In the case of my 2 PG kids at least, the giftedness was evident in both of them before we left the hospital. People (including the pediatrician) commented on how alert they were during their first couple of months.
With my DS, his IQ was actually tested when he was 3 because of a concern about developmental delays. He was a slow talker and slow with some other milestones. His score was in the average range but went up dramatically at age 6, when he was tested again (after a skull fracture/traumatic brain injury). So what I am saying is that even if he has parents who are gifted (who knows but it's probably close), and he got genes that ultimately produce a high IQ, you never would have known it when he was 3. He showed some high talent in a few areas, but his overall development didn't show it. Then he went on to read before kindergarten and learn long division (and other advanced math) at age 6. So in a way, the data makes total sense to me, just given the examples I have in front of me. I was a "late bloomer" as well...things clicked for me in adolescence and I started to do very well in high school but had struggled before that with certain subjects.
I've seen a lot of posts on this forum where the assumption seems to be that if parents have a high IQ, then their kids must have a high IQ, and it's genetically inherited. Or if a kid has a high IQ, it's because they inherited the magical IQ gene. I just think it's much more complicated than that, esp. when you are talking about children. I don't even know for sure if my kids are "gifted." They are right now, because we have the scores which are probably fairly accurate representations of how they were functioning when tested, but I'm not going to conclude that their scores will stay exactly the same over time because they have the smart gene. Their scores are high enough I doubt they will drop out of the gifted range, but they are still too young to say for sure what the picture is going to look like in 5 or 10 years.
