Originally Posted by gratified3
The second issue does touch on whether "they all even out." I don't think they do, but I don't think relative positions are fixed at 6 months or 6 years either. Katelyn'sM om, from your descriptions of your DD, if we lined up 100 kids at 12 months, my DS would have shown development in the bottom 5% and your DD would clearly be at the top. If we looked at them again at 2 years for just verbal development, my DS wouldn't be quite so low and your DD would still be amazing. By the time my DS took an IQ test at 6, it is impossible to score higher than he did verbally (without looking at extended scores), so he's changed relative positions a LOT. I believe that your DD will still be precocious and advanced at 4 or 8 or 12 or 20, but she might not have the same exact relative position since other kids are late-bloomers or slow to get started or on a different trajectory altogether. They don't all even out because someone is always in the 99th percentile on whatever measure! But I'm not sure that's always the kid one would have predicted from looking at 1 yo or 3 yo or 10 yo or 15 yo. I guess I see the asynchrony that most agree is common in HG kids as extending to development too. Just as a kid with capacity for abstract math can forget his lunch box nearly daily, another kid with incredible verbal capacity receptively can have relative delays in expressive capacity, or delays in motor development but not abstract concept formation, or just be a bit lazy in exploring his environment, or have a cautious personality that leads to observation rather than efforts at doing, etc.

Ultimately, I see Ruf's work as operating from a fixed theory of intelligence and I don't share that assumption. I think early milestones don't work because they assume that one snapshot in time predicts what kids look like at another snapshot in time. Watching my own kids develop, they do it so unevenly that their relative positions compared to other kids seem quite fluid. One of my kids suddenly made a giant leap in chess this year after a year or two of fairly lackluster development. Some kids work harder. Some have inadequate nutrition that hampers brain growth. Some learn more through self-motivated activity and develop their brains through cultural advantages, choosing to go to math camp, or ferocious learning to keep up with an older sib or share an interest of a parent. The nervous system continues to develop and change (and, sadly at my age, weaken cry) over time in ways that don't seem fixed to me. An IQ test gives a one-day estimate that relies on performance of particular tasks as a substitute for what we think is intelligence and then assigns relative rank for performance on those tasks. It seems to me that those ranks would be subject to change over time, so it's hard for me to think that a kid could *be* a level 3 as an ongoing label starting literally from birth. Isn't that a little like saying that the best runner was the one that ran first as a toddler rather than evaluating this as an ongoing process?

Wow lots of posts to read since this morning.

Gratified:

I don't disagree with you, in that there are late bloomers and Ruf doesn't really account for this with her levels of giftedness. I have never argued against this reasoning but only offer that her study has some truth because I happen to have one of those infants/toddlers that matches up to her lists. I could almost use the book as a checklist for everything we were experiencing and because of that along with the stories the parents shared I finally had my wake up call. Before that I really had no idea what to make of it and was literally looking up issues on the spectrum freaking out and wondering if this is why my child was so abnormal in comparison to what I see and read. Milestones were a joke for me. I remember looking at them when DD was only 2 weeks old and laughing out loud at the absurdity of the lists because she had mastered all the milestones up to 3 months. I figured they were useless information and must be for the parents who had seriously delayed infants so they wouldn't worry. Sounds awful but is really what I thought. My grandmother was the one who kept pointing out how smart DD was and I kept rolling my eyes thinking of course you think that ... she is your great-grandbaby. So it wasn't until running a search on autism and a few others that I stumbled upon gifted which led me to this site. And when someone suggested Ruf's book I ordered it and read it and finally found some logic to what I saw. Do I think she has all of the answers? No and I completely agree that she overlooks a huge component in the gifted community: 2E, but I appreciate that she includes the infancy and toddler information. Before realizing that gifted is a term that doesn't start with school programs (yep that is what I thought it was for) we were set to send DD to local public school. We now realize that would not be in her best interest and absolutely love the school we discovered and she is very happy and growing there.

Now would I jump to the conclusion that you seem to have that my DD will flatten out? No, I don't. She will soon be 4 and her verbal skills are still growing. Her abilities are that of an adult. Even adding a second language hasn't slowed that down. We still see a vast difference in her verbal and that of a typical 4 or 5 year old. But she isn't only gifted in verbal. She is advanced across the board and we have all heard the bragging parents claims and what they focus on as 'brilliant' but I don't look at the typical tell tale signs. My focus is more on her sense of humor and quick wit; crazy imagination and over the top cognitive skills. These are the things that impress me and for me anyway ... are signs of giftedness.

But your right about kids who start late and grow leaps and bounds and will end up with the same IQ range as someone like my DD who showed signs from the start. I fully believe that every child is different and this means they all develop at their own pace.