Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Will she continue being this far ahead?

So does the speed of learning slow down, or does it usually continue at this point...in other words if a child is at this point 3 years ahead academically, will they typically stay 3 years ahead?

DD 2.8 will be 3 in March, but is not challenged by even Kindergartin material. She loves workbooks, actually asks for them as soon as she gets up in the morning and choses them over other activities. I bought her a full year K Curiculum book, nation standards, etc. I thought it would challenge her...boy was I wrong.....in 2 weeks she has done over half of the 300 page book and it has all been easy...none of it hase even come close to challenging her or being something she doesn't know. I've looked through the rest of the book and really I don't think but maybe one subject will be new and even that I doubt will be chalanging as she tends to hear something once and remembers it for good. I never have really taught her anything, she just picks it up and seems to know it.

So my question, one that came up when my mom and I were talking today, is it most likely she will continue at this speed? I feel like she will be doing 1st rade material by the time she turns 3. Will she typically continue to be working this many grade levels ahead or is there no way to tell?

While she as not been tested, She strongly feels Level 4 according to Dr. Ruff's book in milestones and sounds very similar to the case studies of level 4's.

My Level 2 child (though she spans into Level 3 in some things, I am comfortable placing her on Level 2) was about 1.5 years ahead at her 2 year old doctor appt. And then at her 3 year old doctor appt, she was at least 2 years ahead!! So you never know, imo!!

Hi,

What a great question Amanda. I am very curious too to hear what people say who have kids that are now older. What happened with the pace? Were there any slowdowns and when?

DS2.6 seems to have skipped a grade with reading in the last month, he doesn't even read much or ask many questions, we mostly read to him, so I was really surprised yesterday when he read something fairly hard out loud. Looking at the grade levels he's somewhere around 3rd. So I guess my own answer is DS spent 6 months in kindergarten reading and has been going faster after that. Seems like starting around 4th grade there is more conceptual and also cultural knowledge component that may slow him down.

He's been fairly stalled out on math type things the last couple months, and doesn't have the interest level to make it through workbooks. More in a phase of constant pretend play.

Polly

Well, my DD is not quite 4, but I'll say that she works in leaps and plateaus (or, rather, what appear to be plateaus). By her 3rd birthday, she was reading at a K/1 level. Two months later, she was at 2nd. After another two months, she was at 3rd. And two months after that, she was easily reading some 4th grade level books. Since then, there's been no obvious progress in reading--but why a three year old would be interested in more advanced books than that is beyond me. I figure (and I hope this isn't just my head in the sand) it'll probably be a couple of years before she wants to read a 5th grade level book. It's not just a matter of ability, but also of interest. Likewise, with the math--she suprised me out of nowhere counting backwards and skip counting before she was 3, and then was totally uninterested in numbers until recently, when she began doing basic arithmetic in her head.

I think this is how gifted kids tend to do it: they become interested, they learn like crazy, and then they move on. You have to expect a lot of jumping around.

Also, I'd be sort of cautious of categorizing a child as being at a K level just because she's able to do a K level workbook. I think Kindergarten is so much about learning to read and write and follow instructions that I'd be suprised to find much of substance in a K workbook. (Or maybe that's just more of my sticking my head in the sand.)

I agree with no5no5. Really is about interest. DD 3.3 is like this. She goes through phases. Sometimes it's math and she is obsessed with it; other times she is my little encyclopedia, memorizing verbatim information from books read to her; and other times she is all about her verbals and developing her second language.

I've lost track of where DD aligns to public school curriculum. Before she turned 2 she was already doing a lot of 2nd grade level work, specifically in math. This structure has changed drastically for us since we decided to go the academic route and place her in a Spanish Immersion program where their academics are 2 years ahead of the public school curriculum here in Texas. I will never forget our walk through of the school this past spring. They explained the advancement of their curriculum and gave examples of what each age worked on. Eye opening for me as I realized that the 3 year olds work at a kindergarten level, yet my DD was already doing a lot of what the kindergarten class did, which aligns to second grade. Our one saving grace (at this moment) is all of it is done in Spanish so she has a little challenge for now. The other savior is the school already recognizes her abilities and won't pigeon hold her to a class just because of her age. When she is no longer challenged, they plan to evaluate and consider grade acceleration.

Now back to your question about do they stay that advanced. I, personally, think it depends on the environment. Case in point, my DD. Before labeling her with gifted, my eyes were closed and I didn't over think all of it. I had no problems running with her interest; basically facilitating whatever it was she was in to and building off of it. IE. shapes led to colors which led to whatever. She might not have been interested in colors but it made sense to provide her that information. Once I stumbled on the term gifted and really read up on it, I freaked out and with held information. I could have tackled multiplication after she started adding and subtracting but couldn't bring myself to do it because I felt like I would be pushing. Workbooks were evil hot-housing material and none would be found in my house! I really took it to the extreme. Where would my DD be at this point if I had just left things alone and facilitated her adventure? Who is to say but it really was when I made the bad decision of putting her in a social preschool that I came around to realize I don't have a child who will blossom in this type of structure and I, myself, had created a similar structure at the house. She became a shell of herself. Now that she is in an academic based program we have our DD back. And when she is interested in learning something I have no problem providing her the info, be it in a workbook, internet, conversations, etc.

Through all of this it wasn't that she didn't advance but I saw it in other ways. Her wit and humor became even more advanced, along with her cognitive skills and language.

Thanks everyone. I was just wondering what others have experience. I have always just ran with DD's intreast and didn't really realize that what she was doing was not ND until her 2 year old appointment when her ped said she was on a 4 year old level. I had no idea that most 2 year olds did not recognize letters, count to 15, knew all there colors, and could talk in 10 word sentences. And then we moved and went to a new ped at 2 and 1/2 and was told she was on a 5 year old/ kindergartin level. My mom sent me there end of year K skills list and she has mastered all but 2 things, and those involve handwriting. As of right now she is reading on a 1st grade level.

She constantly surprises me. Her logic is amazingly advance as is her sense of humor and wit. These have always surprised us, she has had a very dry adult sense of humor since beofre 2, even being sarcastic LOL. It's funny as other people don't know how to react when they hear a 2 year old speak this way.

One day she picked up a workbook at a friends house and loved it, and asked for one....since then she blows throught them and constantly asks for more. We will continue to take it one day at a time as I always tell my husband. I apreciate all the stories.

Amanda I went back and read some of your past posts about your DD, and she does sound amazing , what a joy she must be.

In trying to answer your question, my DD's are 5 & 6 so still very young,they are still advancing quite a bit. With DD6 she was tested in kindergarten on where her grade level was at, 8 months later after an IQ test that would qualify for DYS I had her tested on WIAT-11 and she had gone up 2 more grades in everything, as far as I can tell she still seems to be advancing at the same rate, not sure when this slows down it's almost like she is still hungry for information and is still filling the need. Anytime she is presented with something new that she is interested in learning, she goes into this mode that looks like she is memorizing it , completely. Really interesting to watch her do this. Hope this helps

Amanda ... I hope you didn't take my post as judgment on you using workbooks. I am a born again workbooker.

And as for humor ... JMHO but out of everything Ruf aligns with gifted; humor seems to be the tale tell sign for the HG+ child. DD's sense of humor has always been jaw dropping, but when you are living in the moment you don't realize it. At least, I didn't understand how advanced she was. It isn't normal for a 6 month old to hide a toy bottle amongst her car seat straps and ask "Where is it?" and after multiple attempts of someone pretending to locate it, she'd pull it out proclaiming "Here it is!" as she let out a deep heart felt giggle thinking she tricked them. (Sometimes she did since she moved her hiding place to under her leg which the adult wasn't expecting.) Fast forward to today as a three yr old and it is understandable how we (family, friends, complete strangers) are constantly laughing. Tis the Christmas season and DD is all into her Christmas songs as of late. But she wouldn't be my daughter if she didn't have fun with them. Imagine Jingle bells: But she was singing Mac and cheese. That turned into Frosty the snowman eating a gigantic meatball and burping up brussel sprouts.

I could go on and on and don't tempt me cuz I would ... just makes me giggle how much I was in denial while she was a baby.

I had to take DD to the DR today because she's sick but our Ped. was off, so we met with another DR who had never met DD before. The DR was in complete shock and couldn't believe DD was only 3. On ending the appointment she informed me that I had a very special and unique child. She has NO idea. LOL

Giftedness is about being mentally *faster*, not just mentally *ahead*. Think of it like two trains running side by side, one "gifted" and one "non-gifted". They both start at the same time, but the "gifted" train moves faster. After a few minutes, it's clearly ahead. After an hour, it's much further ahead. The lead is constantly growing. (The only thing that can stop it, in my experience, is an overabundance of schooling.)

If it takes a child a week to learn what other kids need two weeks for, that's likely to be the case for the rest of her life. In my case, I was grade-skipped when I was 6, which temporarily improved my situation, but by the time I was 9, I was ready for another skip (which the school offered, but my mother refused for "social reasons", leading to me spending the next few years bored out of my skull). I eventually did skip another grade when I was 15. I then left for university, where I had to take honors classes, load my schedule with the maximum allowed number of courses, and study for two degrees simultaneously in order to feel challenged.

What all this means, unfortunately, is that if your daughter is currently three years ahead of her agemates, in two years' time she may be four or five years ahead of them. The good news is that opportunities for academic and intellectual challenge tend to improve as one gets older, and she will also gain valuable coping strategies in those years. As well, her precociousness might be less visible, since the skills she'll be using in everyday situations will eventually be shared by everyone her age (reading, basic math, etc). But the gifted "problem" does not go away.

Of course, as others have said, all this depends on the individual child. It may be that her interests will skip around and negate some of this, or that she will become less motivated to learn (although obviously no one hopes for that!).

I agree with Zhian. A datapoint fwiw: I realised that my DS could read a fair bit when he was about 2.5 (first words, and letter sounds, came much earlier, but I think that's the case for just about all children learning to read). His reading age, as judged by which books he could read straight off, stayed at twice his chronological age as near as I could be bothered to judge it, until he reached the point where it no longer seemed useful to think in terms of reading age since what he wanted to read was not limited by what he could read. This was with noone making any effort to teach him to read, and with him spending 9-5 M-F in play-based nursery: he really did this himself. Which I suppose may be why in maths, where he didn't really take off until he was already at school, his acceleration is more crazy: everyone is encouraging him to work at maths. I suggest you hold your hat....

Has anyone else seen this chart? It certainly paints the picture zhian described. It gives me chills, and not in a good way. (FWIW, I see no reason it would be terribly accurate, so I assume it isn't, but that doesn't stop me from worrying about it.)

Mmm. And since it's based on ratio IQs, which are higher for HG+ children than the SD-based IQs we have now, parents of HG+ children should be even more chilled by this than they will be if they just read off using a modern IQ...

Does anyone know if this is a reliable source?

That chart did not seem that far off to me. Expecially considering DS's achievement scores. I think if my son were given the opportunitity and had the right situation he could go ahead 3yrs academically after filling in his educational holes. It's so many other things like sports, social, handwriting, and adding 30 mins of Homework that are still a concern.

KatelynsMom- not at all I don't know what we would do without workbooks here....especialy now that it is so cold and we cant go outside...DD hads to constanty be doing something and it helps take up the day thank goodness, that and puzzles, and blocks, and dinosaures LOL

Zhian- I really like the train analogy. I definitly see that with DD...she does seem to just continue getting further ahead. Everytime I get something that I think will chalange her, she seems to have skipped ahead again and it doesn't.


That chart is very interesting. ....and scary.... I don't know what DD's IQ is, but it definitly shows how the progression can be.

I guess I am definitly now freaked out. LOL.....deep breaths LOL

There's no question of the chart being "reliable"; it's not a prediction, it's a definition. It's just illustrating the principle of IQ, which is IQ = mental age / chronological age * 100. If you're 4 years old and function as an average 6-year-old, you have an IQ of 150. Therefore, since IQ doesn't change, you're going to have a mental age of 9 when you reach the age of 6. Because this definition becomes useless once you reach "mental adulthood", IQ tests on adults are always calculated based on a chronological age of 16. Yep, it's the only statistic in the world that's made for kids! I always thought that was kind of cool.

Well, yeah, but there remains the question of whether that particular definition of IQ reliably reflects the changing abilities of most or all kids. And, though IQ is not meant to change, kids often get different scores at different ages--and I don't think that all of that is due to test error. Some of it is surely due to uneven development.