Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Did your gifted kid always seem gifted?

My first-born (now eight) is at least highly-gifted, and I pretty much "knew it" from infancy with her. My youngest is probably highly-gifted too (he's 3.5 years old) but we're still waiting to see how all of that unfolds. I always used to refer to my second-born as our "blessedly average" one (not in front of her -- but when close friends would have some type of unspoken expectation of her because of her older sister, we would make it clear that her achievement levels were in the "normal" range and that we were just as happy and proud of HER as we were of her older sister).

However, a couple of years ago I was talking with a parent of one of my former students who has five kids (now teenagers or adults) who are all highly-gifted or profoundly-gifted. We started off talking about my oldest (who was in kindergarten at the time), but she kept asking about my SECOND daughter. I kept telling her that my second daughter (she wasn't even in kindergarten yet) was academically very normal with all of her milestones like letter and number identification being hit at the "normal" time...but she actually had SOME of the EMOTIONAL characteristics of gifted kids to an even greater extent than my oldest daughter (much more sensitive...a worry-wart...perfectionism...etc.). This other mom just looked at me point-blank finally and said, "You KNOW your second daughter is gifted, right? She may not be reading yet and stuff like that, but she's ABSOLUTELY gifted." I just kinda smiled and nodded...but thought she was just one of those moms of gifted kids who saw giftedness everywhere she looked and just didn't really think much about it.

Well, my second daughter remained "blessedly average" through kindergarten...but her little lightbulb turned on very early in first grade and she finished the year scoring at the 99th percentiles in the math and reading sections of SAGES. She's now performing at a high level in her self-contained full-time high ability class as a second grader. Stinker. :-)

My son, youngest of three, didn't initially strike me as gifted partly because in the family culture he got tagged as the cute, goofy, baby brother.

Then one day, his pre-school teacher said, "S is very, very, smart," and I began reinterpreting some of his behavior.

For example, he loved to do watch video of rockets blasting off and doing the countdown, "10, 9, 8, 7...." I realized he was moe interested in the numbers than the rocket. (This reminds me of Andrew Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem. His mother said that when she read him a book, he was more interested in the page numbers than the story.) Later, his abilities became more immediately apparent, such as when he could look at a clock and say it's 23 minutes before the hour, or when he devised his own methods of doing 2 and 3 place multiplication in his head.

What I'm trying to say is that there are a variety of family dynamics and personal filters that affect our evaluation of other people--similar to my missing how much dementia my father was developing.

I'm horrible at telling how intelligent my kids are or where they are supposed to be developmental-wise.

The only thing that I can tell is that my oldest seems more intelligent than my youngest and that they both seem less intelligent and more socially functional than I was at their ages.

I think that you have to have significant outside testing/observation to get an answer from people who have seen enough to know what they are talking about.

My DD10 is in one of the "gifted" programs for reading, but she is frustrated by math. I should get her IQ tested just so I can have some idea of where she is.

I've personally gotten better at figuring out intuitively who is going to test at IQ < 70 now that I've been interacting with them for a few years.

In my professional world, IQ < 70 = good legal case and financial success (for me and them).

LOL this is me and my friend's daughter. I KNOW this kid is gifted but her mom just doesn't see it (relying too much on report card results). She has the emotional intensities and is incredibly detail oriented and socially precocious. One of these days the light switch will get flicked and her mom will see it too

fwtxmom, I LOVE the smacking the baby Jesus story. Hysterical. That story is SO MUCH like my DD3. I can't believe the amount of time I spend talking to stuffed animals, dolls, imaginary friends and, yes, scolding them for hitting. My DD gets in what we call "duck fights" with her favorite stuffed duck and I have to separate them some times. I feel like an idiot talking to a stuffed duck, much less disciplining one, but she's so convincing and insistent. She's starting a new preschool and has been going through extensive roll playing about it with her dolls and animals and imaginary friends, and I made the mistake of mentioning it at my Mom's group (I assumed all the kids were doing it!) and they looked at me like I was nuts. This story makes me feel so much better. Thanks for sharing!

And can I just say I'm SO TIRED of spending weeks talking about the interior emotional life of a stuffed duck-- his conflicts, triumphs, fights with DD?! It's just so weird. I feel like I'm losing my mind when it goes on so long. Once when I was really tired, I even addressed him directly by mistake. What does that say about me?

At least the duck has an well-developed interior emotional life.

Can you imagine what would happen if the duck was cold and unfeeling or had only a very restricted range of emotions?

A diagnosis of Auktistic Spectrum Disorder?

My friend K and I did this to each other with our youngest kids. We both have older identified gifted kids. I kept saying to her that I could see that her youngest kid was gifted but wasn't sure about my youngest. She saw things exactly the opposite. Subsequently, they both qualified for the school's gifted program. Maybe the two boys sitting in the back of minivan challenging each other with mulit-digit math problems at age 4 should have given both of us a clue.

We didn't have a clue that our oldest was gifted until she was about 5, and it wasn't until she was 7 that DH finally accepted her LOG (PG). We were living overseas and interacting with international businessmen and women and their families, as well as diplomats, so mostly well educated folks, so we didn't see the difference between her and the majority of the population until we moved back to the US when she 4, and then it took us a while to really see it.
The complete conversations at age 1 and her fluent Japanese a year after leaving the country should have been a clue, but....

Our younger one - well we're more aware of it because it is like deja vu! We are having conversations with her that are almost identical to ones we had with the older one years ago. Her personality is very different, but her response tot hings and her pattern of development are so much like her sister's it is impossible to ignore/deny her giftedness, although we will wait a couple more years before we have her tested.