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/...ubmed_DefaultReportPanel.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.

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 �, 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

The most amazing thing about my daughter is that I can't say when she did her first social smile, cause I think she may have come out that way! Everyone told us it was impossible, so I kept doubting it, but when we visited her ped just before three weeks, the doctor was surprised as she had never seen a baby smile at her at such a young age. She also didn't cry much at all, but instead orated non-words within a few hours of birth. It always irritated me when I read that crying is a baby's only way of communicating.

Anyway, walking was 9 months 9 days (dancing and running by 12 months), not sure about crawling. She sang (no decipherable words) when she was maybe 6 months. She was very shy about talking, so I can't say when she started, but she used many other communication techniques to tell stories about the day when a caretaker would come home. I will not be surprised when she becomes a performer. She didn't switch to speaking until almost 18 months, but was almost instantly talking in sentences. (She is a bilingual child who likes to learn things "secretly.") At 20 months she used to play with language (i.e. restate phrases using different tenses and sentence structures) , and was cracking jokes by this time as well.

BWAHAHAHHA!!

When Mr W was about a year old, a friend was talking about cars, and said, "I'm thinking about getting a Mercedes-Benz."

Mr W, clear as a bell, says, "What is a Mercedes?"

I responded, "It is a type of car."

My friend could have been knocked over with a feather!!

I don't remember! I think DD started using simple words about 6 - 7 months and walking independently at 13 months. With DS its hard to remember a time when he wasn't talking. He started walking at about 11 months. One of the most memorable things for me about DS was his love of spelling words backwards when he was 3. His favourite word was hippopotamus.

with my DD3, she said words like tweezers, water, kicking, at 9 or ten months, and started walking at 13 months. Her language and understanding really took off and she knew letter sounds, upper and lower case letters, difficult shapes etc. by a little over 1 and a half. My other DD1, who I am not so sure about in terms of giftedness,lifted her head the day she was born, rolled over at three weeks, had her first social smile at three weeks old and walked early (awful I don't remember when) but she didn't talk as much and as early as the first. Her tongue muscles weren't strong even though she understood everything. Once her tongue got more coordinated, she just surprises me every day with how much she can say. My first is very advanced verbally and conitively and even with fine motor, but has never been strong in gross motor ways. My second is much more athletic and coordinated so it will be interested to see how they develop over time.

My daughter was speaking in complete sentences by 11-12 months and started walking at 12 months.

My son has always been more physical. He started rolling over at 9 days old and walking at 9 months old (and now at 5 has been selected for the team program in gymnastics). He was speaking in sentences around 18 months.

My son started speaking at 6 mos, had 100 words at 14 mos.
Made up his own consistent signs to express ideas/thoughts too.

Walked at 8 mos, and ran steady, could turn on a dime by 10 mos. Very scary.

There's doubt in my mind that your child is profoundly gifted. Every gifted child is unique and develops differently. My child said his first word at 5 months and is speaking in up to 9 word sentences now. He is also reading. His gross motor skills have always been slow to develop. He didn't walk until one day prior to 15 months. He is day-time potty trained and even uses the bathroom standing up at 2 yrs. 3 mo. He has great fine motor skills and loves puzzles and drawing.

My youngest turned over from front to back at the doctor's office at 2 days old. I thought it was a little freakish, the doctor was shocked saying she'd never seen it before, and I thought it was a fluke. He did it a week later, and then here and there until he was consistent at 8 weeks. He was sitting and a week later he was crawling at 5 months old. He started walking the week he turned 8 months, and it wasn't just a step here or there it was walking across the room. He was running a month later at 9 months.

His speaking in complete sentences didn't happen until he was almost 3 however, but he has some speech articulation issues (frontal and lateral lisp). At 8 months however, he had broken his nose by falling into a table leg and had to have his nose set under general anesthesia. That evening, he was sitting in his highchair and he was saying both mama and dada and was adding in some other words and we're pretty sure he was saying actual words that we couldn't understand. We actually think he spoke for quite a long time before we could understand him.

I don't remember too much exactly, but know that both boys were fast talking, showing comprehension of the world around them, counting and reading (self taught although we provided plenty of materials to satisfy the need when we saw it) .

We like to joke, but it's true, that DS1 taught himself to read sitting on the potty!

Physically, neither were advanced, and the one judged HG today was a late walker, trike rider etc. We had him in P.T. for a while when he was three, only to have the therapist say he made the fastest progress she had ever come across. That's what still surprises us today - the way in which he just can't, and then decides to do whatever, and does really well.

We, too, have this problem with DD and I classify it under perfectionism. Do you think this is accurate? DD forever would not ride her tricycle and later bike that she begged for. It was so frustrating because we knew she was able but until she accepted that she really was she would not even try. Once she felt ready she progressed in a matter of hours and now rides her bike like a pro but only in the garage! She refuses to go down the driveway. Sometimes we trick her into it, but she is still content riding it in the garage. I suspect any day she will venture out. But what I just described is DD in a nut shell on everything. Trying to coax her into doing something is met with major resistance and only when she is confident in her abilities will she do it. Knowing this is part of her personality, it shocks me just how advanced she really is.

My kids were/are not in a hurry to do anything on time (forget about early!).

DD7 was born 8 wks early. She rolled over at 7.5 months. Sat up at 9 months. Started crawling at 11 months and took her first step at 13.5 months. At 2.75 years she could only say 10 words. Shortly after her third birthday she began speaking in fluent sentences. She was not completely potty trained until over 4 yrs. She did nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that ever tipped us off that she was gifted. Looking back though, was found out that she was functionally blind in one eye, with not so good vision in the other, when she was 4.5. She was put in strong glasses and patched for over a year. I often wonder how much that delayed her development?

DS20months rolled over at 6 months, sat up at 8 months, crawled at 9 months and took his first step at 13 months. He has only ever said 9 words in his entire life (and four of them I have not heard him say in at least 2 months). He is a very bright little guy, and knowing what his sister was like I am less inclined to worry this time around.

DS spoke a few words at 6mths and full sentences before his 1st birthday. He was signing after 6 mths. I was working so much then and had a helper who took care of him. We had one of those cloth posters that had pockets with alphabets a-z on them, and each pocket, a little felt object, like an apple or banana that went into the "a" or "b" pockets. My helper went through with him a few times and he showed it to us as a parlour trick! That was when he was 9mths. At the time, I had no clue kids could be taught anything, so what was happening it didn't even strike me very hard - I just thought - nice. Even when he was reading road signs or reciting his Mother Goose books before 2yrs old, I couldn't wrap my head around it that he was reading. I thought he remembered shapes and pictures very well and could recite them very well with a picture cue, duh!

Physically though, he's not as fast. I don't know when he rolled over etc. But he walked at 13mths. He never liked playgrounds etc and I found out later that it was due to vision and gross motor skill issues. He's 7 now and still undergoing OT. Still can't cycle on a 2-wheel bike and swim strokes, but he's starting to scoot and loves it, yay!

my son said mumma, dada abd baba in 3 months.
and started walking talking and every thing before any other kid....
is my son gifted???
how would i know about it??

My psychomotor skills were normal for my age, but verbally and cognitively, I was well beyond most premature baby expectations. I spoke at eleven months, read at about age one and a half, spoke a full sentence at the age of two, and read the Bible on a third grader's comprehension at the age of four.
I also had a thirst for justice at the age of six. Whenever someone was being teased, I kind of yelled for people to stop teasing (for example, my sister and I were at Wendy's when this girl started calling her mean names, and I yelled at her about "how mean she was being to Paige"). I recognized racism at the age of eight, and that's a pretty young age. I got interested in psychology in fourth grade, and I wrote like an eighth or ninth grader at the time....so I was pretty much cognitively ahead of other people.
I was extremely behind motor-skills wise...I couldn't walk until I learned to read, and I'm still rather clumsy!

My kids never learned to walk... they went straight into free flight and now travel inter-dimensionally without even flapping their arms...

I didn't look at who is posting but I wonder how much of this is a lady's thing? (Go ahead, slap me.) I know my wife kept a little book on these things and so it must be documented for posperity somewhere.

I am sure all of them walked before 1 year, 9 months seems to be about the average. While they all read before K (mom and dad read to them every day) the youngest was the earliest reading what I am going to guess at a 1st grade level by 2 1/2.

I can't tell you when any of them learned to talk but I can tell you I can't shut any of them up.

I will also caution all of you not to teach them about credit cards at all! *sigh*

Poppa

I can't remember everything my son did but I recall wondering from a very early age whether there was something different about him.

He smiled at 2 weeks old (within the range of normal as far as I was aware)and was very very alert. We were in the emergency room when he was 2 weeks old and the nurse didn't believe me that he was that young and had to check our files. He was never a relaxed, cuddly baby (except when breastfeeding) and wanted to observe everything going on around him.

His first verbal communication happened at 5 months old (no one believed me) and by 12 months he had more words than I could count.

At 16 months he knew all primary and second colours, basic shapes, letters (but not phonics at that point) and numbers up to 10.

He recognised his written name by 20 months (when he started child care). And at this point he was speaking in full sentences, which delighted his carers because he also didn't sleep so they this hilarious little child to chat to while the other kids napped.

He has always been extremely social. From 10 months he would complain and often sob if any one he'd engaged with left the room. This could be a stranger in a lift who'd smiled at him or a friend at the park.

All his physical milestones were within the range of normal, which was very frustrating to him. He desperately wanted to write and draw at 2 but his fine motor skills were way behind his head so he didn't really start happily drawing until 3 or so. We have long periods of zero drawn or written output even now for the same reason, however it doesn't seem to stop his ability from progressing and now he is writing sentences unassisted from time to time.

Reading happened at 5 when he when he saw how useful a skill it was for my partner's child (who read at 3 but is the same age as my son). He's now just six and has gone from reading fairly basic Dr Suess to Harry Potter in 2 months without any instruction from me beyond answering his questions. He's played on a few reading programs on the internet, but he mostly practised his read on environmental print.

What an interesting thread. I've never been one to compare my child to others as a general rule, but somehow it is comforting to read of similar children to mine.

My two were/are late doing everything... crawling, walking, talking, etc. No early reading for the first (but she was half-blind before she got glasses at 4.5 so who knows what she would have done). I will say that she NEVER stops talking or asking questions now. Little man (almost 2) only says about 20 words but knows quite a few letters and all of his colours. He recognizes his name and can spell it with magnetic letters. His fine motor skills are insane. He does 30 piece puzzles. Did I mention that he can barely talk?

I find I watch DS much differently than I did DD. I completely missed any signs with her. Maybe I am watching too closely with him and looking for something that isn't there. Who knows?

OMG, mine too!

Do we have the same kid?!?

Most of the time, we can�t understand what DS21mo says, but he can do puzzles for ages 5+ without help.

New to the board, and am starting to see tons of similarities from your posts in my little guy.
He uses 2-3 word sentences at 12 months, and is always on Que. when asked a question. His timing is amazing. He is very sociable and wants strangers to notice him.. if they don't he stares at them smiling until the do... He really won't leave them alone until they show him some kind of attention. He laughs to himself a lot, and seems to get things that other kids his age wouldn't understand.
He's very aware of everyone around him. Has a fascination for putting tiny ipod speaker cables ends into the little jack. The tinier the better...

So is speaking in 2-3 word sentences early a sign of giftedness?????

Hitting milestones early can be a sign of giftedness, especially early verbal ability. Welcome!

Welcome SLB.

I would suggest getting a copy of Dr. Deborah Ruf's book 'Losing our Minds'. She has changed the title recently but it is the same book. She does a solid job of identifying specific characteristics of the gifted in the young group (infants and toddlers). It is definitely a start in trying to figure out if your little guy is gifted or not and to some extent what level of gifted.

My fairly average daughter hit almost every milestone early. My twice exceptional son was late at everything except walking. Neither crawled.

I assumed my daughter was very bright because of her early skill acquisition. But in about 4th or 5th grade her peers began to catch up and now she is only in the top 25% of her class. Her IQ scores range from average to high average.

Milestones can be an indication of giftedness, but it is not a slam dunk.

Thank you! I will def check out this book

Older son who is 2E:

Smiled responsively: 6 weeks
Sat: 6mo
Crawled: 7mo
Pulled to stand: 7mo
Walked: 13mo
Talked: 18mo with the exception of 1 word
Read: 5 years
Read well: 9 years

Younger son:

Put pacifier in own mouth: 1 week
Smiled: 6 weeks
Sat: 6 mo
Crawled: 7mo
Talked: 10mo
Walked: 13mo
Read: 2 years
Read well: 3 years

Older DD
Sat 8 mo.
crawled 9 mo (prefered rolling)
walked 12 months
talked 12 months (signed from 7 mo.)
read 2 years
read well 3 years

younger DD (2E)
sat 6 mo
crawled (bear walk, never on knees) 8 mo
talked 18 mo (signed from 9 mo.)
read 4 years
read well 7 years

Oldest daughter - qualified at gifted but chose reg ed - now in college
Didn't crawl - scooted on back of her head with her back arched
Pulled herself up and walked with support of furniture - 7 mos.
Walked independently - 9 mos.
Don't remember anything about time frame for talking but she was an early reader

Middle son - gifted in all 3 exceptionalities, senior in hs now
Crawled - 6 mos. - speedy, efficient crawler
Walked - 16 mos.
Read - 5 yrs

Youngest - severe dysgraphia, IQ not quite gifted on last test
Crawled - 11 mos. - had x-rays to verify no developmental challenges in bones, hips
Walked - 13 mos.
Talked - unintelligible one-word commands that siblings translated - 10 mos.
Talked fluently - 1.5 years
Read - 5.5 years
Wrote own name - 5 years
Computer skills - work mouse, play video games made for teens - 2 years
Memorized entire audio books including sound effects - 1.5 years

DS12, not gifted: walked independently at 7.5 months, crawled at 10 months (did it once or twice, so he could, but almost never did), first word at 11 mos., first sentence at 12 months

DD9, HG+: walked independently at 8 months and crawled for the first time the same day, first words about 7 months, full sentences by 12 months

DS7, MG-HG: crawled at 6 months, first steps at 12 months, walked independently at 13 months, first words about 7 months, full sentences by 12 months

DD (EG/PG):

rolled over from birth
sat up ~5 months
pulled up on furniture ~7 months
didn't walk until 11 months. Never cruised, never crawled much.

first words ~6-7 months "kitty" (maybe earlier-- I first noticed 'deliberate, symbolic' vocalizations about 4-5 months old, but she had a LOT of medical issues that affected her hearing at <2yo, so her diction was far from perfect-- other family members refused to believe me until 7mo when they could see it for themselves.) Full (SVO) sentences well before 1 yr, abstract nouns before 14 months old. Object permanence about 4-6 months, I think? Hard to know-- she never really seemed to struggle with it and was more limited by motor skills than anything else, I think-- once she could "seek" hidden objects, she found them unerringly, and she never played "peekaboo" like other babies.

Deliberate verbal teasing of family members by 12-15 months-- complete with maniacal laughter. (She would deliberately MISpronounce a word that my DH wanted her to say, with this impish grin... or would answer him with a nonsense word when he'd ask her a question... and when he'd get frustrated with her, she'd laugh and laugh at him.)

The most striking thing about DD's development was that there was never any "tentativeness" or faltering to it. It just suddenly was. All or nothing. Without any practicing of the skill that we could see, or at least little to speak of relative to what "normal" development predicted. For example, she cruised on furniture for less than a week before learning to walk... she knew how to sit back down when she learned to pull herself up to standing. Stuff like that. She was also quite matter-of-fact about it from day one. It never seemed like a "big deal" to her. She was just moving on to the next thing once she had that mastered, if that makes sense.

She definitely knew all of her letters, primary and secondary colors, and numbers to 25? (higher-- we aren't sure just how high) by the time she was 18 months. She knew letter sounds by age two, and had "read" books to herself-- turning pages, I mean, and repeating words to herself-- by about ten months old. She definitely was not reading until she was much older, however.

ROFL...

that reminds me of the incident when DD was not quite 2 yo-- we were getting out of a rental car to go meet my DH's former thesis advisor and his wife (like family to us) for dinner... she was struggling to get her car seat unbuckled, and from the back seat, we hear, clear as day, a sweet little girl voice saying "F***!!!" (uhhh... we could see the older couple that we were meeting... think grandparents/godparents...)

At that point, you sort of have an existential conflict as a parent... I mean, sure, it's PROFANITY with a capital F. The mother of all curse words and all... But still. Appropriate usage, n'est pas? LOL!

Also interesting to read about other kiddos that had physical development that is theoretically "not possible." Our DD was one of those, too. She held her head up and looked at our delivering physician seconds after delivery-- then rolled over! He remarked on it at the time-- with astonishment. (We have that on video, too.) We also know that she was smiling socially/deliberately at ~2-3 weeks old.

She had the most delicate and careful pincer grasp, too-- and I remember that because she used to touch and fondle my MIL's dangling earrings. She was invariably gentle-- just curious. It was amazing.

I just found this thread, don't know how I missed it I love reading about this stuff. Love the swearing stories.

DD was alert from birth. The dr had some concerns when we turned up for her 6 week check and they were meant to check she had all her new born reflexes (like raising their feet when their feet touch the ground and so on, the ones they grow out of) . She didn't. I knew, without knowing anything about such things, that she'd already passed them. She was very deliberately chatty at a couple of months. Don't remember her ever not smiling, though there must have been a time when she didn't.

She sat at 4 months, yet never rolled. She never crawled or bum scooted or cruised, but at 7 months insisted that we help her walk around. After 5 months of broken backs from bending over, once she was ABSOLUTELY sure she'd never fall down, dd let go of our hands and was walking/running/dancing/jumping etc as if she'd been doing it for years. Though until that time I was worried there was something wrong!

We never noticed that she was talking at first - we thought her words were a fluke, but when you watch video of her at 6 months, they were quite deliberate. Though she didn't really start speaking a lot until 12 months. Then she was speaking in sentences by 15 months. She knew all her colours and letters (upper and lower case), could identify and count to 20 (though always missed 16) and would call out 'number' or 'letter' accurately when we were walking around the shops at 18 months. She knew all her letter sounds by 2 and was reading basic words by 2.5, sentences of 5+ words by 3, writing her name before then. She could skip count, tell time to the half hour and add fractions at 3.5. Then she kind of stopped (she kept developing and coming up with amazing ideas, but didn't want to read or look at maths in a formal way) . She wasn't really interested in anything 'accademic' for 18 months until the last few weeks, when she went mad for it all again!

I'll never forget the woman who told me dd would never dance because she hadn't crawled. Lol, I was so worried (what if my dd was desperate to be a dancer??) As it turns out she's a great dancer and very agile, but couldn't care less

Oh, and she would never, ever slow down. Even from birth. I remember other mums talking about their babies sitting happily in their rockers while they did chores. Not dd. She was furious unless she was involved, being read to, played with, chatted to whilst being held, etc. from her very first days.

Hey all,

I am new here, but this question really got to me. My DS seemed somewhat delayed until he seemed so "un"delayed.

My DS is 22 months.

He didn't talk or babble much until 9 months, and then we didn't believe that he was saying things until 11 months.

At 9 months he was crawling like a pirate, and didn't crawl well until almost 11 months.

He didn't walk until almost 15 months, which seemed very delayed.

However,

At 22 months he jumps with 2 feet off the ground.
We have stopped counting the number of words he knows because he seems to know them all and uses them in sentences.
He has memorized several of his favorite books.
He shoots one handed and two handed baskets.

It seems his physical and verbal abilities have started to progress at a similar rate.

I wonder if progression to milestones is personality driven? I have always described DS as a "watcher," rather than a doer.

Best,
Scalder

My first son (now 4) we were not aware that he was different, but we recorded the following for him:

first word (Daddy): 5 months
sentences: by 13 months fluent and complex sentences
colours: by 15 months knew many colours including shades
sat independently: just before 5 months
crawling: 10 months
walking: 13 months
basic addition and subtraction: 2 years 2 months
reading words: 2 years 2 months
Fine Motor skills: he had perfect pencil grip, but I had read somewhere that toddlers have to scribble with a fist grip so I "corrected" his grip. After that it wasn't until he was over 3 that he got it right again without it causing discomfort.

BUT - we are sure he did some things earlier but we passed a lot off as fluke or us mishearing or being wrong. ALSO - he was a watcher. He would practice where no one could see before doing anything. We caught him practicing crawling in his crib for example.

Second Son (now 2 years, 4 months).
First words: 3 months (Hello, Daddy)
Complex sentences: 14 months
crawling: 10 months
walking: 12 months
he knew a lot of things earlier than our first child. His older brother loves to sit and teach him things, and he has access to things our first child never did.
Reading: he has started reading random words here and there. The first time he did this he was about 18 months, then nothing for ages until recently.
Humor: has always had a very well developed sense of humor, playing with words and laughing at us when he "tricks" us.
Basic addition and subtraction: was doing this around his second birthday, but is now doing it all the time.
Fine Motor: had perfect pencil grip from young. This time I did not correct it at all. He has started writing letters recently.

Baby number 3: (5 weeks old)
Can I just say that I am grateful to have found this thread - reading some of these made me know that I am not crazy!

This little one was holding his head up the day he was born, made eye contact before crying at birth (even though he needed oxygen due to the cord around his neck really tightly).
He smiled properly when 2 - 3 weeks old, although the grandparents did not believe us until he smiled at them too.
He is making verbal noises already, and mouth movements when we speak to him.
He focuses on pictures and stuffed toys for ages already and has done since about 3 weeks of age.

He gets so cross if I am reading to the older boys and I lay him down. as soon as I lift him up to "see" he is happy again.

He follows family voices around the room and today showed visible excitement when our oldest son walked into the room and started talking to him.

He wants constant interaction when he is awake - which is already up to 2 or 3 hours at a time in the day.

No where else have I been able to share all these early milestones, so THANK YOU for this awesome thread! It's also great to see that I am not a crazy woman for "seeing" these things in my children

This is a fun thread to read.

DD#1 took her first steps at 9 1/2 months and was running everywhere at 10 months. DH and I couldn't decide what her first word was, so I'm not sure when she started talking. She didn't say much until about 18 months, although she had no problem understanding and following multipart directions. When she hit 18 months, it was like a switch had been flipped. She started talking in full sentences and never.shut.up. Her favorite word at age 2 was "actually."

DD#2 took her first steps at 7 1/2 months and was running a few weeks later. She didn't speak nearly as much as her sister, in part because she couldn't get a word in edgewise. Plus, all she had to do was point at something and grunt or smile, and her sister would do whatever she wanted.

I never did add mine:

My daughter (now 12) was talking at 6 months. I think sentences by 12 months -- maybe a bit earlier - it's all a blur. She always had perfect enunciation and sang children's songs by the time she was 18 months old. Cruised at 7 months, took a first step at 9 months, but didn't actually walk until 13 months. She was a very efficient crawler.

She didn't read until kindergarten -- I think because she was stubborn and didn't want anyone to teach her until she was around other kids that were reading. As soon as she learned, she sped up and surpassed the others very quickly.

My son (17 months) is still figuring out the age he wants to do things at. I've heard him say about 4 sentences -- his first one was 7 or 8 months old -- but only when he really needs something. He's probably said a good 20-30 words. Maybe more. But almost all of them (including "daddy" and "mommy") he's only said a handful of times and then never repeats them.

We've been playing with blocks to see if he would stack them. He keeps knocking them down -- won't stack anything. The other day, out of nowhere, he started stacking and kept going - probably got to 6 before they fell down on their own.

We can't get him to repeat it (or anything else for that matter). It's almost like he knows we're trying to "test" him to see what he can do. Usually we're patient and don't push or anything, but every now and then it would be nice to know what he understands and is capable of. I guess we'll know when he's ready to show us.

He likes to turn on the TV in the livingroom when he's out there. Earlier, the noggin matching game was up and he patted the TV screen where the right card was. Because of this crazy development patterns, we have no idea if that was intentional or not. Anybody have any ideas? Is it "normal" for a gifted 17 month old to play a matching game correctly? It doesn't seem out of bounds for him based on what I have seen, but I've seen so little from him. My husband thinks it's a coincidence.

Oh - and he keeps near pefect time to a beat and has been doing so for months - this seems impossible to me for his age. Not sure what to make of this.

My son suddenly began to say "Hey!" when someone came into the house when he was about seven months. He never crawled, but started walking when he was barely nine months, and kept running pretty much constantly from then on. My daughter started crawling at about 5 1/2 months, so she took a little longer to walk. About 11 months. Her first word was later than her brother as well - around eight months. But the odd thing is that even though he hit many milestones earlier than he did, she learns academic type things far faster than he does.

I cannot remember exactly when, without looking at the notes but DH was first struck at DD's sense of humor at a few months.

She walked a day after she turned 11 months. When DD started something she just did it and continued. I don't remember early talking but by 18 months, she was articulate and using 3 word sentences and knew 50 different animals -- we were going to the zoo a lot.

And I remember going to a mom's group when she was 4 months and when I positioned myself on the floor with my baby on a blanket in front of me, she looked around and then rolled across the floor to another baby to check him out. Even the group leader was surprised that she would leave me to check another baby out in a strange place.

The most striking and at the time annoying, was that by 2 months she had to look at the world. Couldn't put her in the baby borne with her looking in. And also --- you know how you put the baby seat in the stroller, till they outgrow the baby seat and then you have the stroller?---, she was looking at me, not the world. Unacceptable. I remember trying to shop for some groceries and I had to roll her on her belly so her face was then looking forward and hold her with my hand, because I couldn't strap her in and pull the stupid stroller like that while I tried to stop. If she wasn't looking at the world, she would just scream. Looking at the world, she just stoppped.

Ren

How funny that our son's first word was "No" at 8 months. It hasn't stopped since, lol! He walked at 11 months but then almost immediately ran. He was talking in full sentences just over a year. The really striking thing for us was his use of language and his memory. He remembers EVERYTHING you say and will pull it out years later. Never tell this child "When you are 8, we are going to ...." because he will call you on it. He also heard a vocab word, would ask us what it meant, and then weeks later use it correctly in a sentence. He is a sponge period. He was lining up cars methodically by 8 months and had excellent hand/eye coordination and fine motor grasp.

Squeaky wheel, that sounds a lot like my son, but like adhoc said the stages kind of seem all like a blur. My girl has been more verbal than my boy from the start. Her first word was a sentence "get out of here" at 6 months old (her brother was interrupting her nursing and I said it a few times that week for the same reason). She doesn't have real words, just "hoo"s at the train, "Rawrs" at her brother, baby babbles a lot. But she sometimes makes sentences. She has said "I did it", which her brother says. Right now she's trying to walk. She's been insisting I hold her standing up frequently for what seems like an hour at a time. She took her first supported steps today. It was an accident. She was standing there and decided to throw a fit and stomped her feet standing up and ended up moving forward a few steps. Later today she did it again intentionally. She's got the strength and now the knowledge, we'll see how long it takes from here.
Eta: I told my grandmother what espy's doing and she said our women always skip crawling. My aunt apparently taught herself to walk by grabbing the ear of their indoor pet Labrador. Mom says I also skipped crawling and went from army crawling to walking. Cool.

My son talked extremely early, as in he had more words than I can count at 6 months. My daughter talked fairly early too. She is very intelligent, but not considered gifted.

My son didn't take his first steps until he was 15 months old. He could crawl for quite a while, but preferred to be held and carried. He was a very big baby and very attached to me.

I don't remember exactly when DS started talking, but I remember at 8 months old he woke up in the morning and said Daddy. The next morning he woke up and said Mommy. The next morning he said Daddy and then he called both of us Daddy for the next 3-4 months. But he would smirk every time he called me Daddy. We tried signs, but he only learned a couple by the time he could speak the actual words. I think he was speaking in sentences about 13 months.

He crawled a perfect 4 point crawl at about 4.5 months (after which he stopped crying in the afternoon). Then he refused to walk until about 14 months. I think it slowed him down.

Watching my now 9 yearold learning to crawl was amazing and life changing!She had just learned to sit on her own. She could crawl well, backwards. She was soooo mad that she could get where she wanted. She even learned to go backwards to get there. BUT what was amazing is that she practiced SOOOO hard! When she did it, she looked up...and waited for us to clap. She was 4.5 months. She spent the rest of her months holding my hand and walking to get around. She woul push a small chair. She could stand and bend over and stand up by 8 months, but didn't walk until 10.

By her first b-day, she was running to get a kite in the air!

Before she was born, she said hello to daddy when he came home from work.

He called her booper...because would boop my tummy.

He would call to her..."Booper!"
And 100% of the time, she would kick back!

She was so verbal and tall, that a woman once asked her what grade she was in..

She said "I'm 2."

The woman laughed.

"How old are you really?"

My daughter laughed...two."

The woman actually came over and said how funny it was that my daughter was pretending to be two.

I told her ...she IS two.

the woman got mad and took her child away.

Sydness,

Your story reminds me of my unidentified, but suspected gifted DS7. He was talking so well at the age of 2 and having so many adult conversations, no one would ever believe me when I told them he was only 2.

My identified MG/HG DS9 did not talk or walk early. Milestones were right on target.

I just noticed this thread.

My son walked on his own at 10 months.

He said his first intelligible word,("UP") other than "mama" and "dada", at 14 months.

I have an email my dad sent me that VERY same day!! Read it and know why I was a bit surprised by it's timing.

Here it is:

Did You Think English Is Easy?

I just wanted to quote your comment even though this is an old post. My son was three weeks early and I do think that needs to be taken into account. (although the medical opinion is that three weeks isn't going to make that much difference, six weeks really does.)

We did sign language, too. Our son learned, "more" and "eat" and...I can't remember what else. It wasn't much more before he was speaking, though.

Here's another clever compilation of reasons why English is so tricky to pronounce:

Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it�s said like bed, not bead �
For goodness� sake don�t call it �deed�!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there�s dose and rose and lose �
Just look them up � and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart �
Come, come, I�ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive.
I�d mastered it when I was five.

From a letter published in the London Sunday Times (January 3, 1965), cited by Marilyn Jager Adams in Beginning to Read (MIT 1991) 20. Only the initials of the author, T.S.W., are known.

Try reading it aloud without stumbling -- it's fun.

Cute!

Cute stuff, hip. I'm showing that to DS5 today.

DS5 talked early and with a huge vocabulary, complex sentence structure, etc. I don't remember when he walked, though my wife would surely know.

DS1.9 doesn't show any inclination to speak yet, but he's apparently ahead on his problem-solving abilities, according to a developmental-delay screening we had done recently. His receptive language is apparently advanced as well. My wife reports that as the assessers left, they told her it was a pleasure to evaluate an advanced child, almost in the same breath as they told her he was approved for speech therapy.

Now I'm a bit conflicted as to whether we should just leave well enough alone, especially because I was speech-delayed but turned out all right. Still, it's hard to turn down the free services. I want to have conversations with him! Plus, I'm still worried, just a little less worried.

This sounds like my ds, who spoke no more than 15 words till two weeks before his 2nd birthday. Then one day there was an explosion of words, which continued till I counted 85, I think, two weeks later on his birthday.

I remember worrying before the explosion, as his active vocabulary wasn't keeping pace with what the baby books said he should be doing. But he was fine - seven months later he was asking things like 'What would happen if the earth doesn't [sic] revolve on its axis?'. In retrospect I think it was probably a manifestation of his perfectionism -- wanting to wait to try something till he was sure he was good at it.

Maybe that's the way it will be with DS1.9. If I recall correctly, according to my mother, I didn't speak until about age 3. It makes me wonder where DS5 got his early verbal development from, if it's really driven heavily by genetics. As far as I know, my wife wasn't super-fast in that area, and neither were members of her family.

With every passing year I become more and more skeptical of heavy reliance on milestones, especially verbal / reading ones, as major predictors of intelligence. I suppose I may get less skeptical if DS1.9 turns out to be a dunce.

My DS6 said his first spoken word at 26 months. However by 2.5 he "said" over 400 words using ASL. He walked at 10 months.

My DS 4 also gas a speech disorder, but said his first word at 18 months, after 2 months of speech therapy. He walked at 10 months.

DD said her first word at 12 months. She walked at 10 months.

DD13 (born at 34.5 weeks) spoke her first reliable word at 4 months. The word was "hungry." She quickly followed that with "mama," "more," "daddy," and "again." (Notice any early indicators of her personality?) She walked at exactly 10 months. DD13 developed a lasting interest in classical music at 2, composed her first poetry at 3, and learned to read by following the words to songs in the church hymnal.

DS7 (born at 37 weeks) spoke his first word ("mama") at about 7 months and hasn't stopped talking (except when he's sleeping) since. His next words were "dadadadaday" and his sister's name, and he has kept his main importance on people and feelings. He walked at 9 months. DS7 has been a prolific reader since 4.5, but is not very interested in writing. He'd prefer to express his stories through cartoons.

DS4 didn't say his first word until 13 months and walked at 12 months, both completely average. His first word was "hi" his second word was "exit" because he loved e signs. However, he turned the pages in the books we read to him starting at 6 months, that was my first, huh? Moment.

My twins are 14 months, and only say mama and dada. My DS says "uh oh" as well, my dd only says mama & dada. The also just started walking two weeks ago. They understand us, I think they just don't want us to understand them yet. Lol.

DD7 did not hit milestones remarkably early. She was an extremely "alert" baby, however, and people frequently commented on it. I think there was a lot going on in her head that didn't show until later.

She said her first words at 8 or 9 months, but didn't start talking up a storm until about 16 months. When she did start talking, her pronunciation and usage was unusually good and her vocabulary extensive. She read at a simple level at age 3 and with fluency at 4.

She walked at about 11 months, and started out in slow motion. She hardly ever fell. It was more like she just didn't do a lot of any one thing until she felt she already had it mastered.

I think so and it might explain alot about my oldest. I don't specifically remember the milestones, but there are somethings that I can even see carrying to her current school issues. I don't remember when she actually started to talk, since she is just quieter in general, but well before 1 year, she would put her hands out in front of her, like in a pushing away gesture and say, what sounded like "monkey shoes". DH and I both noticed, then realized it was her way of saying she was done with something so we accepted it...eventually, her ability caught up with her intellect and we realized she had been saying "No thank you". She also put herself to bed on a vacation when she was maybe 22 mo. She just came in, announced that she was going to bed and off she went. She didn't really crawl (we do have hardwood floors)but went straight to walking and her favorite color has been black since she was two.
I guess part of my point is that I am suspecting she is one of those kids that has little patience for steps or really "discovering" but would like you to give her the whole thing all at once, kwim? It's like she goes straight to the end...

ok, now I'm cracking up because I see so many things that I too thought were just normal. Probably because I didn't really have any basis for comparison...

Lol. This reminds me...

One of DD's first combination of words was "Mimi (spoken,) Girl (spoken,) Boat (signed,) Hat (signed)" She would go through this combination every time she saw a particular picture in one of her books. It was a picture of a little African American girl wearing a hat with a bow on it. (Mimi was a character from another book that was a monkey the exact same color as this little girl.) So this was her way of describing this girl. Signing boat was a good enough approximation for "bow" in her mind, and well, it worked. This was at about 15 months old.

For weeks she kept saying what we thought was "mimi girl" in the car all. the. time. We just thought she really liked the picture of the little girl. Weeks and weeks went by, maybe even a month, until her speech cleared up enough to start hearing "Green means go." She was saying this phrase every time she saw a green light.

My daughter was already tracking objects with her eyes and lifting her head up before she even left the hospital. She skipped crawling altogether and went straight to walking somewhat late at 13 mos, and then was running maybe 2 weeks later. I don't think the idea of crawling ever occurred to her until she heard my wife talking about how she'd skipped it. By the time she was two she could already throw a ball mostly in the direction she wanted it to go, and she could kick a soccer ball in a straight line every time.

We'd learned about baby signs and figured we'd do that when she got to six months, but she already had a word she could use to tell us what she wanted: "mama," "dada," "baba," "buh-bye," and "nite-nite" were obvious. She'd wave her hand over her nose and say, "phew!" when she needed a change, and she'd created "pasherfir" for her pacifier, since we'd never referred to it as a "binky." We had all the basics covered at 6 months except for "hungry," but a couple months later that was a problem solved when my mom started watching her in the afternoons, and she learned "num-num" from grandma. She had a handful of other words, too, and if she didn't have a word or couldn't make herself understood, she'd just point, and I'd carry her over to whatever her fingers led to.

She played her first prank when she was about four months. I was getting her ready for bed and started changing what I thought was just a wet diaper, then yelled, "BABY!!!" so my wife could bring me the supplies I'd need for the disaster I'd just uncovered. Once I got her cleaned up, my daughter started shouting something unintelligible, and finally my wife stuck her head in, and my daughter busted a gut. It took us a while to figure out she was trying to imitate my "BABY!!!"

When she was two I had my "G*d d*mn" Stupid fishy" moment. My wife had a habit of twisting the car seat straps further every time she traveled, and I'd just placed my daughter in the car seat to find them more mangled than usual. As I was trying to sort them out with my daughter in the way, I whispered, "Damnit" under my breath. She gave me such a mischievous grin and said it back to me with such ferocity that I couldn't help but double over and laugh, in amusement and embarrassment. Of course, now I'd just rewarded the behavior, and so she kept doing it. When she did it for my wife, she laughed, too. The only fair thing to do now was to taper off the reactions slowly, which we did... though not before she'd performed for my holier-than-the-pope grandmother, naturally.

My 9yodd was born a month early. The doctors thought she might have been a little earlier than they had originally calculated because of some of the difficulties she had in the NICU. She smiled while still in the NICU and would calm immediately upon hearing my voice even when getting an IV changed (the nurses thought that and the way she looked right at people completely alert was amazing).

Her gross motor skills were not all that advanced unless you adjust for her prematurity...sat at 5 months, crawled on hands and knees at 7months, crawled on hands and feet like a crab at 10 months, and walked a week after her 1st birthday. She was potty trained for bowel movements at 11.5 months.

Her speech was more advanced...she said her first "word" at 4 months old (we called breastfeeding ninny and she would cry nin-nin when hungry) soon followed by mama and dada, had 12 words at 6 months and began signing, had over 50 word vocabulary plus over 50 signs and putting words together by 9 months, memorized whole books at 11 months, "read" them back to me, and sang songs in tune. She spoke in multi-word sentences using adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns correctly at 16 months. By 18 months she continued to memorize every book I read to her more than once and had a huge song repertoire though sometimes the words she thought someone was singing were very funny. She spoke like an adult by the time she was 20 months old using complex sentence structure and a huge vocabulary. She never really "babbled" as a baby and was always easily understood and very clear with her speaking.

Her fine motor skills were advanced as well...she wrote her name at 16 months and me other fine motor milestones at least twice as fast as average.

DYS PG-DS10 didn't talk for real until some time into Speech Therapy . His first sentence was "I love to jump" as he sprang off a couch. He was over 2 at the time. I didn't keep notes of every milestone but i took lots of video with commentary.

But, DS DID say this one word as a baby. We thought he was trying to say Mama but it turned out it was the name of this other baby girl that he was kind of obsessed with. We figured it out when her Christmas photo came and he flipped out over the photo! He was 8 months at the time and had known her since he was only weeks old. All those months I thought he was trying to same mama but he was definitely trying to say her name, not mama. After that he would only lay still for a diaper change if i gave him the photo.

Also, he liked numbers before he could really talk. I didn't catch it all at the time but I have the videos and I have since realized some of what I missed. There is video of him pointing out letters & numbers on a playset at the park and I just thought he wanted to climb again. Pointing at a "3" excitedly, exclaiming over and over, "fee! fee! fee!" as I took him the other way by the hand and also climbing the steps as a little one and counting "unn, ooohhh, feeeee" I was expecting little kid babble. He was probably not talking to me because he thought I didn't understand him! lol poor kid!

So, while at 18 months he wasn't really talking, wasn't communicating with us, he had been grunting, pointing & biting out of frustration! Also made up some of his own signs. But the speech therapist, using a writing board, figured out the kid new all his letters, could read words, new all the shapes you could think of (trapezoid, etc) he started to count up and down as his language skills emerged. his countdown was so cute too, from 10 down to 3, 2, 1, zeeeewooooooh. lol Then, more frustration for him, he couldn't express what was in his mind and he was shouting what I called "catch phrases" at us! We worried about echolalia but it wasn't. By 2.5 he was expressing himself well and was freaking people out in public all the time. In the park there would be skip counting and negotiating: "i want to go on the slide 80 more times...counting on 10s!" lol I'd get funny looks! It all worked out and he's a wonderful public speaker, has a great voice, amazing vocabulary and corrects my grammar constantly.

Walking - well, on his 1st birthday I said "that's it bub, walk" and I stood him up, moved a few feet back and he walked to me. After that he pretty much RAN 24/7. lol

MG/HG DD8 had some a few words at age 1 (mama, thanks, 1,2,3) then stopped abruptly which had us all worried. She had speech therapy at 18m until gr K. She had major articulation probs. She's perfectly fine now

She was cruising and starting to walk at 1.

So, does this fit the mold for gifted kids? Seems like so many have the super-early milestones.

DD7 started walking very early just short of 10 months. She was singing the alphabet song at 18 months, was able to use scissors at two years old, and could speak in full intelligible sentences well before she turned 3. She learned to read simple Dr. Seuss type books before kindergarten and now in second grade reads at about a fourth grade level. DD7 is very bright but has not been formally identified as gifted.

DS6 didn't start walking until 13 months. He didn't start talking until he was almost 3, but when he did he spoke in full sentences, but had trouble with certain sound combinations and still has some trouble pronouncing certain words. DS6 was recently identified as gifted when the school gave him the WISC-IV.

My younger son walked at 9 months; my older at 12 months, although he had had major skull surgery at 3 months, which maybe delayed him.
Both boys "talked" with baby sign language by at least 6 months. They responded with the appropriate signs if you asked them. When my older one was 13 months old, I said (without gesturing), "walk to the door and touch it." And he did it! He obviously had a receptive vocabulary at that point.

The one thing I clearly remember is when my son was two and he would arrange his magnet letters into sentences across the floor. He would take the numbers and do problems such as 2+8=10. I went to many garage sales picking up buckets of letters and numbers for him to do this with. You only had to show him how to do something once and he would remember it.
When we would go for walks he was fascinated with license plates on cars. He would search for unique, out of state plates. This was difficult when we would go to the store or any place with a large parking lot. He would want to cruise the lot in search of license plates from different states. Then he would remember how many of each we noticed, 4 Washington, 2 Oregon and so on. Walking through the store he would repeatedly talk about the plates, color, how many had letters and numbers. He clearly had obsessions.
At about 3 his new obsession became states and capitals. In a few short weeks after he knew all of them by shape of the state he started talking about routes from one end of the country to another. He would create long lines of people at the store while he talked. I clearly knew at that point this wasn't normal. Then obsessions with shows and characters like Thomas the Train. Knew details about every train character and when they started on the show, color, favorite paths, etc. Obsession is still a big one. He gets obsessed with a subject and exhausts it then moves on. Like a tornado. lol
The subtle hints were liking older children, trying to teach others, wanting to discuss WHY about everything. Example, it's time for bed, why? The why's went on and on. Then in the end he would usually come up with reasons WHY NOT. lol
At school they finally moved him up because he was getting in trouble trying to teach first graders division. Because he was in the first grade gifted class they wanted to learn it. It was distracting. lol So now he is a small fry in an older class but loves it.
As time goes by there really isn't any way to ignore it. Ignoring it becomes harder to do than acknowledging it. That is what I've experienced. No way not to know.


Currently he is eight years old and in the fourth grade gifted classes for english lit, science, history and sixth grade math, Algebra. It's still amazing to me year after year. It's like the song that never ends. You can't help planning every step of the way. There is nothing traditional about it.

At 9 months dd5.5 was able to say 'up', followed closely by all sorts of stuff like 'gorilla' and 'woof' because I guess she thought she was a dog. Around 11 months she shouted "I need water!" and has been trying to run the house since then.
She walked at 12 months and 3 days or thereabouts.
She has always stood out as extremely articulate and very well coordinated for her age. aka 'a handful'.

Ds10 was slow to be particularly well understood by others, some hearing issue from earaches, possibly. His large motor coordination has always lagged a bit from other kids his age, although he walked around 13 months, which is pretty normal.
He is tested gt for language arts; his fine motor control has always been really amazing, drawing, origami and other visual art/spatial things come extremely easily for him.

My oldest (6th grader) was in GT during 4th and 5th. We decided not to continue with GT since our local middle school is amazing and GT middle school is far and inconvenient. He was not especially quick to learn walking: at 13 months maybe... Has big motor skills always were very good (For instance, he moves very gracefully. Oddly he has no talent for sprinting - he does not change the lengths of his strides - from short and quick to long - as a his speed increases. This is very odd to me since it seems so intuitive). At some early pediatric visit we were asked: "does he know 50 words?" We were not sure. They seemed worried about that and I guess so were we as a result. He had one ear infection after another and that might have contributed... Then at the next visit they asked something like does he know a few hundred words and we thought that he pretty much had a vocabulary in the thousands. So everybody has their own schedule. Now he's in 6th grade an his Lexile range is 1526-1676 and his RIT score was 257 (BTW should we be worried that this is the exact same score he had last last year in 5th grade?)
Our second boy was extreme in that he spoke in sentences at age 9 months (comprising an object and a verb such as "I don't want to" and "I'm hungry"). But of course it was not always grammatically correct and often words were pulled together (I.e "I don't want to" sounded like "I nanto.") Still very early, I guess. He is clearly very smart (maybe smarter than his older brother but has not distinguished himself in school yet. He seems very relaxed about it and not as driven as his older brother). We'll see what happens.

Ds9 started walking at 8 1/2 months... Running at 9 not months and has not stopped yet! First word 6 months and full sentences by 18 months. Talks super fast and all the time. Often providing I sightful lectures on history, mythology( difference between Greek and Roman gods) or what ever topic he is interested in at the time.
Dd7 walked at 10months, was slower verbally- had to have tubes at 9 months and a 2 1/2, the Doctor said she heard everything as if she was under water until they got cleared out. Shortly after tubes she started talking and if you know her now... She has no problem talking...LOL!
Brandy

I awkwardly put my first answer in the brag thread. To quote a presidential candidate, "Oops.". Espers used one of her maybe sentences she uses (dora's I did it!) but she added onto it. This is the first sentence I've heard her make that she added to the words by herself. We were making animal sounds looking at a book. We got stuck on some cows for several minutes. Me: moooo Her: mmmo. Smiles, grins, and giggles. Finally, Her, "I dey it, I mmmm." Again, I apologize for making a conversation in the brag thread.
So it's official. She walked @ 11m. And talked @ 13.5 months, but not fluently. She still makes a lot of shrieks, squeaks, and grunts.

DD22 walked at 9 months and talked near 12 months. She is very bright (more of a "well schooled" child than academically gifted) and gifted athletically. She is currently in graduate school at the University of Oxford after graduating in the spring from a US college where she attended on a full ride athletic scholarship.

DS8 never crawled and walked at 8 months. His first word was at 6 months (Ab for our dog Abby) and his first phrases were before 12 months. He read at 3 years and was quite concerned that his long division skills were lacking when he started kindergarten. He loves sports, but isn't particularly athletic. He's been tested and he falls in the HG range...the jury is still out on whether he'll be a good student like his sister, but he loves a variety of topics, is very curious and is an all around enthusiastic child.

Oldest walked at 12 months and "talked" with baby signs at 9 months. Words at 12 months and full sentences at 14 months. He is hearing impaired but is very articulate- he got a 150 on the WISC verbal at age 6. He talked very fluently, big words, long sentences at 16 months.
Youngest walked at 10 months and talked full sentences at 12-14 months. He does everything earlier, I guess b/c he's trying to keep up with big brother, LOL!

DD, who is MG, hit normal milestones of walking and talking at about 11-12 months.

DS walked at about 12 months, but didn't talk until almost 27 months. The teachers were worried enough that suggested early intervention. Fortunately our pediatrician (the same one that identified him at 6 weeks as one of the most alert kids he had ever seen) told us that it would be a waste of time, and instead said that when DS decided to finally speak, it would be in full sentences. And that is exactly what happened at 27 months. His delay surprised us because he was mentally ahead of DD in all other measures.

DD walked at 12 months. She said her first word at 7 months and acquired more gradually till she had more than 50 on her first birthday. She had hundreds upon hundreds of words and was talking in paragraphs at 18 months.

DS walked at 13 months and said his first word at 10 months. I think he had maybe 20 words at a year, or soon after. His language development was slower than DD's, but still well ahead of the curve, especially for a boy.

DD has tested MG, though we suspect her score is a bit low. DS has not been tested. He is able to read beginner books at not-yet 4 (DD didn't read till nearly 5, at which point she suddenly read fluently) and is showing some other signs of being a bit "more" than we suspected. He is a much less driven child than DD, except when it comes to chess.

DD4 was nearly 15 months when she learned to walk. We always joked it was the 3 weeks she spent strapped in the Bjorn/stroller in Europe at 7 months that delayed her development. LOL

I have difficulty remembering....

I think dd was talking in short sentences by 12 months and handling very complicated sentence and even some abstract thought process by 18 months.

One day a couple weeks after she turned 2, I decided maybe I should start working with her on her numbers. After working with her for 15 minutes, she could count to 20. I decided not to do that anymore since I had no idea what we would do about her school if she was too advanced....

She taught herself how to count by fours when she was 3. She thought it quite amusing and would do this in the bathtub. I did not help teach her this.

She walked at exactly 9 months.

She read simple books at the age of three.

At the age of 4 she had such a thirst for knowledge and would not stop talking and trying to gather information... I decided to go back to work as I felt that interacting with me was not enough. We sent her to an academic preschool where they immediately accelerated her...

As a dancer, at the age of 10 she surpassed all her teachers who had danced professionally in her ability to pick-up on choreography. She was put in senior level classes which the teachers also took for practice and danced circles around them. Many of her teachers have told me they think she could have a career in dance- I don't think they realize that she really is simply gifted intellectually and they see the physical side of this. I am sure there are tons of better dancers out there- but few who learn the choreography after seeing it only one time.

She took the ACT at 13 and scored better than 80% of college-bound high school seniors.

First Words: 5 months
First Walked: 1 day shy of 15 months

DD4 was usingher hand to hold her pacifier in her mouth when still at the hospital
-was batting at toys at one week (seemed unusual and was just wondering if anyone else has seen this)
-put herself in a sitting position at 5 months
-waved bye to the dr at 6 month visit
-walked at 10 month
-tried to say name at 4 months...and then nothing until 10 words at 15 months and 70 at 18 months (and has not stopped talking since lol)
-believe she signed and said "ball" for the traffic lights at 10 months (I think indicating the were in the shape of a circle)
Now, at 4 she is really strong in math concepts (just taught her the concept of odds and evens in about 15 min), and she is not that interested in learning to read (although she has most of the concepts down)

DD1: smiled 3 weeks, rolled over at 6 weeks, sat unassisted at 4.5 months, crawled 6 months to the day, first steps 8.5 months, walked 10 months, running before 12 months, first words 8 months.

DD2: sat unassisted 5.5 months, crawled 7.5 months, rolled over 5 months, firsts steps 11 months, walking 12.5 months, running 14 months, first words 10 months

Its hard to know what will happen with DD2 since she is still only 15 months - she seems to have later spurts than her sister but is much stronger with her fine motor skills and was stacking 4 block towers well before a year and trying to draw much earlier than my older DD did.

My kids are strange. (lol). They're hot and cold... early and late.

My daughter knew the alphabet COLD at 16 months (I'd ask for letters and she'd point to them) before she ever said a single word (24 months). She was writing letters (26 months) before she was potty trained (28 months). She could read and write complete sentences, add, subtract and multiply, at 3 yrs, before she was able to play with other kids (4ish). She demonstrated conscious motor control of her hands at 5 days old, yet never crawled, and walked at 13 months.

I still don't know how she learned to tell time (is that bad? lol). She just "already could" in grade 1. I have no idea who taught her (I'm referring of course to hands on a clock, not a digital display).

My son, meanwhile, said NOTHING until 24 months, at which point he started naming all the letters of the alphabet. At 1 yr, he was obsessed with how toys worked and liked to try and take them apart. At 2 (after he started talking), he counted everything in site (up to about 10 or 15). He had advanced ability for puzzles and mazes, but didn't walk until 15 months. He has a language processing disorder, and yet was sounding out 3 letter words at 3 yrs old.

It goes on and on. (you know :-) It's late, I'm tired and I know I'm forgetting stuff.

Anyway, I stopped referring to those baby milestone books because they never made any sense. I'm to the point now where I have no idea what's normal ;p

LOL my daughter too!! I had all these plans to walk off my baby weight while she slept in the stroller - not a chance. She'd ride for a couple of minutes and start to cry, and continue crying until I took her out and carried her in a way that she could see around her.

Same here, I haven't referenced a milestone book ever with my DD2. I know Ruff puts a lot of focus on early milestones, but it's such an overgeneralization. My son seemed incredibly average. He army crawled at 7 months and sat up AFTER he crawled. He didn't crawl normally until he was 11 months and then walked at a year. He met the minimum standards for talking until he was about 26-28 months, when he began talking in adult-like sentences. He learned all his letters at 24 months and was reading and spelling simple words by 2 1/2. He also began doing math around 2 1/2, of his own fruition.

I agree with the observation that "early" isn't everything, and I'm not sure that it's truly meaningful if milestones are more-or-less on time. I think it's a lot more about atypical development (skipping or inverting milestones) and really astonishing acceleration (you know, the kind where you rationalize away what seems impossible by any means possible).

One strikingly illustrative example of 'early isn't indicative' is a comparison with a nearly perfectly matched child my DD's age (literally-- B-days same week, both with two-PhD parents, both only children, similar in appearance). Both girls were highly verbal and played well together (not parallel) at age 2, when they were in daycare together. If anything, her vocabulary far outstripped DD's. They were apart for several years (academic nomadism) and next met when they were about six. It was shocking how... ordinary (?) this other child seemed by comparison to my DD. My DH also remarked on it, and he's not one to do that. His question was; "Huh. What happened??" I mean, she was still the same lovely child, but she seemed comparatively so--so-- placid and incurious. It was as though her development had plateaued, whereas DD's had taken off exponentially. So her verbal precosity wasn't really significant, though at 2, it would have led to speculation that both were MG+, and the other girl likely PG. We know them still; the difference is staggering now that both girls are adolescents. The other child is a pretty typical middle schooler, and DD is, well-- not, and I can't even imagine it. So no, 'early' isn't 'gifted' necessarily.

It's not about the snapshots, it's about the trajectory.
It's that velcro-brain and avid/obsessive interest in the world at large that comes to mind when I think about DD being so very different. Many of her early daycare carers were quietly agog, but we figured that they probably were 'flattering' to most children, and didn't think that much of it.

Some of the most striking things about her earliest development was that she had a keen sense of self at a very young age. She was also just so weirdly observant of everything ALL.THE.TIME, and eerily empathetic and socially astute (this was the thing that inspired AWE in carers, to the point that a few of them recall her VERY well even over a decade later). She seemed to understand that other children (<2yo) didn't have the communication skills or cognitive awareness to exert self-control or experience true empathy, so it was as though she needed to compensate for any other peer she was engaged with. She shrugged off antisocial behavior in peers (though she had her own ways of casually, passively resisting being run over by them-- and she did this with grace and seemingly no effort at all). Eerily 'knowing,' really.


One more early thing that was downright bizarre. When my DD was not quite two, a new infant (just 12mo) entered her daycare. His home was Spanish-speaking, and none of the adults at the daycare were bilingual. He was a very sensitive little boy-- who was highly distressed, and cried and cried his first weeks in the new setting. One of the carers told me his background in passing on the first morning; apparently DD understood that or at least worked it out from what she'd overheard.

DD was obviously very concerned about his obvious distress, and gravitated toward him. The next day, she wanted to learn "some Spanish." I thought this was innocent enough and taught her how to say hello. A day later, she wanted to know what else I knew. Why? She needed to "learn real Spanish." Why? This other child just didn't know any English and she wanted to help him. Oh, and that it made the caregivers and other children less tense, too, because he wasn't crying all the time now that she talked to him in Spanish. She needed to know more than "Hola" and how to count to ten. When I wondered where she had learned the numbers, the answer was a casual "Oh, Sesame Street yesterday afternoon because Rosita speaks Spanish sometimes."

"I need to know more, mama. I can't just count and say hello to him all day long. He's going to know that I can't understand what he says back. Besides, 'hola. hola. hola.' It's silly."

The initial foray was evidently an experiment to determine if the child's distress was solely because of the language barrier. She was quite concerned that this was her responsibility since nobody else was stepping up to the plate.

There were a handful of those unsettling moments with DD as a baby, toddler, and preschooler-- most of them didn't really register as unusual for her, so some of them I haven't really thought about in years and I certainly didn't annotate them anywhere at the time. Looking back on them, I'm amazed.

Wow, Howler--that is a really amazing example! So much empathy and insight.

Here, Here!

It reminded of my son's best friend. When they were tiny, his friend's language skills were amazing - especially in comparison to our DS. My DH and I used to joke about it all the time. P was telling us about rollercoasters and waterparks at 18 mos...our DS said maybe 15 words tops. Both at 5 now, P is confident fun-loving boy with no interest in reading/science/maths. DS can't get enough of learning...but P blows him away at soccer, so...I guess will see what the years ahead bring.

Youngest Daughter learned early her twin would talk for her, and didn't talk until she was somewhere between two and three. When she did, she spoke often in movie quotes, to the point where Peanuts videos were banned for awhile because Lucy is just so darned mean. OTOH, I remember her taking this huge animal encyclopedia into the bathroom with her when she was still getting the potty-training thing going, and sitting there for a good half hour or more with a book that weighed roughly the same as she did on her lap. (This was the same kid the school volunteers refused to work with in first grade because her vocabulary outstripped theirs.)
The other three? Pretty typical, not terribly early or late at anything. They just had an intensity I didn't see in their friends or classmates. And little stuff: things like being five and taking a drive down the freeway with Dad and pointing out the window and saying "Look Daddy! Hoofed ungulates!"

DS6 was a challenging baby until about 5 months. He cried and had this annoyed, focused look on his face until he turned the corner. We chalked it up to colic though he was exclusively breastfed. At 5-6 months, he started this unusual "propeller" crawl where his left leg was dominant. It was pretty fast in retrospect but different... we dressed him as Yoda that Halloween as his crawl had the same "hobble."

Walked at late 10 months. Don't remember his specific first words- he knew how to ask for "baa" and certainly made his needs clear. Refused solids until 9M when he started eating Chipotle guacamole...good taste I guess. lol! A Christmas letter records his first 3 word sentence at 18M, "brother hit me."

He was quiet for the next few years until he asked to be taught how to read (just about 4 years old). He took off from there... learning just about anything anyone would take the time to teach him. His older brother took early cello lessons so we tried with his teacher at late 3. He was too shy. At 4, he engaged and took off... quickly reaching and passing his older brother.

Kids are people too�and just like grown-ups, their behavior can be inconsistent and they have to the capacity to change over time. So don't panic if you think your kid is intense, sensitive and cranky.