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Joined: Sep 2007
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In the interests of creating a guide to developmental milestones for gifted/talented kids, here's a quickie survey that may mutate into something bigger. Right now I'll stick to school-type milestones.
This is totally informal and isn't meant to be a diagnostic tool or anything like that. But it could be a useful guide. I've done a survey like this once before and I found that it worked well when it was allowed to morph over time (meaning, I would call people again and ask them new questions to create new categories).
Please fill in the blanks and I'll figure out a way to organize this. My plan right now is to make averages, medians and ranges.
Caveat: This is all self-reported data, and I am definitely estimating some of my responses, so take it with a grain of salt. Also, and naturally, some of these milestones depend on when mom or dad first handed a book or pencil to the child.
So this isn't perfect but if people are interested, it could be a useful (if rough) guide.
Count months only if the full month after the birthdate is complete. So for someone born May 12 2000, May 11 2001 is 11 months and May 13 is 1y0m.
Options: PM the info to me and I'll add it to the list or just add it in here.
Also, try to reply to each successive message. This will cut down on copying and pasting on my part.
If this bombs, I'll drop it. If people don't like the idea, let me know. If you DO like the idea, also let me know!
Val
Age at which your child started sounding out/reading words:
DS8 4y0m, DS6 3y10m, DD3 3y3m
Age at which child starting reading easy beginner books (eg Bob Books Set 1; See Dick Run.)
DS8: 4y2m, DS6: 4y6m, DD3: 3y6m
Age at which child read a Dr. Seuss-type book:
DS8: 4y7m? DS6 5y10m,
Age at which child read chapter books with little or no help:
DS8: 5y9m
Age at which child could count a group up to 10 objects and draw a line to the corresponding digit:
DD3: 3y4m
Age at which your child could do simple addition (sum <5) in his/her head:
DD3: 3y4m
Age at which your child could multiply in his/her head:
DS8: ~5y6m? DS6: 5y10m?
Age at which child started to write letters:
DS8: 2y9m, DS6: 4y9m, DD3: 2y3m
Age at which child started to write words independently, even if very short and/or mispelled:
DS8: 4y2m, DS6: 5y5m, DD3: 3y6m
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This is very interesting Val, except in my case I cannot reliably recall that info. I never "schooled" my dd and to be honest one day she just knew how to read. I don't remember these steps of learning to sound words. I don't think she ever did. She just started reading whole words and kept going. She was reading Dr. Seuss books by the age of 3 on her own. Chapter books by maybe 4 1/2 or 5.
She did not start writing until she started school at the age of 6 1/2.
I think I need to start writing things down.
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I'll confess I am totally useless at remembering any of this; I was too busy trying not to forget the diaper bag and remembering to do the laundry. I do remember that DS read his first sign, "exit," at 23 months. He became obsessed with signs and read them a lot, but never picked up a book. Then at 5y6m he started reading Narnia books completely on his own. We skipped all the early readers and easy fiction because he never sat still long enough to read a book, and, i suspect, there was not enough plot to capture his attention.
When you say chapter books, does that mean Magic Tree House or Harry Potter? I have always been confused by that term since many pretty easy book and some very hard (like War and Peace) are all chapter books.
I also remember that at 6y2m, he spontaneously figured out how to multiply to find area. Until then, I didn't know he knew how to multiply at all!
As I said, I'm pretty useless.
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Joined: May 2007
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Val, I pm'ed you my kids' info. This is really interesting but I'm not sure how useful it is since my kids are at different LOGs. Most of it is my guesstimate anyway.
Cathy
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I don't think you can really gather any data from this unless you start looking to IQ scores as well. This board leans heavily towards 99.8%+ and it's hardly a good representation of gifted community (it sure is the right place for us).
Not to mention that there are 2e issues and the fact the parents do not remember when the kids did what. I have no idea when the kids counted or wrote letters. I think writing letters is more about fine motor skills than anything else. My older one never sounded out words either, he too just started reading words.
To me Ruff's milestones are not that meaningful and just because child doesn't do anything doesn't mean she/he is not HG. (I think my kids have quite impressive list so it's not about them.)
Davidson application no longer contains list of milestones and my guess would be it's for the reasons I mentioned above.
LMom
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Yeah, I think also, it's hard to be accurate. I did my best to be accurate, but guessed a little, it's too hard to remember.
Plus, I only remember the things I thought were strange.
Such as: DD8 could count to 10 by two years old, but also started counting backward. She was also sight reading a word or two she had remembered at 1 1/2 I think.
DD5 started humming her lullaby at 8 months, that really freaked me out.
Neato
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Hmmm... good list, Val. I'll have to think about it and see if I can remember. Wouldn't it be great if you could put this together as a "real" pamphlet and get it handed out by pedicatricians? I'll get back to you.
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Davidson application no longer contains list of milestones and my guess would be it's for the reasons I mentioned above. Aww man! All that writing I had to do and now you can get in without it? LOL!! Actually I was thinking "I should just go get my copy of our DYS application and copy all the answers here..."  I did have quite a bit of it in the baby book, but not all... We had a further difficulty with recording milestones because DS was very much a "hider" early on. We knew he could read at least some words by the time he was 3y2m because he slipped up a couple times, but mostly he insisted he couldn't. And while I know he can do math in his head, he still generally doesn't if he doesn't have to, even at 8. He's very cautious about his math facts... so if I insist that he just tell me what 6x8 is, he can, but if he's just working on something he'll usually skip-count up to it.
Erica
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KAR - my DS4 is a hider too, about reading (laughing at your "slipped" comment)! So we don't really know exactly when he met milestones. Counting - could count to 20 by 2.6; one to one counting, just before 2; simple adding, by at least 3.6 Reading - signs/road signs between 2 and 2.6. Beginner books - since he's a hider, not sure, but at least by 3. Days with Frog and Toad, just before 4th birthday. By the way, many of you have probably seen this, but SENG does have a pamphlet that they would like pediatricians to hand out: Seng gifted pamphlet
Last edited by st pauli girl; 05/20/08 07:42 AM. Reason: figured out linking
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So I have to tell the story... lol... We went to Washington, DC, when DS was 3y2m, and while DH was busy with what he had to do there, DS and I went to the zoo and some museums... and ended up at the aquarium in downtown DC (not the big one in MD, this one is tiny and dank and hidden in a basement...) The first tank we came across said "Lion Fish" and DS pointed at it and said "Long Fish".... I said (not thinking for a minute), "No honey, it says Lion Fish" and then "Hey, did you just read that?" He said "No, I saw the fish and knew what it was" I said "Sillykins, the tank is empty, you couldn't have seen the fish!" (and nevermind that he wouldn't have mispronounced it that way!) He said "Well it looked like the sort of place they would have had a Lion Fish" *snort!* I know that was the same day we "officially" started talking about multiplication, too, because we were sitting outside that building for about an hour at dusk waiting for DH to come pick us up and we were alternating skip counting... so for instance he's say 10 and I'd say 20 and he'd say 30 and I'd say 40, etc. I think we did 5s and 10s but I don't actually remember it too well... I was watching for DH and keeping an eye on the enormous rats that were sneaking around the building... A year later he was still pretending he couldn't read, but when I tried to claim that a concession stand only had pretzels, he said "But the sign says grilled hot dogs!" And he was six before he slipped up in front of anyone else -- I was starting to wonder if I was entirely off my rocker!!
Last edited by KAR1200; 05/20/08 08:31 AM.
Erica
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LOL! Love that! The nutty kid! Though as my father often says about me, just because that instance doesn't show you to be crazy doesn't mean that you aren't! 
Kriston
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For my son, age 10:
First started sounding out/reading words around 2. By 2 1/2 I could spell words for him and he could name the words. He also liked to spell words for me.
Read his first easy reader book at 2 1/2 and Magic Tree House books at 3 1/2.
He was able to read paragraphs from Alice in Wonderland at 4 1/2 but only with a finger underneath the words and for short periods of time before his eyes got tired but he could continue naming the words if I spelled the words out for him while he looked away. Vision therapy several years later helped with this.
Age at which he could count a group of up to 10 objects and draw a line to the corresponding digit was around 3 when we bought him a Kindergarten workbook, but he preferred doing First Grade Reader Rabbit at that age because he had some visual motor integration problems.
I don't know when he first started doing addition in his head, but I think it was before he turned four.
He could do some multiplication before he turned 5.
He could only write his name before he turned 5 and his handwriting was sloppy and he wouldn't color in the lines. He has motor dyspraxia which makes these things more difficult for him. He could spell really well but his handwriting was very slow and he couldn't write for very long before his hands got tired. For this reason and the fact that he has a May birthday, the Kindergarten teacher wanted to hold him back in a transitional first grade and we had no real choice but to homeschool.
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The problem I see with the seng pamphlet and pretty much anything else written is that it can be interpreted so broadly as to have every child be gifted. Who's going to think their own child isn't curious? Every child is curious, just in different ways. Unless you redefine some of those terms, I think it just does a disservice.
Now a pamphlet written more like the developmental disabilities ones would be what I'd like. "Does your child seem different" Do you feel exhausted just having a conversation?
Just flimsy examples, and I don't know a bunch of gifted people like y'all do, but from looking on this board, it seems parents tend to have self doubts and struggle with parenting and wonder about their child and characteristics that aren't matching up to the parenting books. I don't know if it's a common factor, or if parents of typically developing feel the same way, but I do know that most parents in our preschool didn't agonize over kindergarten choices like I did. They chose based on price, reputation, etc. Whether their child could manage there was much lower on the list.
Milestones can be misleading too. If your child doesn't meet really early milestones in every area, you can be lulled deeper into denial. My dd isn't particularly logical or mathematical, so I was able to ignore the early reading and the flowerful language, and strong emotions, reassuring myself that she is normal. Despite the public school teachers of my older ds telling me I should do something about it. I just latched onto any evidence of normalcy (and still do).
Anyway, that's just my biased thoughts. I work in the field of developmental disabilities and see all the work that goes into reaching and supporting the parents through all means, including literature. They've put a lot of research into attracting the kids they really want to catch for their programs, addressing denial as well as overidentification. But then the pamphlets are made for programs that actually exist!
Mostly, I just wish that I had some guidance with this child of mine. Not so much academically, but I felt on my own to research and discover on the internet some of the different characteristics like intensity. It's not something you can ask professionals (teachers, doctors) about without feeling self conscious and labelled. And there's so much misinformation on the internet too and you don't know who to trust when you are just starting out researching. So many people trying to get rich by making your kid gifted. Ahh I ramble, but hopefully you can see where I'm whining from. This is my current experience. Word for word. As for milestones, anything non-physical is way advanced, anything physical? Not so much. My hulking child didn't walk until 18 months. Good times. Graham is currently 2y9m and counts to 1,000 and sight identifies bigger numbers. He can one to one count and has been able to do so for about 8 months. He's starting to add and subtract things with sums less than 10. He can pattern numbers. For example the other night, for the first time, I asked him complete the pattern 2...4...6 and off he went. I don't think he understands even and odd numbers, but he can complete patterns in puzzles, etc. Knew his letters and the sounds they made by 2y3m and read his first words by sight (cat, dog, bat,etc) at 2y5m. He's currently reading Biscuit, Mudge, Spot (what's with the early reader dogs?) and other Level 1 readers from the library. His vocabulary is very advanced and his favorite things in the world to do are to thumb through phone books (lots of numbers and words) and do his "websites" (Starfall, etc). To summarize our life with him....he's a great kid who acts like a kid, but on a daily basis he does or says something that makes my husband and I look at each other, and with a bit of panic in our eyes, laugh a bit nervously. 
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I didn't really look closely at the Seng gifted pamphlet until after reading through your comments. Perhaps what's needed is a "Is your child highly gifted" pamphlet, because the kids who are not HG (and the parents of those kids) don't have quite the same issues.
I'd add something like "Did your child begin reading without any apparent instruction?" to traits noted by others.
Last edited by st pauli girl; 05/21/08 12:15 PM. Reason: added stuff
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LOL, it is a wonderful idea, but I have to admit, I stopped writing down when DS did most of this because it frankly scared me:). My husband actually took all the What to Expect books away from me before DS was a year old because I couldn't figure out why they didn't work for our child. I figured that I was misinterpreting what the book meant by saying 1 or 2 words by X months. Nothing made sense as I started to read too much into them and got stressed out trying to make them work for our child.
I do remember at his first B'day, one of his aunts said we needed to write a list of all of his "words" so we'd remember. DH and I started it and stopped after we filled up several pages and still hadn't run out of his words and phrases. That same morning, I remember DS sorting his Cheerios into piles of equal numbers and eating the ones that didn't fit into a pile evenly. I think he did it by 2,3,4 and 5 asking for more cheerios when he needed them. My sister brought it to our attention. DH and I were so used to it we didn't think anything about it since he had always done that with goldfish and Cheerios. Was he really doing math before he was 1? I'll stick my head in the sand and say no but the interest was there.
I don't think DH and I realized how proficient a reader DS was until we took him to the Smithsonian around 4 years. He was fascinated with reading all the displays especially in the early Life and Early Sea life rooms. Hearing him sound out and understand and discuss those displays sort of opened our eyes. Somehow the fact that he was reading Magic Treehouse books at 3 didn't have the same impact since everyone on both sides of family had been early readers:)
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According to my mom, I didn't say anything but Mama until I was three when I said, "Can I have a drink of water?"
My IQ would place me in the HG category. I guess what I'm saying is that not meeting particular milestones doesn't mean that the child is not HG.
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Thanks for all the replies. I'll put something together soon. Elh0706, you can PM the data to me if you want and I'll include it.
I think of this as a little experiment to see if we can come up with something useful. As I said, I expect it will morph over time as everyone looks at it and thinks of ways to improve it.
Val
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Hi Everyone, I've collated the developmental milestone data I received. I created four MS Excel graphs for four questions: 1. Age at reading first word 2. Age at first reading a simple chapter book 3. Age at first doing simple addition (sum </= 5) 4. Age at first deliberately writing a letter. I got the most responses to these questions. More responses would be great! BIG CAVEATS: *The data is only useful as a description of the kids included in the survey. *It isn't linked to IQ *It's self-reported *There are a small number of data points Obviously, this data isn't generalizable in any way. Although I did a few simple statistical calculations, they're only meaningful in the context of the group (and barely so at this point). More data would make them better. That said, I think this is a worthwhile project that could provide interesting information if more people participate. The current little idea could morph into something more interesting and more statistically reliable, too. In the meantime, the graphs are certainly interesting for us. They could also be useful for showing to school administrators, given that they paint a (little) picture of (a small group of) gifted kids. The approach I'm using here is a little different from what I've seen in other sources (Ruf, etc). If anyone has found something similar to this, I'd be happy to see it. I created a Google page so that everyone can view the files: Survey results #1 If anyone else would like to participate, please answer the following questions here or in a PM to me: 1. Age at which your child first read/sounded out a word.
2. Age at which your child first read a chapter book (Cam Jansen, etc).
3. Age at which your child could do simple addition (sum less than five) in his head.
4. Age at which your child first deliberately wrote a letter.
5. Age at which your child starting writing words (mispelled or not), not including his/her name.
New:
6. Age when child first wrote his/her name.If interest continues, and if my time permits, I can continue this project. Cheers, Val
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Cool, Val! I like the charts.
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