Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted Traits as Toddlers

Just wondering -- how gifted are your children and what special things were they doing in the toddler years?

I'm asking because I have a DD2.5 who clearly shows signs of GT. However, I'm not having her tested until she's getting closer to going to school. In the meantime, my DH and I are always trying to analyze how GT she might be. Sometimes we think just MG, other times HG or even PG. She seems to be learning even more quickly now than she did just a few months ago.

I know all children develop at different rates and some may not show signs of being GT until later than the toddler/pre-school years. But if anyone can remember some of the special things your child did at this time and how GT they are from tests, I'd be very interested to know. It's perhaps the closest I can get to figuring out how GT my DD is until she's old enough to be tested.

Thanks!

Have you looked at this? http://www.educationaloptions.com/levels_giftedness.htm

My recollections of DD at 2.5 are a little hazy. At that age she couldn't get enough of being read to. She was verbal very early. She was able to draw a large capital E with crayon on paper. At age 3.5, she announced to her grandparents that she would "now do an interpretive dance". She then performed a dance to show a seed sprouting and blooming into a flower. She could recite "The Night Before Christmas". Just before she turned four, she begged me to teach her to read. She picked it up very quickly and has had her nose buried in books ever since. Her WISC scores at age 8: GAI~MG, VCI~HG. Her FSIQ is not valid due to a visual/motor integration problem.

At 2.5, DS knew all the letters and letter sounds and was just beginning to sound out words like CAT, BUG, etc. He was beginning to add and subtract and could count to at least 30. His reading and math skills have developed a full year (or more) earlier than DD's. His WPPSI-III score at age 4.5: FSIQ~EG.

For my definitions of MG, HG, EG, PG, I'm going by this chart:

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/highly_profoundly.htm

Grat-

My dd sure hit it off with your social butterfly! I have a feeling that if you were to retest, she'd blow it out of the water.

I am interested in this as well, my dd is 2 years and a couple of months, so it's all very fresh in my head, no testing as yet (do they even do that?), I'm pretty sure she's "blazingly smart" as my dh puts it.
Here's some of her latest, I would be curious if this rings any bells for people with older children:
definitely a music lover, calls out for repeated viewings of the Nutcracker, gets near frantic when the classical music station 'turns off' the music to tell you what's coming up next. Knows by heart many children's rhymes and songs (abc song, I'm a little tea pot, hot cross buns, etc.) and makes up plenty of others. I remember telling her to stop singing at the top of her lungs in a restaurant because others were trying to eat and she just launched into a hearty rendition of "TRYIN' TO EAT, TRYIN' TO EAT" which she made up on the spot.

She has a very rich vocabulary, both her baby sitters are astounded at her ability to communicate. Three and four syllable words are no problem for her, her grammar is usually spot on, with an occaisional mistake which she will sometimes correct on her own.
Her coordination and vigor seem ahead of normal for her age. She is defniitely 'large and in charge'. For a while I thought she was considered bright by so many people because she is just extremely outgoing, but I more and more feel there's definitely something going on in that brain that is at least early for her age.
First word was at 9 mos, which I think is early.
Walking was average, exactly 12 months, give or take a couple of days.
Not sure how 'normal for her age' these are:
Today she started using a pair of scissors somewhat deftly - straight lines only, but didn't seem like she was going to hurt herself. Since at least 1.5 years: when asked to count to 5 can recite to 10 or higher depending on her mood. Now starting to recognize some of the numbers on paper. Can really count objects up to 3 with accuracy (as opposed to recitation of a string of number names).

Hoosier-

If you want to post a little more about your toddler, us old timers might make a few speculations. Just keep in mind that certain behaviors will shout PG, but kids who do not do these things may also be PG. Early reading, for instance, is a big clue, but there are plenty of PG kids who don't read until a more typical age.

I've got four PG kiddos and each has had a unique developmental path, though all were self taught early readers.

I think it's really hard to tell from early milestones. According to my mother, I didn't really talk at all (except to say, "Mama") until I was three. She was quite concerned but decided I was ok because I could follow complex, multistep verbal instructions at age two. One day when I was three I started to talk--the first thing I said was, "Can I have a drink of water?" LOL, maybe I didn't talk until I actually needed something I've always been uncoordinated and didn't do any physical stuff early. Socially, I was a very late bloomer. I tested HG in grade school.

My twice exceptional son who had a 50% delay in motor skills at 12 months but was identifying letters before he was two and read his first easy reader book without being taught at 2 1/2 only a year after he started walking and could name words that were spelled out for him and could do Reader Rabbit First Grade at age 3. He was also very talkative and liked to use big words in his speech. He has not had an IQ test, only an individual achievement test. The educational psychologist guessed his IQ to be in the highly gifted range based on the information we gave him and the results of the achievement test.

My 3 y/o daughter was alert at birth and put her fingers in her mouth just before 1 month. First word at 9 months, combined words at 13 months, sentences at 15-17 months (hard to tell because she vocalized constantly). She had a repetoire of songs at 18 months and could hit the notes.

She started writing letters at 2 1/4 yrs. When she was 3 1/4, she told me she wanted to read. So I wrote CAT and she sounded it out. They do sounds at day care, but no one talked about tracking from left to right or combining sounds as far as I know. She wanted me to give her a spelling test in May and wrote "I see a dog," "feet," and "fast" correctly, including separating the words.

She begs the day care provider for homework. It's mostly kindergarten level stuff and has been very easy for her for months.

She took steps quite late (14.5 months) and didn't really walk for a month or so after that.

My 6 y/o wanted to learn about dinosaurs when he was just 2. He probably would have started learning their names before that if Mom and Dad had understood what was going on. He could distinguish similar dinosaurs (ex. different dromeosaurs) before 3 by looking at drawings of their heads, even when they weren't drawn to scale. I didn't teach him this. He could learn from documentaries about dinosaurs before he was 3. He could identify a skull as amphibian when he was 5 ("What kind of skull is that?"), and I didn't teach him this. He's EXTREMELY observant.

He could sound out words before 4 but wasn't interested in learning to read until 5 1/2.

My eldest asked us to teach him to read when he was 3 1/2. He thrives on instruction and soaks it up like a sponge (when he's in the mood). He wanted to learn how to play chess when he was 4 or 5 and was playing games in kindergarten. He wasn't very good, but he was playing properly.

They've never been tested so I have no IQ info.

Val

If anyone can give me an idea or has had similar experiences your children as little ones, that would be interesting. Here's the lowdown on my DD2.5.

She has never been advanced with gross motor skills, crawling and walking at the average time.
She started speaking about 25 words at 17 months and then just went in fast forward with her speech.
Before 2, she could:
speak in 5-word sentences
recognize the entire alphabet, upper and lower case (22 months)
knew all the sounds each letter makes
could count to 20
recited books we read to her only once or twice
memorized various nursery rhyme songs after hearing them a few times
could sight-read about 25 words in both upper and lower case or mixed (dog, cat, elmo, mommy, go, stop, etc)
could spell her name out loud (20 months)
knew all her shapes and colors (20 months)

Now at 2.5:
solves puzzles of 24 pieces (I haven't gotten anything bigger than that yet)
operates the computer mouse perfectly, opens certain programs and navigates through websites (right now she's drawing on the computer with free software, Tux Paint)
completes a 12-card memory game on the computer
comprehends a large vocabulary from us - we talk to her like she's 4 or 5 because she responds better to it (our family probably thinks we're nuts)
She can type her name out on the computer
Started teaching herself to sign the alphabet by herself


She does not read yet, but I think she's close. Lately she's been naming all the letters in a word and then "reading" it (for instance she took my lotion bottle, read all the letters in the word "continuous" and then said, "Mommy's lotion!" as if that's what she was spelling out).
DD has always LOVED being read to. When she was 18mo or so, she became obsessed with this Pooh ABC book so that I had to read to her at least 25 times a day, no exaggerating. We realized later she was trying to memorize all of the letters. Today at lunch, she said, "I'll stay with mommy while daddy mows the grass." She stuttered a little, but I thought that was a long sentence for 2.5.

Dottie, we are doing our best to enjoy DD while we can (although some days get a little frustrating, as life with any toddler can be). I try to write down as much as I can about her -- they say the funniest things!


I think I asked my original question on this thread because sometimes my DH and I feel like we're reading too much into what DD does. Our family has not been the most supportive, often discarding her behavior as nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes we really second-guess ourselves even though we know in our hearts our DD is not "normal."
Any thoughts or speculations about my DD are welcome.

Thanks for the additional details, Hoosier. I'd say she definitely sounds G, but what flavor of G is hard to say. The memory for songs, books, sight words etc. stands out to me, along with her vocabulary and interest in reading. Keep on letting her lead the way and I'm sure she'll continue to amaze you!

I've got three early walkers (7 months, 8 months, and ten months) and one late walker (15 months). All were fluent readers by age three at the latest. The most precocious of my readers was reading signs at 12 months, had many sight words at 16 months, and we discovered that he could read virtually anything in clear print just after he turned two. At that age, he loved to read adult field guides to identify things form his rock and seashell collections. He is not my strongest reader now though, as his little sister has surpassed him. She is much more of a bookworm and is very, very fast! The test admin who did her evaluation said that she scored higher than any other child she's ever seen on some reading subtests. She was past grad school level at six years old. It's been fun watching my kids play developmental leapfrog with each other. Skills don't always develop along a predictable path, and I have given up trying to guess where they will be in any particular area in a year, two years, or more.

My kids were all pretty verbal early on, and I think I am a bit out of touch with what is typical. Let me see if I can find a chart: http://parentcenter.babycenter.com/0_milestone-chart-25-to-30-months_1496593.pc

That's not the one I wanted... let me see:
http://www.austega.com/gifted/preschoolers.htm

That's the one! Maybe you'll find this helpful.

take care-