Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion When did you know?

Hi, I am new, with a DD toddler who will be 2 in mid august. I am new to this "gifted" thing. I started to suspect that something was up when my DD 2-4 months of age, but have only recently come to the conclusion that she will need to be tested eventually (just knowing "how" to read, knowing circle s, sphere, square vs. cube, linguistic skills and 99% of milestones on par with a 3-5 year old, etc).
Just trying to get an idea of what parents and resources are out there and all of that.

My questions are these:
1) when did you start to see that your kid was different?
2) In hindsight were there things that were "normal" for you, your SO, or your families, but in reality were indications of giftedness that you merely accepted as routine?
3) when did you for sure conclude/accept that your child was gifted?

1. From birth pretty much.
2. Probably, but I have no idea what normal looks like, DS is an only.
3. Still working on that one, but testing helped a lot.

Just have fun with your DD and enjoy the toddler/preschool years. If I could I would go back and give myself that very advice. 18mo-2yrs was my favorite time with DS and I wish I had known to appreciate it more. And take lots of pictures, she's likely cuter right now than she will ever be again in her life :p

I have two kids, twins now 17yo. They just finished their junior year in high school, and actually perform similarly (high) in terms of grades and test scores. But they are and always have been quite different, and it was one of them that drove me to the internet for information.

1. from babyhood, for sure, but I wouldn't say birth
2. With twins we had the control experiment. DH and I worried we were neglecting DT2 while feeding DT1's voracious appetite for language learning before age 2. So we made a conscious effort to help him learn too and he made it abundantly clear he had no interest, which is presumably closer to the norm. DT1 was reading by age 2 yo and reading fluently by age 2.5, and is still a standout in high school classes related to language.
3. For us, the harder question was "what do our kids need academically to thrive?" We made a conscious choice to keep our kids in the neighborhood public schools with only subject acceleration (as available) and to augment where needed. There were some rough spots and hard choices along the way, but we have no regrets. They'll be applying (mostly out of state) to college in the fall, and they are very well-prepared and super-excited about their futures.

One of my two children....

1. From the Time he started talking, he just cracked me up...all.the.time. I knew he was different but I didn't know he was gifted.

2. I thought he was typically developing because his older brother was delayed. So I didn't realize he was exceeding the typical pattern of developing until later.

3. After a lot of denying....By the end of K I finally admitted it. It took the school a bit longer-- except a few of his teachers knew and tried to tell me at age 4 and again at 5.

My other son the path was different because of the delays but I knew all along that the delays and 2nd exceptionality weren't the whole story. So late elementary he was tested and confirmed. And nothing about his journey through childhood was normal. But he has a pretty normal life now at 17 (if a bit quirky).

I still don't know because DD4 hasn't been tested. But she hit all her milestones pretty early up until about 3 years old, e.g. pulled herself up to standing at 3 months, first word at 4 months, walking by 9 months, great over arm throw by 18 months plus alphabet, counting, shapes, etc., all learned from watching youtube videos on the ipad - which she figured out how to work, and so on, maths at 2, reading at 3. So she was definitely different when she was young.

At 3 everything slowed down a bit when she started daycare and then school last September. Her maths and reading went backwards too. I guess she's busy learning social skills. That, and we moved to a foreign country, so she's probably been busy absorbing her second language. Or else maybe she just had a fast start and now she's slowing down. Or maybe because I don't speak the language well, it's harder for me to compare her to other kids her age - because I don't know what they're saying most of the time.

Sorry, I'm rambling a bit now. But anyway, I won't be concluding that she's gifted until she gets tested, which isn't on the cards for now.

Ds10. When the test results came. Ds8 when ds10 was tested.

They are normal for my family and a lot of the non-family kids we know and knew then also turned out to be gifted so my perspective was kind of skewed. I knew he was bright but I was thinking 80 to 95th percentile not well above 99th.

Some days I am still unsure.

In retrospect, I should have known sooner.

1. At birth he was extremely alert. He was looking us in the eyes at the hospital. Nearly everyone commented on this, but we didn't think much of it at the time.
2. As a baby he slept very little, and was impossible to put down. He always seemed restless, but rarely sleepy.
3. I'd say when he was 2 we were pretty sure, because he had memorized every car make/model in parking lots as we went through and could "read" logos, like Target, Babies R Us and Pizza Hut. He also knew many types of dinosaurs by name and could classify them by herbivore/carnivore/omnivore, and also by Jurassic, Triassic or Cretaceous. By the time he was 4 we had preschool teachers confirming our suspicions. His preK 4 teacher and I were both in tears and hugging at our conference.

I think one reason we didn't catch on right away was that he didn't talk until he was 20 months, but he had a different sound for different objects, buzzing, whooshing and brumm brumm-type noises that we eventually realized formed patterns. He was also colicky and that threw us off a bit.

Our 2nd child was different, but also unique from other children we came across. He was very calm even though he also refused to nap. He liked to watch other kids.

By the time he was 3 he was solving multi-step math problems in his head and understood the concept of percentages. He was always easier to manage in play groups as he's a little more naturally social than his brother. The only way it's really obvious he's different from most kids is if you start talking math or science.

Have fun with your DD. I can't say that I enjoyed the toddler years, because they were so much work and as a SAHM I often felt isolated, but now that my kiddos are older I really miss those days.

DS- we only started to suspect at 3.25 years but more along the lines of "very bright". He would have random "flashes" that would catch people by surprised with the complexity of his thought but he was very adapt at blending in. He also had some delays with speaking (just barely making the minimum 10 words at 18 months) and he was by nature cautious with motor skills (he did not try to walk until 13 months, and he was confident he would not fall). We had him tested at 3.5 to rule it out, and his results stunned us at that age. At that same time, he was starting to tell us directly how he hated his daycare so we had to change tracks fast and put him into a GT school that started at 4 years old, where he just bloomed. So far, at 6 years, we are now wondering if his test results may have understated some of his capacity because he seemed to really have taken off in his GT school beyond what we expected - and loving every minute of it.

DD was more obvious and her 2/3 year old teacher noticed her right off the bat - told us up front that DD will need to be in a GT program. The teacher had made efforts to keep her mentally occupied even at 2-3 years old and would leave me notes of some of the hilarious quips she would say. She is now in same school as her older brother and doing well, but it is clear too that her interests and way of processing information is quite different from her brother. We have not had her tested other than an informal screening by the admissions department at the GT school.

3) I just found out DS6 is considered gifted.

1) I knew he was bright for sure since he was about a year old, but nothing screamed "this kid is gifted". He didn't do anything extraordinary as a baby, aside from turn the pages of books by 8-10 weeks, if I remember correctly (I think it was before I returned to work). He on the tail end of normal as far as verbal milestones, he's never been very articulate, he's not a font of knowledge, he has an immature sense of humor and a bunch of other things that made me think he was probably bright, but not gifted. He did do puzzles early, he learned his alphabet earlier than most kids and he has always liked numbers and counting. The ladies that ran his preschool would have college students in to help at times and often told us how they didn't tell the students that he was rather bright. The students would always come back to the teachers in disbelief after working one-on-one with him.

2)For me, probably only his ease in learning. He picks things up quickly compared to many other kids. On either side of our family (our first cousin's kids) there are at least 3, maybe 4 kids that I'd bet are gifted. One has been talking since 6 months, with full, clear sentences by 12 months. One could identify the make and model of almost any car at 3. He didn't even need to see the whole car, just part of it. My son didn't do any of that.

Thank you for all of these responses. makes me feel so much less alone. That's been my biggest issue, as a SAHM. None of the other SAHM's I know have kids that act like mine.
my own answers to my own questions:

1) about 2 weeks in. She was far too alert, looked for noises, looked for her dads voice, insisted on being propped up to see the room and turn her own head to look around.

2) a bit, as she got older. I thought that the earlier events were flukes, just really advanced pattern recognition (not realizing that that in itself was odd). My own brother was alert, and as he got older he picked up bigger words like a sponge, my sister was walking talking, running, smiling, etc all weeks and months ahead of time.

3) recently. Shes too young to be tested, but if this pattern continues then, I will. Even if she slows down she will still be on par with my family, which I learned, through all of this that my own parents are gifted, both in the 140's. I never knew.
I am thinking of having myself tested eventually, just for curiosities sake. I was homeschooled, but kept strictly in my grade, but thought that it was normal to test 6 grade levels ahead of my age group, to easily see patterns. I wished to blend in anyways.
It's odd, isn't it, how we research our children's oddities and find that we, ourselves, are also odd, or at least more odd than we had assumed.