying for a while that I thought pre-k would be pointless because she would know everything by then. Well, having her around the house, I realized she already DID know all the pre-k stuff. So, I thought, ok, let's see what they do in Kinder. And after a couple of weeks, I realized, hmm, she basically had all the kinder stuff down (she still has a few gaps -- like, she doens't know coin values).

In retrospect, there were a ton of other signs: It's NOT normal for a 2 yo to want you to read them 20 books a day; or for them to be able to logically argue their position (or against you). Then there's the fact that she'd flourish the first several months she was in a new (age-grouped) room at day-care, then stablize, then flounder so that we'd be asking "Would they move her up already, for goodness sakes." But, really, it was just the fact that I realized she could do stuff that was considered 1st grade at 3.6 y that made me think, ok, the normal educational trajectory is NOT going to work with this one.

3. Did your child have any delays? If so what area (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?

Nope.

4. Is your child 2E? If they are did they have other signs besides the obvious, more quantifiable ones?

No.

5. Has your child been tested?

No.

6. Is your child across the board gifted or quite asynchronous? If so what are his/her strengths and were they obvious from a young age?

Both? She's above age-level at everything (except gross motor), but she's not at the same level with anything. The things that really stand out I guess have to do with general cognitive skills: she's got a fantastic sense of humor, she's very observant, very analytical; she's got great comprehension skills (~ 3rd grade level) across various disciplines -- science, literature, history.

7. When your child was young (baby/toddler/preschooler), was their development fairly even or did they excel more in certain areas (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?

Verbal skills stood out first. She was always amazing and amusing dh and me with what she'd say. I remember filling out milestone charts for her daycare and thinking (ok, I didn't phrase it anything like this at the time) "I'll see your two-word sentences and raise you six" or "I'll see your four-word sentences and raise you eleven." But even then, I was still thinking "really smart/bright", not gifted.

It's not?

lol! For us, it got worse for my small girl when she started walking at 12 months because she could go and get more and more and more and more books for me to read.

I had to limit read aloud time to 30 minute stretches because my voice can't take anything longer.

ETA:
I can't answer all the questions because I had no thoughts of giftedness for my big girl until she was 3 years old and 3 different teachers suggested it. Although, at her 2 year old check up, the NP estimated she was 2 to 2.5 years ahead cognitively but never mentioned anything about it.

She hasn't been tested officially but we did let a buddy administer the WPPSI-III for his Master's class.

She seems to excel verbally and in math. Her interests are math and science. Her maturity level is definitely lower. She wasn't placed into the 5-6 year old class at church because she can't sit still!

My small girl seems advanced: she object counted to 10 (missed 4) at 17 months old. Said her first word at 4 months, says all sorts of things now including sentences. She is starting to recognize shapes and colors and letters. She is also starting to work 24 piece puzzles - she can do 12 piece puzzles now.

When DS was 10 months old, DH told a casual friend once that DS reads 30 books in a sitting. The friend thought we were crazy.

I have videos of dd11 from when she was about 9 months old where I am reading to her and she is sitting with big open eyes twirling her wrists and ankles around in circles and making this big "o" with her mouth. Whenever I finished a book, she'd look horrified and start crying. As soon as I started reading again, she'd light back up and start twirling again. We thought that it was very, very cute.

DD11
1. When did you first expected giftedness in your child?
Age 6.5, toward the end of first grade. Initially we thought that she was a bit slow b/c she wasn't getting most of her work done in school and was truly miserable. I recall sitting in the principal's office with dd's teacher, dh, and the principal arguing with them that dd was going to be a "C" student and they needing to stop stressing her.

2. What milestones/traits (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social) really made you suspect giftedness?
Things that probably should have made me suspect:
said first word at 6 months
knew all colors including purple, pink, orange, etc. by 16 months
reading at 4
spoke in complete sentences by 15-18 months depending on how much you count grammar
amazing memory (remembered exactly where the toys in a store we went to once when she was under 2 were when we went back more than a year later.)
what seemed like an unlimited attention span from the time she was a month or so old
extreme emotional intensity
loved books from infancy to the point that she cried when I stopped reading
was sorting things like hexagons and two different types of stars into a 6 sided shape sorter with holes on all sides at 10 months
was reading books like Harry Potter and the Chronicals of Narnia at 6.5 (this is about the time when I was begining to tie together all of the things that were "wrong" with her.)
3. Did your child have any delays? If so what area (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?
While not so delayed as to require intervention, dd's gross motor skills were a bit slow. She wasn't walking until 15.5 months and didn't crawl at all. She did a butt scootchy thing that propelled her around well starting at 11 months.

4. Is your child 2E? If they are did they have other signs besides the obvious, more quantifiable ones?
No, although she was dx with SPD at 7.5. I do think that it is part and parcel of being gifted not necessarily a separate dx, though. She was unreasonably sensitive to noise and lights as a baby. She never slept and cried constantly as a baby. It had to be pin drop silent for her to sleep at all and she slept in 30 min intervals at best until 18 months. She stopped napping all together by about 15 months.
5. Has your child been tested?
Yes, IQ at 7.5 and the WJ-III achievement. She's also taken a ton of other achievement tests - EXPLORE, SAT, ITBS, MAPS, SRI Lexile, etc.
6. Is your child across the board gifted or quite asynchronous? If so what are his/her strengths and were they obvious from a young age?
She's pretty across the board gifted. As her 3rd grade teacher told me, "[dd's] weak areas are other people's strong areas." She consistently tests in the 99th percentile on grade level achievement tests for reading, writing, science, and social studies even with being 1-2 years younger than her grade peers (she has a fall bd with a grade skip). Her math achievement scores, which are her "weak" area, generally run btwn the 92nd to 97th percentile.
7. When your child was young (baby/toddler/preschooler), was their development fairly even or did they excel more in certain areas (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?
She was slower with gross motor and had amazing small motor skills and very good verbal skills. Socially and mathematically I'd say that she was right on par although she did have some difficulties with peers socially in preschool in terms of being a bit bossy. It wasn't such that no one else liked her, though. In hindsight, I think that she was just a bit more sophisticated in her speech and interests and was therefore directing the action.

I'll post dd9 separately.

1.
Didn't expect it. Many others said child was very alert as a baby. We didn't notice anything but we weren't really looking. (Ah, perhaps you're asking when we first 'experienced' giftedness?) Around age 2.
See #2.

2.
At age 2, across the board, most skills were approx. 1-2 years ahead. At age 2.5 is when we started to pay attention and was thinking "something is a bit different". Puzzles were one extremely obvious hint because child could do much more than other children of the same age. Gross motor skills were approx. a year ahead. Fine motor skills were probably 1-2 years ahead. Literacy was about 2 years ahead at the time. Math skills were 2-3 years ahead at the time. Of course, we didn't really know that at the time. It wasn't until child was around 4-5 that we went back to look ...

3. No delays
4. No, not 2E.
5. Yes, tested much later when older and would qualify for DYS.
6. Across the board gifted
7. Excelled across the board

Thanks!

DD9
1. When did you first expected giftedness in your child?
Once we figured out that dd11 was gifted, I started to wonder about dd9 b/c she was my more obviously "smart" child as a baby, so I'd say 4.5.

2. What milestones/traits (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social) really made you suspect giftedness?
Again, things that probably should have made me suspect:
said first word at 5 months followed quickly by combining two words by 5.5 months
spoke in complete sentences by about 16 months
very sophisticated sense of humor
tricky - I recall holding her at the stove when she was about 18 months old or younger. I was melting chocolate chips in a pot and she kept asking to eat them. I kept telling her "no" until she finally looked over my shoulder, got a look of horror on her face, pointed behind me and yelled, "oh no!" I turned around and she reached into the pot and grabbed a few chips and shoved them into her mouth.
3. Did your child have any delays? If so what area (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical skills, social)?
No, she was right on par with gross and small motor skills and ahead with social, verbal and mathematical skills. Her literacy skills have remained somewhat ahead but not as high as I would expect given her verbal IQ scores.
4. Is your child 2E? If they are did they have other signs besides the obvious, more quantifiable ones?
Not that we can tell although we have wondered about a few things. Nothing has been dx, though.
5. Has your child been tested?
Yes, IQ at 7.5 and 8.5. She took the EXPLORE last year as a 4th grader and has also taken MAPS at school and the WIAT-II at 8.5.
6. Is your child across the board gifted or quite asynchronous? If so what are his/her strengths and were they obvious from a young age?
I don't know. She has a language arts GT id, but I really think that math is her stronger area innately. Her verbal IQ scores were very high both times she was tested while her PRI scores fluctuated a lot, but she was coming off a bad school year that really beat down her confidence the time her PRI scores were lower (still above avg, just not 99th+). Her WIAT scores were high in all areas, but that isn't the full measure of a child, of course.
7. When your child was young (baby/toddler/preschooler), was their development fairly even or did they excel more in certain areas (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?
She was either average or advanced in everything. She was probably pretty average in gross and small motor skills. She was a little advanced in literacy skills (could read easy readers by 4.5 and write things like "I luv kats" at the same age, but nothing that made me say "wow!") She was quite advanced in terms of speech and pretty advanced socially.

Thanks everyone whose answered so far and also to those who PMed me! Hopefully I can start putting all of this in one massive excel file by this weekend and then let everyone know the results.

Also, don't feel bad at all if your kid is young or you didn't notice signs right away. That's interesting too and let me know because I'll make note of it.


We never made it to so many books because DD always gets stuck on a handful of books and we had to read them OVER and OVER and OVER again! Now it's normally one book per day that is read an infinite amount of time and we have to flip too all her special pages and read those pages over and over and over again (normally ones that have a word on them that she likes or really intricate pictures that she can try and figure out what all the things are). Oh, and then we have the inevitable tantrum after mom can only read the same book 50 times in a row...