I thought of my own two kids when I began reading this post. My oldest-- a 13 year old dd-- is "wordy". We homeschool and haven't had her formally assessed for giftedness, but she read well before 4, is extrememly articulate, is excelling in her 10th grade curriculum, and scored 99th percentiles on a cogat test, so we just assume she's gifted. I was in the gifted program growing up and she reminds me of myself, so I have never given her "giftedness" much thought.
But, I've given a *ton* of thought to my 8 year old "mathy" son. Parenting a mathy kid seems so much more confusing and overwhelming than parenting a wordy kid. With my wordy kid, I just make sure she has appropriate reading material and plenty of opportunities to write. Easy, IMHO. But, I'm at a loss for how to help an 8 year old son who is whizzing through highschool math and begging for more. It's not as easy as simply handing him a challenging math book to read. With my daughter, her reading abilities naturally matured as she grew older. With my son, however, he needs to actually be taught concepts and given practice problems and that sort of thing. This mathy challenge is what has driven me to seek out the Davidson Institute and forums such as this for guidance.
Math talents seem to have a bit more WOW! factor. When my 3rd grade daughter read on a 9th grade level, people might say "Hey, that's really impressive! She's a good reader!". When my 3rd grade son does math on a 9th grade level people the response is more like "OMG! He's a genius! That's amazing!!".
