It's most likely both nature and nurture. I think vocabulary is one of the things which is highly influenced by the parents. I remember studies about how much a child was spoken to and how big his vocabulary was.

I know this is not really SAHM/daycare scenario, but it's nature versus nurture. The book "What's going in in there? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life" has a simple table based on a study of adoption records. Both the biological and adoptive parents were into two groups based on their status, low-socioeconomical status (SES) and high-socioeconomical status. Then they looked at the child IQ at the age of 16.

The study showed 12 point IQ difference based on the status of the adoptive parents. The results were the same for both Low-SES and High-SES biological parents. The difference based on the biological parents is 16 points.

------------- Low-SES adoptive pars --- High-SES adoptive
Low-SES bio. ....... 92 ............. --- ..... 104 .......
High-SES bio. ...... 108 ............ --- ..... 120 .......

The numbers are from French study, 1989.

So yeah, both nature and nurture play a role and I would say both quite a lot. As for nurture, like others said there are good daycare situations and bad daycare situations as they are bad and good parents.

I agree with others that sometimes it's hard to recognize GT kids. I am not sure too many people would say that DS3 is gifted unless they got to really know him. Of course, if he starts reading signs or a book you can tell, if he starts talking about human anatomy, you can tell, but it's much more likely that he will behave just like a regular three year old.

Just for the record I have been home with the kids since my older one was born. I used to do some p/t work from home for a few years, but mostly when they were asleep.

Last edited by LMom; 05/05/08 01:08 PM. Reason: table formatting
LMom