Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Verbal vs mathy siblings

Just for fun, could you share your experiences of your differently gifted kids, please? I have one very mathy son (DS6), and my other son (DS15m) seems to be more verbal. Both completed their milestones (from the column on the right in the link below) at exactly the same age (within a week), except for my eldest who could count to ten by one year old. My youngest hasn't shown much interest in numbers, except to point at them. He does, however, have a big interest in scribbling by 11 months. My youngest also just appears to be older and understand an unbelievable amount and has a wide variety of interests; my eldest was always very focused on just a few things.

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10106.aspx

So, just wondering if, in hindsight, you noticed any differences

My DD appears to be pretty globally gifted, but is particularly strong in writing and art. DS also seems very well-rounded. What I can say about the two of them is that you would never have guessed, based on toddler development, that my DS would read much earlier than my DD. She had way more early reading milestones than he did. Also, she was very interested in math and showed early talent with it and he was blase about it and not too showy (didn't count items early, for instance) till about age 4, when there was a sudden explosion in his mental math skills.

At 9, I find that DD is interested in patterns and math "tricks," very strong on calculation, but does not appear to be top of her class in the subject (she attends a gifted school). I still feel a little confused because I feel there is a math kid inside of her somewhere, but it's not showing much at this point. Oh, she likes geometry.

Does globally gifted mean gifted in all areas equally? My DS6 is five years ahead with maths and two to three years ahead with everything else.

That's interesting about the "switch" in abilities. My eldest has always shown a stronger aptitude towards maths, but early abilities in everything else, too. I wonder if my youngest might switch. He seems to be even more aware than my eldest as a baby. It's hard to explain: my eldest was like a little maths professor, like a caricature. Whereas my youngest is like he is literally a three year old. He is very mature, sociable, and can play with older kids like he is their age.

It's fascinating. I can't wait to see how things turn out!

squishys ... if I was to go by the milestones in the article, both my boys would be severely and I mean SEVERELY delayed! lol In our house it's not verbal vs. mathy but more about "show off" vs. "closet giftie"

My eldest was more overtly mathy as a small child (addition requiring fingers and toes while in her baby car seat so just before or just after 3 I would guess, as she was out of that seat by 3.5 or before). As much as IQ can be measured by a test she's a full SD less gifted than her sister, who was never the less much less naturally mathy, possibly through complete lack of interest. Though I suspect that they will both be better at problem solving than facts.

Squishys--yes, gifted in all areas pretty equally.

Funny thing about making generalizations re: verbal vs. mathy. Eldest has ALWAYS been overtly mathy. Younger brother has great vocabulary, taught himself to read at age 4 and is great speller. So, I've always thought of him as more verbal than math. Well, wouldn't you know ... at end of 2nd grade and then in 3rd grade this year, the county and us have done all sorts of testing on the younger one. On everything, he's scored extremely high on ... QUANTITATIVE. Much more so than verbal. DH theorizes that he actually second-guesses the verbal questions b/c he is so literal.

Still, never would have thought the testing would show what it did.

Mum2twoboys - I have read (here perhaps) that self taught early reading can actually be more of a sign of "mathy" thinking than verbal - self taught reading is strongly about decoding/pattern matching etc, different thing to raising a mini bush lawyer, and unsurprising to see a self taught reader progressing strongly in math...

Because, obviously, her child's verbal ability is due to intensive parental coaching. Of course...

Maybe you can run that line by her facetiously and see how quickly the coaching talk is dropped.

MumOfThree, I believe you are right as my mathy son was an early, self-taught reader at two. He started by memorising the words of his favourite book, Mr Noisy (from the Mr Men collection). That was the first book he "read", at 18 months. His first book he read, on his own without memorisation was Mr Strong, at two. I couldn't imagine my youngest reading in three months' time.