I definitely think that early demand for stimulation is a real indicator. Lucky you picked up on it. As an infant, our DS10 would cry if we weren't at least giving him eye contact, from very early on. He would also cry if left lying down, cry if in wind, sun.... He was absolutely exhausting because of it.
We just thought it was some sort of colic.
Likewise, when he started talking very, very early, we really didn't understand how early this was compared to other kids.
We really had no idea and didn't start figuring out the whole GT thing until K. So,we did no reading on this issue and made some mistakes:
1. Letting people praise our child for smartness.
We didn't know how to deal with all the people exclaiming over our non-walking, super-talking baby. We were happy to let people praise him for being "so smart" because we thought it would be good for his self-esteem. It turns out that he so identifies with being "smart" that now he avoids anything he doesn't get right away. He has unbelievably high standards for himself that he struggles to meet, all because he's laboring under this idea that he's smart, so everything should be super-easy, and if it's not (gulp) maybe he's not smart.
What I know now is that no matter how smart the kid is, you shouldn't praise the child for this gift, but instead for what the child is doing with the gift. Praise hard work, praise trying, praise thinking things through.
Oops, I was giong to write more but parental duty calls...
GL,,
bk
