For my son, he was always ahead in developmental milestones by months during infancy, then during toddlerhood was significantly farther ahead in numbers and letters than same age peers. He was also very creative and could problem solve, at times better than us (at the age of 4, he broke the wing on his plastic dragon which we could not fix, so he traced it on a piece of cardboard and matching paper, cut it out, glued it together, and somehow used a mangled paperclip to connect it, it truly looked fixed!). He was identified as gifted by the school in first grade. My daughter, who is most like brighter than he is, I never thought would be above average during her toddler/preschool years. She was not creative, did not appear to be ahead of the curve, etc. But once she started school, she thrived and is further ahead of where my son was at her age. I have never had their IQ's tested, (pertaining to question #3), so I am only going off of what their school has said. However I would feel more confident if I had actual IQ scores.
