Originally Posted by RachaelC
Originally Posted by MegMeg
Originally Posted by jojo
Deborah Ruf says that physical milestones are mostly irrelevant to giftedness

I wonder about this. The more I read this board, the more clear it seems that there are lots of different ways to be gifted, and probably lots of different neurological causes. So if you average over all the kids, some things may wash out, statistically speaking.

But I've seen enough comments here from parents whose gifted kids were physically advanced as babies, I do think there may be something to it. Maybe a subset of gifted kids have some kind of global neurological advancement (early myelination, maybe?) that causes both physical and cognitive advancement.

DANG, I really want to do some research on this!

You know, I'm glad you mentioned this. I didn't want to "ruffle feathers" on the first day smile but I don't tend to agree and there is other research to refute that as well (I know I should dig it up before opening my mouth...maybe another day I can get the links :)). My daughter has met every milestone, physical, social, verbal, etc more than 30% in advance of her age peers. How can it be that they are not related? Did you have the same experience?

I'm confused and it has been a little while since I read Ruf's book but she has clear markers in infancy that are related to gifted and are physical, such as early control of neck muscles. Maybe you are talking about early walking? My daughter was an average walker and I know a lot of members on this board had average or late walkers but many had early walkers. DD is a perfectionists and though she could theoretically walk by the time she was 11 months old; she wouldn't until she was sure she could master it which meant months of us holding her hand as she walked around until at 14 1/2 months she finally let go and did it on her own. She chose our anniversary to do it so we laugh and say it was her present to us. (Not the first anniversary present she gave us either. When she was 2 1/2 months she said elephant on our anniversary. A word she worked on for days as she focused on each syllable and on our anniversary she put it all together.)

As for Ruf's book ... I think I need to pull it out and review the infancy sections of the levels because I remember a lot of clues for gifted.