Chalk us up in the clueless category! We also thought gifted meant "genius" or "prodigy". We thought more along the lines of Doogie Howser or a 3 year old that knows all the states and capitals or can tell you everything about every dinosaur that roamed the Earth. To us the probability of being gifted was very rare and it was not how we viewed our girls.
We knew both girls were smart and very inquisitive, but we didn't really compare them to other kids. I read the books on appropriate age development and basically ignored them because both girls were always ahead. The pediatrician would ask about some of those same age developments and we would tell her the girls had already hit the markers. She would ask how many words they knew, or have the girls jump on one foot or draw a picture of themselves, etc, then she would tell us we were doing a good job and to keep it up. We just patted ourselves on the back and kept going. We did a Parents As Teachers program with our 1st child, which runs from birth to 3 years of age. The lady would bring in blocks for DD9 to play with and we would let DD9 put together a jigsaw puzzle to show her. She also told us we were doing a good job and to keep it up. We didn't waste our time and do this program again with our 2nd child. We thought when the girls starting reading around 3-4 years old it was because they both went to pre-school for 2 years. We thought most, if not all, the kids were reading at least by the 2nd year of pre-school. Now we know that we were just assuming this and we were wrong.
DD9 was tested at the end of 1st grade, after she just turned 7. We weren't even looking at IQ necessarily, but were trying to get answers regarding her behaviors in school. When the testers explained where her IQ was at on the bell curve (which we also knew nothing about) and how she hit the ceiling in several sub-tests we were floored. They told us they hadn't seen anyone her age score so high on the memory sub-tests. Now that was something we could believe because sometimes it seemed like she had a photographic memory. DH and I just always joked that we had to make sure we followed through on what we said since she would definitely remember.
We had hoped to get DD7 tested at the end of last school year, but we got stuck on a waiting list and will hopefully get her in sometime during the 1st semester this school year. DD7 is very different from DD9, but now that we know more about what being gifted is like, I would say DD7 is also up there somewhere. I also wonder about possible stealth dyslexia or slow processing speed with DD7 because she gets it, but sometimes it takes quite a while and she is still turning letters and numbers around. I will have to post again once we get her results to see how close my estimate is with her.
Looking back, we had several indicators and several people that should have clued us in, if they had any idea about giftedness themselves. We just didn't even know we should be looking in the first place.
