This is a great picture of the dichotomy we're often faced with as parents of gifted kiddos! I know that with my 16-mth old, I come across a similar issue in almost every interaction. Take a restaurant lunch experience, for example: he is so small and so very much still a baby that people stop and stare at him wherever we go, as he speaks in full sentences, never forgets a name once he's associated it with a face, and quite obviously understands so much of what is happening around him.
Still, he's just a baby, really, and has baby wants and desires. So, he'll point to the tiny plastic sign at the end of our booth and say, "I want sign please, to bang!" And if you give him the sign, he will smile in devious delight like any other little boy his age and smash it against the table. The difference between my son and most other 16-mth olds is that he externally verbalizes his internal conversation, saying things like, "I bang the sign! I bang it! BANG! Bang, BANG!"
It rather reminds me of those Far Side cartoons where we can suddenly understand what dogs are trying to say...and they're really just saying, "Hey! Hey, hey!"
