DD11
1. When did you first expected giftedness in your child?
Age 6.5, toward the end of first grade. Initially we thought that she was a bit slow b/c she wasn't getting most of her work done in school and was truly miserable. I recall sitting in the principal's office with dd's teacher, dh, and the principal arguing with them that dd was going to be a "C" student and they needing to stop stressing her.
2. What milestones/traits (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social) really made you suspect giftedness?
Things that probably should have made me suspect:
said first word at 6 months
knew all colors including purple, pink, orange, etc. by 16 months
reading at 4
spoke in complete sentences by 15-18 months depending on how much you count grammar
amazing memory (remembered exactly where the toys in a store we went to once when she was under 2 were when we went back more than a year later.)
what seemed like an unlimited attention span from the time she was a month or so old
extreme emotional intensity
loved books from infancy to the point that she cried when I stopped reading
was sorting things like hexagons and two different types of stars into a 6 sided shape sorter with holes on all sides at 10 months
was reading books like Harry Potter and the Chronicals of Narnia at 6.5 (this is about the time when I was begining to tie together all of the things that were "wrong" with her.)
3. Did your child have any delays? If so what area (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?
While not so delayed as to require intervention, dd's gross motor skills were a bit slow. She wasn't walking until 15.5 months and didn't crawl at all. She did a butt scootchy thing that propelled her around well starting at 11 months.
4. Is your child 2E? If they are did they have other signs besides the obvious, more quantifiable ones?
No, although she was dx with SPD at 7.5. I do think that it is part and parcel of being gifted not necessarily a separate dx, though. She was unreasonably sensitive to noise and lights as a baby. She never slept and cried constantly as a baby. It had to be pin drop silent for her to sleep at all and she slept in 30 min intervals at best until 18 months. She stopped napping all together by about 15 months.
5. Has your child been tested?
Yes, IQ at 7.5 and the WJ-III achievement. She's also taken a ton of other achievement tests - EXPLORE, SAT, ITBS, MAPS, SRI Lexile, etc.
6. Is your child across the board gifted or quite asynchronous? If so what are his/her strengths and were they obvious from a young age?
She's pretty across the board gifted. As her 3rd grade teacher told me, "[dd's] weak areas are other people's strong areas." She consistently tests in the 99th percentile on grade level achievement tests for reading, writing, science, and social studies even with being 1-2 years younger than her grade peers (she has a fall bd with a grade skip). Her math achievement scores, which are her "weak" area, generally run btwn the 92nd to 97th percentile.
7. When your child was young (baby/toddler/preschooler), was their development fairly even or did they excel more in certain areas (gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbal skills, literacy skills, mathematical sills, social)?
She was slower with gross motor and had amazing small motor skills and very good verbal skills. Socially and mathematically I'd say that she was right on par although she did have some difficulties with peers socially in preschool in terms of being a bit bossy. It wasn't such that no one else liked her, though. In hindsight, I think that she was just a bit more sophisticated in her speech and interests and was therefore directing the action.
I'll post dd9 separately.
