Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Feedback please: Is this normal for your children?

I just wrapped up a family visit and was astonished at the differences between my DS14mo and his 17mo cousin in terms of comprehension and expression. Can you please weigh in on whether the following sorts of behaviours were typical for your children around my son's age.

1. Mechanical fascination. Takes apart toys/household objects and appears to understand "advanced" concepts, like circuits in a flashlight.

2. Can identify and name hundreds of colours, household objects, tools, animals, actions, etc. Many are complex words spoken clearly, like bulldozer or raspberry.

3. Early numeracy without being taught. Can count fingers, holds up number of fingers requested, recognizes numbers in environmental print and responds with correct number in speech/on fingers.

4. Excellent manual dexterity. E.g. Can put small gauge bits in a ratchet screwdriver.

5. Ridiculous memory. Remembers anything if taught its name/function once.

6. Prosocial skills--e.g. sharing, kissing, hugging, consoling, negotiating with tone/expression

7. Can follow multi-part instructions by generalizing concepts in new settings (e.g. From the kitchen at Grandma'a house, which we've visited three times: "Please go to the toolbox, get a screwdriver, and tighten the screw in the vent in the family room.")

8. Directional awareness--left, right, etc. (e.g. Holds up right foot when changing and says "right sock").

9. Fussiness. Wakes often at night. Only content if in constant motion and learning, even when eating.

Thanks folks. My son's paediatrician, who has been practicing for 30+ years and is a professor at a leading university, says she's never seen a case like this before. I'm hoping you can help me mentally prepare, for lack of a better term, for a ballpark level of giftedness.

What other skills/interests might come next? I was floored at the counting. I have no idea how my son picked it up. I figure I must inadvertently count with my fingers when we read or use math implicitly in everyday speech without even realizing it.

I can sympathisize with 2, 5, 8, and 9 when my son was that age. He's 3 now, so we're not that far along this path yet either. I found Deborah Ruf's 5 Levels of Giftedness to be an interesting read, although it may or may not be helpful for you. A fascination with maps was next for us. Good luck!

DS (now 9) was not talking at that age (and wouldn't be for another 10 months), so a fortiori wasn't doing most things on your list. I think the interpretation "therefore, he can't be HG+" would seem perverse in the light of his later development, although he hasn't been IQ tested. So don't write off the cousin if this could be the main issue there! That said, he had been clearly understanding everything said to him and a lot that wasn't for a long time by then, and several other items on your list look familiar too. Early speech is a gift (and I'd have welcomed it!) but one can give it too much weight, I think.

My third and youngest child is precisely twice that age (34 mths) and is still not doing some things on that list, possibly through lack of interest not lack of ability, she's not much for screwdrivers... she is (and was) of course doing many things not listed which may or may not overlap in skill level, but I am guessing was not as advanced at 17 months as your son. And equally I am pretty sure that she will be at least similar to her sister in IQ (DYS qualifying FSIQ). We also have the "wow! That's different" experience when spending time with other kids her age, which doesn't happen often.

Thanks for the replies, somerdai, ColinsMum, and MumOfThree. I'm much obliged for your time and feedback!

I appreciate that in the early years, individual environment and interests can drive a lot of the variation in expressed ability of children with similar levels of giftedness. It's still valuable to me to understand how a known gifted sample behaves as a benchmark because, frankly, I'm learning about this on the fly.

I see elements of my husband and me in my son. At 14 months, I was more verbal and musically/artistically inclined. My husband was more physically advanced and had an engineer's mind, like our son.

The passions we've seen lately are construction (thank you, Ikea!), cooking, vehicles, and disassembly. It was getting so obsessive that my son would wake up first thing in the morning and ask for a hammer. Pronto! His new thing is doing rounds of Grandma's house doing imaginary repairs to cabinets, tightening screws in door hinges, etc.

2,3, 5 and 7 characterized my DD as a young toddler, but more at 16-18 months. Her language was very advanced--she had hundreds upon hundreds of words at 18 months. 14 months is very young for those milestones. FWIW, though, my DD tested as MG, though her school performance makes her look more HG to me. I am of the untested opinion that many gifted books underestimate the # of young children who can talk very well.

My younger son was far less advanced verbally, though still ahead, and much less showy as a young toddler. However, his abilities at this age (almost 5) outshine his sister's at the same age. I think he may test a bit higher, into the HG range.

I guess what I'm getting at is that your child is very likely gifted, but it's awfully hard to gauge to what level at this age.

Mmm... some similarities. I can't recall exactly their ages, but somewhere around 14-16 months:

1) DS for sure. He was very fascinated with mechanics. He wouldn't just play with toys - he'd analyze them (sometimes taking them apart) to see how they worked.

2) DD. It was creepy. Neither of my two spoke a word until 24 months, but far earlier on, DD's comprehended vocabulary was just... out of this world. You could ask her for ANYTHING and she'd find it and point at it. I never did inventory and count, but I wish I had. She knew the alphabet (could read the letters) at 16 months, and prior to that there were so, so many words/things that she knew.

3) Both. For SURE. They love math, and it started early

4) Just DD. DS had some fine motor challenges.

5) DD - OMGYES. DS - pretty good.

6) Both everything except verbal. My two were silent at that age.

7) Just DD. DS still has problems with that (now 8). Getting better though.

8) Neither

9) Hmm. Both slept well, but got fussy quickly while awake unless engaged. Sleeping was no problem though.

I'm pretty sure neither is PG/EG - just HG/MG. I was very similar at that age and tested as HG in my 20s. I think it's really, really hard to tell when they're that little. When DD was 3, she was... wow... I think she might have tested as PG, and there's no way she's PG. I almost think (for the sake of accuracy) that testing should wait until early adulthood, but by then it's too late to use the test get them help in school.

Thanks for the insights, ultramarina. Your answers gave me some good food for thought.

How did numeracy develop for your children? I saw a progression from my son saying "some" and "another, another..." when seeing multiples to being able to count a few items.

I agree that gauging level of giftedness is difficult, if not impossible, at this age. Practically speaking, it doesn't really matter until he's in school, anyway. This is purely me being excited that he's just so switched on. I love seeing my son's face light up when a new concept clicks!

CCN, thanks so much for sharing! Your reply was really informative and helpful, and I always appreciate your candour in posts (e.g. OMGYES!! Haha!).

Re #9: My little man can't shut off for sleep. The learning must.go.on. Like a bad James Cameron film. Until he started to communicate more clearly, he became downright angry anytime we tried to settle him. Our trick is to run around the house (literally) naming everything we see in rapid succession until he seems satisfied. It's as though he resents the opportunity cost of sleep immensely. We look insane doing it, but he seems to love this...err...settling method.

Re #3: How did your children's math interests evolve?

Thanks again!

Background:

I haven't done IQ testing, as far as my family recalls, but my elementary school slapped on a gifted label and initiated a double grade skip in grade 3 after ability testing. (CTBS, or Canadian Test of Basic Skills,for Canucks). I did pull-outs through to high school, with one-to-one enrichment tutoring in some subjects, advanced placement, and compressed university studies, finishing grad school (master's, only) at 19. Per CCN's point, I don't know that testing would have been accurate then, much less changed my path much, if at all.

My husband tested HG+.

#9 for sure; we needed lots of noise in the house, including the TV always on. Couldn't fall asleep by himself with nothing going on, often in front of the TV or sitting in a chair and spinning. We now tell him (age 7) that he wouldn't go to sleep as a baby and we had to make him so dizzy he would passout every night.

I personally can't really remember much outside of just thematic stuff like that with a couple of incidents sprinkled in( particularly at what age what happened.) Though we do swear he had psychic powers around that age and an obsession with buttons.

I know it was around 20 months when he noticed letters and got fascinated by them and started accumulating sight words and the alphabet.

So true-- I'm definitely guilty of confirmation and sample bias with this post. And thanks for the tip on puzzles! He has a stack that he likes, but maybe it's time to replenish our stock.

I am pretty sure a child like yours will NOT have an average IQ. Those milestones are extremely advanced and it takes a differently wired brain to be able to accomplish that at such a young age. (Someone correct me if I am wrong)
To what level, I am not sure. Hard to tell at this age. But I am sure that throughout the years you will continue to be blown away by him.

We just had DS5 tested and he tested PG. Did I know? Honestly, yes. But I was in complete denial. It was very obvious to everyone around us that DS was very, very different.

There are lots of other aspects to the whole milestone issue too though. Drive and motivation to learn. From what I was told the first born is usually the driven one. Therefore it seems much more obvious that they are gifted. But high IQ is more than just academic milestones. Some might have early milestones but still not be gifted, but "just" bright.

You will start noticing later that thought process of your child, the depth of thoughts, abstract thinking etc. also plays a huge part. It sure is a ride, this whole "gifted child road". And you might want to prepare yourself for it....;-)

I found my notes from when my son was between 14 and 17 months. I stopped writing down all the words he could say at 150. He was saying two and three word sentences like "sorry spit" when he spit out his milk and "go get it" when he wanted something. He had a mild disability that affected him physically and had gross and fine motor delays that had nothing to do with intelligence. His manual dexterity was affected by this disability. He could not walk until he was 18 1/2 months old because his muscles seemed weak. I carried him around a lot so he could look at whatever he wanted to look at and answer his questions.
He was saying "is dat?" at 12 months about everything and he learned a lot that way. He was a happy kid and got so excited when he learned new things.

He wanted me to read at least 20 books a day to him. He recognized some letters at 12 and 13 months and would count to four because he watched a show called Teletubbies and heard the numbers.

He did some computer games where he had to identify letters when he was two and at three he was doing Reader Rabbit first grade and it did include some math. At 2 1/2 he could not only read some words but also identify words that were spelled out for him. At 4 he memorized a 300 word script and could read his Alice in Wonderland Lines that were about 5th grade level.

When he was seven an educational psychologist that gave him an achievement test and brief intelligence test. He thought he was probably highly gifted but would need a full scale IQ test to confirm and we could not afford it. My son's friends at the time were three and four years older and we were told this was fine since his mental age was higher than average.

He always had trouble sleeping.

Sounds familiar. At that age DD was so easy to reason with and pacified by mental stimulation. She loved conversation, had an endless attention span for any book, and was quick to understand abstract things like colors, reading, and counting. She understood everything. And, she was always making connections. She has always been an observer. I think she takes in her environment and files it away succinctly as to better understand things in the past and experiences to come in the future. It so easily developed then that I just kept exposing her to new things.

I focused on making sure she could entertain herself in imaginative play for long periods of time. I wanted her early childhood to be brimming with unadulterated play. We invested in high-quality, open-ended toys that have payed off ten fold. Personally, I eschewed early learning toys and videos, and at four we still have yet to introduce workbooks and such (I have written this before, and for a while now I have been thinking, 'though I really should.' I know she is ready, but I guess it is just not our style. ) We love going to museums, reading books, and having late night conversations in the dark. The majority of her learning takes place in the car or waiting in line for something.

There is no rush in teaching anything but I do understand the feeling of keeping the beast fed and happy. Our DD really enjoyed rote learning at that age and she seems unscathed by it. She memorized anything. We explored a lot of pre-literacy stuff and she did become a very early reader.

We barely did any kind of number activities, and while she was not that early in math skills, at four she is actually showing more number sense than her second grade cousin. She is having no trouble figuring out what three threes make or four fours. Fractions, negative numbers, division, even/odd numbers--have come really easily to her now. She can mentally calculate addition facts by deduction ("I know 8+8=16 and 8+9 is one more, so 8+9 must be 17" and "8+2=10 and 10+2=12 so 8+4 must be 12) which I think is advanced for even kindergarten so I am thrilled. We really let her figure it out and I think it has payed off. I would have had no idea how to teach this anyway.

She was also never much interested in writing or drawing and has caught up a lot. She still is probably only average in handwriting, but has already started writing out sentences the best she can sounding out words.--It is not amazing, but she has always been behind in writing output, only ever developed a consistent pencil grip a few months ago.

This is all to say, your kid may have strengths and weaknesses and that is OK. It is OK to wait for him to become interested in developing his weaknesses. It is OK to indulge his strengths. Every child has their own timetable. You do not need to worry about what comes next. Your child will lead you. He will surprise you. Stuff will come out of nowhere, trust me.

As far as comparisons, when DD was that age they were so stark. But, she is now four and it is interesting to have seen her peers develop along side her. Unless you listen close, you would not know who spoke first or who now has the larger vocabulary. But, it is easy to notice who never gives up, who is most independent, who is the most outgoing, who never gets frustrated, who is good at making friends, who is most competitive, who always has a smile, who has a huge imagination, etc. They all have strengths.

I couldn't remember much about DS's early milestones, so I searched some of my early posts and found this interesting thread: Developmental milestones

I think a lot of the items on your list are fairly normal for the population on this forum. I'd say gifted, yes, but what flavor no one can tell yet. For DS8, I would say yes to your numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9. He's still not so great with right and left!

As for fussiness, he would not nap and he was fussy if you weren't constantly entertaining him or dancing around with him in a Baby Bjorn. He slept well at night, though, so we were lucky. And he was happily entertained pretty much since birth by us reading to him. He would happily pay attention to picture books very early on.

DS8 reads at a high school level now, and he has always been highly verbal and an early reader. When he started kindergarten, he hadn't really taken off in math yet, but then he started to really progress quickly so he completed the 2nd grade curriculum at the end of kindy. Math is still not his strongest subject, but he's still near the top of his 4th grade class for HG kids (5th grade base level instruction on up).

I do remember some specifics from when he was 18 months old, since we went on a trip. His grandma gave him this Leapfrog Count and Learn Math Desk, and he recognized his numbers 1 to 20 shortly after getting that. Also, he could read the Exit signs and loved all the road construction because of all the signs.

Sounds like you have a lovely DS. Have fun with him!

You asked if it rang a bell and how to prepare for a possible IQ, and after raising three gifted kids, I'd have to say that only time will tell. My kid who achieved milestones the earliest and seemed the most gifted as a toddler is probably the lowest IQ of the three - although still obviously gifted. The one who missed most of his milestones and still hasn't managed to register a valid IQ likely has the highest if we can ever measure it.

So keep track of them (it will matter to committees when you're asking for testing/services) and just enjoy your kiddo.

Yes, my DD also enjoyed memorization as a young toddler. She learned most of the countries in the world and a huge array of flags at that age. I was reminded of this when you talked about your bedtime ritual. We used to have her find 8 countries and 6 flags (or something) as part of the bedtime routine. Interestingly, she probably knew more world geography at 2 than she does now at 9. (I'm sure she could pick it up if she were motivated to, though; she learned the 50 states and capitals effortlessly.)

Ditto to everything ABQmom said. I also have three kids, one of which matched just about everything on your list at the same age. She's HG but she's not my highest IQ kiddo, she's in the middle of my three. She's very much a high achiever and for the most part looks like your classic "gifted" child as recognized by schools (ie, high achievement), but she's 2e and still struggling with reading and phonics - in third grade. My ds, otoh, also 2e, didn't start to even talk until he was 3 and didn't match much of anything on your list. Once he started talking it was obvious he was thinking at a level that was well beyond his peers. He's my EG kiddo, and he's never been one to easily benchmark against anything.

Definitely write down the benchmarks you're noting as your ds grows - as Lisa mentioned, you'll be asked about them when he's tested as well as you might be able to use them later on if you're trying to get him gifted services.

And in the meantime, have fun! Enjoy these early years

polarbear

I can't begin to thank you all enough for sharing your thoughts with me. It's fascinating to hear how your children have developed!

I'm just on the move at the moment, but I'll respond individually, as you've been so kind in providing thoughtful, detailed responses.

Hi aquinas,
I learned my lesson and finally did take notes on my third kid's development. This is from 14 and 15 months. It does not correlate directly with yours - I didn't put much down about counting.
Is your son saying many words?
She had pretty advance early literacy like my other kids and knew her alphabet before two and was reading some words at two. She was recently tested at 99.9th centile (145) and is early entering into school in 2013 at 4y 8,m, she can read pretty well already.

14 months
walking really well
running
steps down steps holding one hand
really interested in letters,
always names b, o, n
sometimes knows s, d, m, a,
obsessed by balls
"big ball"
learning colours
great understanding eg "Go and hold Brian's hand"
really getting good at repeating words, today for example about 5 new words though I can't remember what they were!
can point to objects in turn while I count
likes scribbling
can shout out letters as we drive in the car

15 months

kicks ball forward
spins on the spot
walks backwards
"me mi" (give me the milk)
R
tantrum
went to one sleep months ago
about 30 words?
runs
paints, scribbles (on wall!)
says "wee" but no luck in potty yet.
danced months ago
loves climbing
has been 'reading" books and turning pages since before 12 months
First three words together today, bubble da ba(th) which meant, I want to have bubbles in the bath.
Several two word combinations

words - mummy daddy nana, sisters name, brothers name, manma (grandma) mampa ( grandpa) own name
dory (story), book ,me, mi (milk, water, drink), nana (food, banana ), juice, eye, nose, mou (mouth), no, yes, ear, up, shoe, bubble,
ba (bath) ball star car bus day (train) bee, ba (sheep), moo (cow).
door, bum, bye bye, ta,
duck, now (cat, ie meow), mats (mouse, Max), da (the)
letters - sometimes - N M D A R T S E B
some recognising of colours but not 100% (yellow, blue, purple, red)
another three worder, "me ba(th) Nana" (I am in the bath with sister)

Hope that's interesting! Let me know what you think....

Cheers,

Thanks especially for the behavioural corroboration, ZenScanner! That's also a helpful benchmark re: early literacy to keep in mind. We have a set of magnetic letters which we use to spell out words of special interest, and my son can pretty consistently identify "t" and "h" phonetically, but we're not pushing the individual letters. We shall see how that goes...!

From your experience, would you recommend focusing on only lowercase or uppercase letters, or do you prefer the blend in standard prose?

Wise words, 1111. Thanks for your input!

I think you've hit on the key difference behind giftedness in your comment on thought process. My son seems to be developing a deep meta-knowledge while learning, which I don't see in his age-peers. He seems to "experiment" and use logic in his free play quite heavily, which is fascinating to watch! But again, I appreciate that the show is just getting started, and I'm sure he'll be outsmarting me soon!

Hi Lori, thanks for seeking out your notes and posting about your son's development! That's very kind of your to go to the trouble on my behalf.

It sounds like our sons are similarly verbally inclined. My son seems to develop in rapid bursts with long (~3-4 weeks+) fallow periods in the intervening time. He started out the gate at 5.5 months with couplets (e.g. "read book", "yellow lemon") and phrases (e.g. "I love you", "That right there"), and has since populated his vocabulary with new words in bursts.

To be honest, from 6-9 months was relatively silent as he began walking. I worried a bit about hearing loss, but was reassured by our paediatrician. Sure enough, once he started walking, he resumed with more sentences. Spoken vocabulary--full words clearly enunciated, only-- has proceeded like this:

6 months: ~ 15 words
12 months: ~ 50-60 words
13 months: ~ 90 words
14 months: Lost count. ~175-200 words. Receptive vocabulary seems much higher-- he understands EVERYTHING! Some days I hear a dozen or more new words.

Sometimes he's quiet and says nothing, other times he's a chatterbox. He doesn't talk gratuitously. The other day, he finished a sound puzzle, flipped it over, turned off the sound switch and announced, "I done now."

We're big readers. If my son has his way, we'll read 40 books a day, often for an hour or more at a time while moving. Thank God for the library around the corner!

Thanks again for sharing your experience, Lori!

ellemenope, that was a fabulous post. Thank you for the details. I love it. I've already re-read your post twice to make sure I'm digesting everything. I have a feeling I'll be revisiting it again!

Your comment about "unadulterated play" resonates with me. We're an urban family in an over scheduled world, and I want my son's world to be fanciful and imaginative. He doesn't need tennis lessons every Tuesday or a yoga guru. (Does anybody?!)

We have a membership to a museum just around the corner, a library on the next street, we're kiddie-former to a leading university and beautiful parks, and we have a conservatory a block away. It's gravy. Our only scheduled activity is a group music class at the conservatory once a week, and that suits me just fine. After a recent past of 80+ hour workweeks, I feel I've earned an unscheduled existence, and so has my son!

Our favourite toys are books, youtube music clips on the iPad, balls, blocks, tools (real), and toys we make. Any favourite activities, books, or toys you'd recommend? FTR, we're a TV-free home due to a lack of interest in popular programming.

Thanks again! I love how your post highlights character and intrinsic personality over compartmentalized abilities. After all, we're all striving to help our children become whole, healthy individuals. Wonderful!

LOL


LOL I love your settling method - that's awesome My DS drifted off fast as toddler, but I think it's because he had a soother. DD slept well, but sometimes I'd be up until 1-2 am waiting and waiting for her to fall asleep so I could too. DS went through an awful night terrors phase when he was 5 or 6 (me too - I had tons of sleep problems - night terrors, sleep wake paralysis, vivid VIVID dreams, etc). DD10 now seems to function on very little sleep (I wish she'd get more, actually).


They've both always been mathy. As a toddler DS counted everything: his toys, the pieces of his food, the steps as he walked down them - you name it, he'd count it. In grade one he started doing simple equations with negative numbers (DD may have shown him? I didn't - not sure where he got the idea). He LOVED fractions. His grade 1 teacher suggested I move him out of French and into Montessori so his math would be accelerated (which I considered, but then chose to keep him in French instead). He's always been a grade or two ahead. He's currently not formally enriched in this area, although his grade 3 teacher suggested I let him work from his sister's grade 5 text.

DD loved making up math games - for example when she was three she made up this math wheel on the black board that looked like dart board with equations in it. It was cute. She was proud (I was dazzled, lol). At three she had learned to add, subtract and multiply (she just loved numbers) and was always after me to show her things. I wasn't sure how to explain division so I didn't (thought of an idea a few years later, using marbles and cups... by then she'd already learned on paper), but I'm sure she could have learned division then as well. In grade two she was tested by the school and found to be 1-3 grades above age level, and in grade 3 was put in a pilot junior math gifted program for grades 3 and 4 (which was canceled the following year due to lack of funding). Currently she's in the intermediate version of that program and does some math tutoring on the side.

It's funny because at three her math and reading ability were way, way above age level (her reading included compound words, contractions, silent letters, etc), but once she was exposed to school... it was like she "settled" into this lower ability... like cereal sold by weight settling in the bag... because she's the chameleon/anxiety/perfectionist type. I really have no idea what her IQ is, and after the disaster that was DS's testing, I'm steering clear with DD.

Thanks St Paulis girl--for your experience and the link. I'd be delighted to read it once I finish replying to everyone who has taken the time to write me.

We're very blessed with these zestful little ones, aren't we? My son is my magnum opus, yet all the credit goes to him! I never thought I'd be the type of woman to say this, but my enjoyment of my son far outstrips any professional satisfaction I've ever had.

Great advice; thanks Lisa! I'm a spreadsheet nerd, so record-keeping is second nature. Are there any points that committees value highly that I should note more carefully ?

Amazing! I've heard good things about GeoPuzzles, which might start to be "fun" over the next year. When I was maybe 2, one of my favourite books was "Around the a world with the Word Gang", which featured cultural vignettes that a band of globe-trotting animals experienced. The allure of the foreign is irresistible at any age!

Funny story, but I remember noticing the crappy decor my in-laws had in photos of my husband's nursery as a baby. The only thing that stood out was a laminated world map!

Thanks for weighing in, polarbear! Would it be helpful to collect "corroborating" support from third parties, such as our paediatrician, to lend credibility to my claims? I try to catch videos of some of the more "outlandish" activities on my iPhone, but I'm not much of a cinematographer! Plus, these talents reveal themselves unannounced.

I am going to say No. Because say you are looking for early entry to school for example. If you pull out a letter from your pediatrician about what he was doing when he was 14 months, it does not add anything to the case AND it makes you look a bit mad, and over invested. And when they head off to college or whatever it does not matter in the end what they did when they were a baby. It's kind of nice to keep some records for yourself if you want to. You think you won't' forget... but you do!

Oh yes. You DO forget, so write everything down!

GeoPuzzles! LOVE them! I sat today and did 5 of them. DS5 and I took turns doing one each. I do not like doing them with him because while I work on one piece, he has placed 15.....I feel like the child saying "no please, don't show me. Let me do this myself"....lol!

ninjanoodle, I wish I could hug you! Thank you so much for that wonderfully detailed record from your daughter! That granularity is so informative.

I don't want to bore you with redundant information, as I've just now provided some more details about my son in replies to previous posters. But, in answer to you question, my son is in the ~175-200 word range for clearly spoken words. He has, I'd guess, at least as many spoken words where he says the first syllable of the word.

His vocabulary seems to expand either outright, with the word(s) said crystal clear immediately, or progressively, with one syllable or phoneme added at a time over a period of hours, days, or weeks. For instance, a month ago, zebra was a non-word extended "zzzzz" while pointing at a zebra. Then, it became "zee", "zeeb", and then "zeeb-a". When he includes the "r", I'll count it as a word.

Interestingly, my husband says his memory seems to work alphabetically, so it seems like my son has inherited his mental taxonomy. Did you ever notice anything similar with your daughter or other children?

ETA: If you, or any other participants, would like more details about my son, please don't hesitate to ask.

Fair. It can be a fine line between advocacy and lunacy, and I'd prefer not to be the nutbar parent who needs a hefty dose of Valium!

Yes! But with a different child. My second child who is now 9 complained recently about the words. The words are driving me crazy!
WHat words say I?
I can see the words, when people talk, it's very annoying, she complained.
My jaw dropped as I have this too, but never told anyone about it. When I mentioned it to my mum, she said she sometimes gets that too, and she had never told anyone either!
It's kind of like subtitles. If I can't understand what people say, I can't 'see' the words. But if I wasn't listening properly sometimes I can play it back. Weird huh?

Yes. Enough people will think you are mad ( I have been there done that!!!) so best not to add fuel to the fire.... LOL

Wow! Full stop.

I believe it.

I have a terrible visual memory, but a wicked auditory memory. I used to read at university while watching the Simpsons and Britcom and link the subject matter to the transcripts. I can still derive some long-"forgotten" proofs because of what Homer said...

ETA: I see his trait of mine in my son, who does his best learning in parallel with other activities.

My in-laws openly doubted my son's ability to speak when he first started, and still do now. I figure water seeks his own level. Doubt away, haters!

LOL! Glad to hear the endorsement. Any other favourites...puzzles, books, apps, toys, or otherwise, that your recommend 1111?

I have a feeling I'm going to have to learn to enjoy being bested pretty soon!! Character builder much?

Haha! It's laughable, but I wish we'd discovered it many months earlier. On those 3am nights, which were less infrequent than I'd like to remember, I could have used an ace up my sleeve!

He's an intense little man, and very much a lactivore, which helps in our co-sleeping home. He can settle reasonably quickly once he's saturated. At least he naps!


Fascinating! Your DD and DS are brilliant! Isn't it awe-inspiring how these little ones think?

My son seems to be "getting" how numbers interact, too. For instance, if I say "two", sometimes he holds up two fingers on one hand, while other times he'll hold up one finger on each hand. Ditto for three. (Thankfully not the middle one ala "get lost Mama"! That said, he did go through a phase of flicking us off around 1-2 months, but I think/hope it was neurological and not frustration!)

I guess the lesson I'm learning is that I'm more of a gesticulator than I realize!

All of those things were normal for us, but our son turned 2 in October, so we have no idea where he would test. I am just here because he seems different. One thing though on 9. We have been lucky in that our kiddo is a great sleeper once he is finally down (we do somersaults to settle), but that is right around the time our son started having nightmares, the occasional night terror, and worst of all sleepwalking. All are gone now, well except for an occasional nightmare that pops up if something unduly frightening happens during the day.

Our kiddo taught himself the alphabet and moved onto counting to 39. He can identify any number to 100, but doesn't care to count higher& that is fine with us. He is now decoding words. Loves street signs, "s.t.o.p. spells stop", "y.i.e.l.d. spells yield.". The solar system is a new obsession. He will happily talk your ear off about Jupiter.

We just try to follow his lead. His only questions at this point are what questions. Haven't had any why questions yet but he seems to just know.

As to next steps on your end... Not sure how valuable my advice is to you but we went through tons of puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles were great but I always waited too long to go to more pieces. He would fly through them and start doing them upside down to make them harder. Once he mastered the 48 piece ones he seemed sick of jigsaw puzzles so we moved onto magnetic mighty minds. He still likes those.

Gymnastics is fantastic.

Music is great.

Recently we have noticed he is less tolerant of doing repetition with skills he has mastered. We have never done any drills or flashcards or anything like that but we used to do a parent tot swim class that did the same thing every week. They told us 2 months in that he mastered all of the skills for the following year but That he had to stay in the class due to age and that he would be fine because kids like routine. He did ok for another couple of months but then started getting fussy about 30 seconds into an activity and asking to do the next activity... By another couple of classes it was a full blown meltdown for not switching activities... Then a full blown meltdown simply forentioning it was time to go to swimming class. He remained perfectly happy at home and at gymnastics, but he was fully bored at swimming... The point of this long rambling story is that you know your child. I ignored my instincts too long with swim class. It is absolutely possible for a kid under 2 to be fussy because he is bored and is ready for more...

Hope to see you posting more. I really enjoy reading this forum.

Sorry for typos and grammar issues. On my phone. Between fingers slipping and auto correct, it can be a challenge...

My ds5 has not yet been tested or labeled gifted yet, but did exhibit a lot of those characteristics at that age (2,3,5,6, and 7). Luckily, ds is a pretty good sleeper even though he has severe reflux.

I agree with the others here, saying that puzzles were huge at that time and books. At 15 months, I gave him a tag leapfrog pen (with books); which he loved and started playing the build- a- words games. Also, by 18 months, we started playing games like Memory and Bingo. For his energy, gymnastics, swimming (he loved it, because he was the only student in his class, so his teacher did a lot more with him), and lots of playground time. However, socially things were a little hard, because he spoke 50/50 Spanish and English. He would get frustrated when the kids wouldn't talk back (because he was speaking Spanish) or think he was a baby (he was/is small).

Good luck and enjoy! It's challenging, but fun!

That's interesting your kids all liked puzzles at that age. Mine didn't like traditional puzzles (still doesn't), but he liked the puzzles you could do on the computer (e.g., the Thomas the Tank Engine website). He liked being read to. A lot.

My DS loved puzzles too. He had fine motor challenges which got in his way, but he still enjoyed them. He ADORED mazes. We had this retro game system "Atari Flashback" that had a game called Maze Craze which he loved. None of us (adults included) could touch him. He won every time! He was about four, I think. Ultra competitive DD used to get so mad, lol.

Mazes, yes! DS loved them around 3 or 4, and then found Tower Defense games where you create your own mazes. He was obsessed.

My DD had common ground with 2,5,6,7, and 8. We can't claim 3, because she was being taught early.

1 didn't happen until later, when she saw me taking things apart and just HAD to know what was going on in there. I lost count of how many times I was asked to remove the toilet tank lid, and describe the parts and their functions.

As for #4, DD had limited (or rather, unexceptional) fine motor skills, probably because we kept her in mitts for the first month of her life, until we were confident she'd stopped gouging at her face with her nails. But gross motor skills... yikes. At 14mos she could throw a ball in the general direction she had intended, at a level I'd seen before in some 4-5yos. She could also kick a ball unerringly straight, over and over again.

Thanks for sharing, Dude! I recall reading your posts and your daughter sounds like a gem.

I ask this not to doubt you, but rather to inform myself as a newbie parent: is the consistent kicking/throwing unusual at 14mos? I ask because our pediatrician was floored that my son would kick a ball well around 9 months, when he was walking but still holding my finger. That boy has wicked aim and can do a decently firm shot while running at a makeshift "goal" now (e.g. A mixing bowl, box). Ditto for throwing-- like your daughter, he has a solid arm. Maybe I just take this for granted.

Thanks for recounting your experience, SAHM! It sounds you have a sharp little man!

I appreciate the tips you've shared--particularly your son's experience with boredom in the swimming lessons. I'll have to be mindful of that with our music sessions, as they do tend toward repetition, though they only run for 14 classes.

I think that maintaining constant stimulation is the key challenge I face with my son. Mealtimes are our worst fussy time outside of settling for sleep because he's physically restrained. So far, what's worked has been to read while eating, sing songs with gestures, or watch short clips on the iPad and mime/discuss what we see.

Those are good to know, thanks Melessa. How do you like the Leapfrog systems?

The consistent aim is VERY unusual at that age. My kiddo was also advanced in gross motor with good aim. It all really started to sink in after reviewing this site...

http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/two/index.html

Check out ages 1 - 5 milestones. I am guessing you will be as floored as I was...

Also, memory card games, magnadoodle, duplo, and wooden blocks are all big hits here.

I also have a big Tupperware full of oats that he likes to scoop in and drive his hotwheels around in. It is like a sandbox but easier to clean up and vacuum.

It's just my own limited, personal experience, but I'd played catch with 4-5yos who were just as likely to throw the ball behind them as towards me, as likely to bounce at their feet or sail over my head. Compared to them, her ability certainly looked unusual to me.

As for kicking a ball... she was doing better than I, a full-grown, semi-athletic adult. That was clearly unusual. If I missed her by more than a couple of steps, she'd look at me like I was doing it on purpose. It wasn't hard to diagnose how she did it, either. If you factored out the height differences in her kicking arc, and plotted the various points on an X-Y graph representing the plane of the floor, you'd see that all of these points are on the same line:

- The ball
- The target
- The furthest point her foot is drawn back
- The furthest point her foot advances on follow-through

Not that she was thinking about any of this consciously... she'd just automatically turn her body square to me, pull her foot straight back, and kick straight through the ball.

Fast forward to age 7, her soccer coach is frequently praising her passing ability (she's far and away the best on the team), while simultaneously trying to get her to use the side of her foot. She tries it his way, gets frustrated with the results, then goes right back to using her toes. He and I both know it shouldn't work that way with any kind of reliable consistency, but it's working anyway.

My youngest loved his leappad - especially the famous musicians. What was nice is that he could use programs for older kids while still only three or four because of the interactive, tactile, intuitive interface of the leappad.

You asked what you should track:

Beyond the basic milestones, some things I am sorry I didn't record or document:

"Wow" behaviors - like my kiddo reciting Living Books software stories when he was two or three, complete with sound effects. "Harry opened the door. Screeeeeeeee. The door squeaked." The stories were 15-20 pages long, and he would play them over and over until he had them completely memorized.

Musical accomplishments - songs he picked out on the piano when he was three. He would play for hours. They showed complexity and nuance, but we never recorded any of them.

Extreme interests - he carried a pocket-sized encyclopedia of dinosaurs with him everywhere when he was three or four. It was about 150 pages, and he knew the details from cover to cover despite not being able to read a word. He badgered all of us into reading the same page until he knew the material.

Making videos of things that are way out there for the age your child has served us well. Videos even helped friends kids qualify for DYS. DS
Started reading easy readers he had never seen before at 15 mos.
And we have kept a video record of his progress. He Just turned 4 and reads at late fourth to early fifth grade level. We have a video record to show his teacher when he starts K.

One thing you asked is for kids who looked PG early what then happened?

At around 18 mo to 3 I thought DS5 might be PG in a mathy way, and now I think he seems more "regular gifted" in that regard. He could count very early, for example spontaneously counting 11 objects and pronouncing there were 11, right around 2. He loved counting things, it was a big social activity for him and DH.

Also around 18 mo to 2.5 he had memorized all his favorite CDs of kids songs by the numbers rather than the names. It was clear he knew which ones he was asking for, because if I would say the name he'd confirm yes. I had to make a chart because I couldn't remember the numbers myself. The other way I could be sure he knew exactly which was which because sometimes he'd ask to listen to several different versions of the same song, all in a row. "Want song 32 on red CD" "Now 19 on the new one". But this is more memory than math, the number could as easily be any other name, although he did usually seem to understand what number would be before or after.

And then nothing. Well not nothing, but the pace of his math learning slowed way down. He's 5 and can do addition to 100, subtraction to 20, understands paying for something in coins (this year we slowly taught him that last one, he didn't just pick it up). Multiplies with 5 or 10 to 100. No division. Easy adding a few easy fractions. Still likes numbers and uses a lot of numbers in everyday activities, but doesn't seem PG at it to me. Or at least not yet. He doesn't intuitively "get" things like volume or division, and he doesn't seem to like complicated things in general.

At around 2 he also had PG looking reading skills, ie that he knew all the letters and could sound out short words. That has continued so that now at 5 he can read and understand everyday adult level stuff although he still only likes things with pictures and is impatient with too much text. He plays with words nonstop, making up puns and poems and stories as he goes, repeats himself a lot trying to get it to sound like he wants both the word choice and intonation. Barely can use a pencil though so output has waited years solely on that, has turned the corner on that just the last month.

I think he'll get more attention over the next few years for reading/composition skills than math.

Overall I think what made DS stand out as advanced early on was a combination of his memory and drive. I read a baby book where they said a typical 6 month old can remember something for 1 or 2 days, and that seemed to be a ridiculously low estimate. DS seemed to remember whatever the adults could remember. Also he slept way less than other kids and he needed constant stimulation. I really I think a huge part of him looking bizarre at 1 or 2 was that in those years he'd likely had and remembered hundreds of times more "life" than most kids.

He's not been tested yet but my guess is while he "looks" PG because he has a ton of drive and a fantastic memory and a good imagination, that he's not PG across the board due to either a lesser ability or lack of interest in mental analysis.

You asked about teaching letters. Now having been through one kid I think I could do it more logically the next time, we didn't really do it at all with DS other than playing around with letters on the fridge and providing a fridge magnet thing that says the letters. If I were to do it over I'd start with a handful of commonly used letters that can be easily combined to make highly relevant 3 letter words. Such as M O D A and maybe C or T. Only ever refer to them by the sounds they make in the words you are later going to make with them, such as mom, dad, cat. So O would always be "aw". I still remember at some point showing DS how a few letters went together and he got all quiet in a stunned sort of way, and I realized I should have shown him that earlier. I've read that its better to do lowercase first because they are more commonly used.

If you haven't checked out starfall.com DS loved it just before 2 (and your DS sounds a bit ahead of him so perhaps would like it now).

Last thing -- On Geopuzzles, does it irk anyone else's child that you can't put them together? Wouldn't it be great if you could take some edge pieces off one and attach another continent?

More on gross motor... my niece's son (not gifted, as far as we know), could kick and walk with a soccer ball (as in, purposefully direct it as he walked) at 12 months! I've never seen a kid do that before. Made my DS look really bad when at the age of three he still had to reach down and hold on to curbs when stepping over them (he was pretty delayed with gross motor, but he seems to have caught up now).

Fine motor... my DD could add missing pieces to a face drawing (ie if you drew a circle and say, a mouth, she'd draw the eyes and nose) at 12 months. Nothing fancy, but still! She was purposefully writing letters at 26 months (before she finished potty training at 28 months... ha ha ha... I always found that funny). At 26 months she could only do the letters with just straight lines (didn't have the control yet for curves), so she could write things like W, X, M, Y, etc etc. She intently stare at you, crayon in hand, waiting for you to tell her which letter to write. I find that interesting... that there was such a delay between letter recognition (16 months) vs. written output ability (10 months later). It makes you wonder what else is going on in their little heads that they can't express yet.

DS could control a soccer ball at 10 mos, but can't now, at 3 yrs. Jus' sayin'. Now, he's too busy doing a million other things. At 10 mos, it was cool he could do it, so he did. He'd do it now if his life depended on it, only it doesn't.

Michaela my 2nd child could dress herself beautifully at 2, but can't at 6.5. Because it was interesting then and clearly isn't now. She can't even get her undies on right anymore... I can't tell you how frustrating THAT is every morning!

FWIW, I did think my DD might be PG or something like that when she was a young toddler, and she has not tested as such. I think her IQ (which was gifted, but MG) might be a little higher than the # we have, from the RIAS, but not a LOT higher. I'd say she's not above 140 and I don't think she would ever qualify for DYS.

For instance, at 14 months she knew all letters, all numbers, all shapes, all colors, and many birds and plants (she liked field guides). Her early verbal development was just light years ahead of peers. At 18 months she had 50 or so sight words. As I mentioned, she also could ID most countries of the world and many flags at around 2. I kinda wish I HAD taken a video of that. There's a video of a 2yo whose skills with this were very similar to my DD's on YouTube and it's got 10 zillion astounded comments. I didn't realize at that time how unusual this was. She also could reciite very long books, like 50+ pages, in her twos. Letter perfect. My DS had exactly the same ability. In that case, I knew it was unusual because people outside the family were loudly and frequently amazed by it.

Again, she is certainly gifted, and I think she will be able to get into a very good college and achieve almost anything she wants to. However, at third grade, she reads probably at 8th grade level (this hasn't been tested to my knowledge, so it's a guess) and her math ability is probably 2 years ahead. Gifted, but not OMG COLLEGE AT 12.

Interesting, Ultramarina. Sure sounds like a PG child with those early milestones. Makes me think though. DS5 who tested PG did have impressive early milestones but nothing like OP or you describe. Advanced, yes, but nothing completely spectacular before 18 months old.

Once he hit 2 he really accelerated and by 3 he was reading at a 4th grade level and doing 1st-2nd grade math. This has continued and he is learning at lightning speed without being taught. It is really like magic.

I guess it really is very individual. I wasn't paying any attention to milestones, and "gifted" wasn't remotely on my radar, so maybe I just didn't see it. I certainly can't remember much, and since I'd never had a kid before, I had no idea what was normal. I do remember her being just several weeks old and staring at herself in a little mirror in her Moses basket. When she was about 18 months, I made a partial list of words she used, and it was around 200, including colors and numbers. But other than that, nothing ever hit me over the head. She was intensely interested in books and being read to, and began listening to full length novels by 3, but I thought that was because I read to her a lot. She didn't learn to read until she was 7, although she did so with limited instruction. (We unschool.)

Wow!!!! That is SO awesome... That stuff just blows me away. My two were not in ANY way gross-motor advanced. Not at all. They've just had cognitive/fine motor advancements. DD was bang on average and DS was delayed.

It's interesting. DD is in figure skating, and her anxiety is hampering her average ability. She is doing fine, but you can sure see the difference between the way she skates Vs. the non-perfectionist average-ability skaters. She can learn everything that she's taught (even won an award), but is very reserved and careful in her style, and is not at all expressive or performance-like.

She LOVES it though.. (you'd never know it to watch her). This makes me laugh and remember her fifth birthday when she got a gift she'd been hoping for from her cousin and she just stared, poker faced, at it. Cousin's Dad said "I thought she wanted that." and I said "She does!! She's thrilled!! That's her in-front-of people excited face!!" LOL that's how she skates. Very... deer in the headlights. Very... "the world will tumble like a house of cards if I make even one small mistake."

At 10 months my DD was just furniture walking and had just figured out what crawling was... (she didn't walk until 13 months, DS not until 15).

I'm blown away by your DD, ultramarina. What you describe is a phenomenal level of knowledge. She sounds remarkable.

A more general comment to all on my family background:

After doing some digging through old records with my parents, we've discovered that there is a known history of EG+ on my side of the family. Strangely, this had never come up before.

My dad is a retired fighter pilot and had to sit a battery of psych tests over the course of his recruitment. His evaluations consistently ranged EG+. (Though, he is quick to say that he thinks IQ tests are overblown and insists that he isn't remarkable.) I learned that my mother was doing university calculus and algebra courses in high school. I've always thought she was wired differently, since she has unusually low sleep requirements (<4 hours/night long term), and this is just another tidbit that supports my hypothesis.

Also, apparently my parents were told that I had received one of the highest scores ever tested in the province (Ontario) on the universal standardized test I referenced earlier (CTBS). I never knew this.

Yes, it's interesting. Meanwhile, my DS was mildly advanced at age 2 but nowhere near DD in his capacity to make you go "Whoa." For a while I worried about having one very gifted child and one child who was bright, but likely not gifted. Fast forward to DS learning chess at 3 and reading chapter books at 4. One area where he is still far behind DD at the same age is drawing and writing, but DD is notably gifted in these. (Although....her drawing ability was relatively more impressive at 4 than it is now. She still has an incredible artistic sensibility and skills, but at 4 she was sort of jaw-dropping.)

It's possible that DD is as gifted as she once appeared but that this is being obscured by other issues (she is dxed with anxiety and depression and may yet receive a dx of ADHD, ODD, or ASD). Her daily emotional struggles take up a lot of time and energy these days. However, she was a very challenging toddler as well.

Another interesting thing about DD is that she has synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia), which we did not discover till she was 6. I believe her brain is very unusually wired in a lot of ways. Much of her early precocity was memory-based, and she does continue to have an incredible memory, but that takes you only so far (doesn't allow you to understand advanced math, for instance). It certainly helps in school, though. (Memorizing math facts is effortless, for instance.)

Look at that--I didn't even know this, but it certainly sounds like DD: "Little is known about what, if any, cognitive traits might be associated with synesthesia... What has been confirmed is elevated, sometimes photographic, memory."

Ohhh... that's interesting! I thought I had that in my 20s (did some further reading and ruled it out, or maybe mine is mild). For me it was imagery and colours associated with sounds. I did have a memory that was somewhat photographic (not sure if it truly was.. have lost some of it) and I'm extremely visual-spatial, just like my DS.

How did you discover your DD has it?

Ok, this is me (somewhat):

Wikipedia: "Sound often changes the perceived hue, brightness, scintillation, and directional movement. Some individuals see music on a "screen" in front of their faces. Deni Simon, for whom music produces waving lines "like oscilloscope configurations – lines moving in color, often metallic with height, width and, most importantly, depth. My favorite music has lines that extend horizontally beyond the 'screen' area."[3] Loud tones are brighter than soft tones, and that lower tones are darker than higher tones. Synaesthetes nevertheless choose more precise colours than non-synesthetes and are more consistent in their choice of colours given a set of sounds of varying pitch, timbre and composition.[29]"

Sounds have colour and visual texture to me, and if someone asks what something/someone sounded like, I'm at a loss to explain it unless I can say something like "fuzzy and yellow, with jagged edges."

I've often thought of it as signals mixing because of increased sensitivity (sort of like feedback from speakers).

Ultramarina I'm really curious to know how you identified this in your DD.

(I love this forum )


EDIT - found your earlier thread & reading it now http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....5419/Synesthesia_seeing_colors_with.html

Yes, there seem to be a lot of different flavors of synesthesia. You can take a battery here: http://synesthete.org/ I'd love to have DD do it, but like I say it, she seems to be sort of uninterested in her own exceptionality.

It is supposed to be highly heritable. I don't have it...but...I am highly visual when drowsy and will sometimes see a color or texture in my mind associated with particular thoughts or emotions. But only when sleepy. It isn't dreaming--I'm awake at the time.

Oh, and we discovered it in her completely by accident when she referred in a matter-of-fact way to a number's color. I think she was saying that something looked wrong because the number was in color and it, of course, isn't that color. (As with many synesthetes, this sort of bothers her.)

You know! I was talking earlier about how DD learned letters, numbers, and colors extremely early (all were in place by 14 months). Since syn is thought to occur when connections that are supposed to be "pruned" in infancy don't get pruned...I wonder if this could be associated with her very early number/letter learning?

Hmmm... could be. Both DD and myself were really early with letter/number recognition. Interesting. DS was "a little" early - maybe he missed the cutoff? Or maybe he has another variation of syn that I haven't identified yet? Interesting. I would have thought he'd be more syn because he's so visual/spatial and sensory, but the spelling and memory (DD & I) seem to be more connected.

I've been trying to reply personally to each poster, but I wanted to issue a general note of thanks to everyone who has offered feedback in case I've missed anyone. This is a terrific forum, and it's thanks to your generosity in sharing your thoughts and experiences. Much appreciated!

--Aquinas

CCN my child that is "most" visual spatial and definitely most sensory has no synasthesia at all and does not get it at all. She's been quite freaked out by the conversations about it in fact. That said she has impaired working memory, AS and is dyslexic and can't spell to save herself. I guess there is an extent that she is "more visual spatial" because this is a standout strength amongst her weaknesses. She does have an amazing visual memory and amazing long term memory.

My daughter with synaesthesia has a 140+ WM score (can't remember exactly what it was) and she actually has a higher score in the visual spatial than her sister, but her verbal is higher again than that, so her visual spatial skills are very strong but not her relative strength, if that makes sense? She certainly has learned to read and to spell in a completely different manner and on a radically different trajectory to my eldest. You would expect that from the difference in their IQs and also given my older daughter's other Es (she's definitely one for the E/e thread), but it is interesting to wonder about the impact of the synaesthesia and differences in memory style/function between the two of them.