When did you first realize your son or daughter was gifted or possibly gifted?

Lol. About a year ago. And she's 13. (for gifted, possibly gifted came in 1st/2nd grade, and then stayed until 5th grade at "just really bright")

We are under the possibly gifted stage since my DD is 2 1/2. She was an unusually baby but as her mom I kept making excuses for all that she did and being my first and only child I really had nothing to gauge her against. I looked at milestones when she was around 2 weeks and quickly dismissed them as ridiculous since DD had mastered all of the milestones up through 3 months. I had not placed the term gifted into the equation until right around the time I joined this board. I knew she was a smart cookie but did not have a term for it.

I still have days where I ponder just how gifted could she be but at this age it really doesn't matter. I just know she is not 'normal' for her age. We just got back from a trip and we were waiting to board our plane so she was super excited to fly again and to come home. She ran up to a group and they asked her where she was going which she quickly responded Austin. The older gentlemen after talking to her for a few short minutes wanted to know how old she was which I responded 2 1/2. He mistook it as me saying 3 1/2 and was flabbergasted that she was only 3 1/2 and that just could not be. When he was corrected his mouth dropped opened. He made it clear that there is no doubt that she is a highly intelligent child. I guess we as parents just live in the moment that simple things tend to escape us or we become numb to it all. I am use to her language and cognitive abilities and think nothing of it but to strangers it is apparently clear. But for now since I have no real proof (meaning tests) I will comfortably place her in the possibly gifted category.

My first one's pediatrician kept saying "99th percentile!" at well-baby checkups when he was a very young infant. I remember he said "Now, if he turned his head to a noise, that would be REALLY out there..."

I was having a giftie-keep-quiet! reaction at that moment and didn't say that, yes, DS would turn his head when I shook his rattle. I guess I decided it was enough for me to know. Looking back on it right now, I think the doc really wanted to see this reaction in a very little baby, so I probably should have shaken something! Oh well.

Val

I wonder whether your doctor was teasing you? I wondered whether it was just that I had a giftie too that made me think it's perfectly normal for very young babies to turn their heads towards a noise, but no, here it is as a common thing in the 0-1 month age range:
http://ukfamily.co.uk/lifestyle/hea...birth-to-one-month-what-baby-can-do.html

On the third day after mine was born, DH was holding him a few feet away from me, and I waved at him. He waved back, and I was convinced it was deliberate. Only happened that once though, so I suppose it must have been coincidence. Still...

By the way, this, The Social Baby, is a really fascinating book, e.g. to give as a present to someone who's pregnant. By showing frame-by-frame analysis of very young babies' movements, they show that even in those very early days (ND!) babies can and do communicate.
http://www.socialbaby.com/shop/product.asp?P_ID=403
I remember being afraid, before giving birth, that it might take a while to start thinking of my baby as a real person: I couldn't quite imagine forming a real relationship with someone whose communication options were so limited. In the event, it was never an issue: maybe because as parents we naturally learn to pick up even their subtle communications, even if consciously we don't know how we're doing it?

When DD3 was a few days old, DH sat down with her, held her up and held the camera out and snapped a few pictures of them both. She's looking right at the camera with great apparent interest in several of the pictures. She lifted her head up and looked around the day she was born. But it took me a few years before I realized that that was unusual. I didn't conclude that she was definitely gifted until she started reading at 2.

Last month when we got her IQ scores back. DD is 6 and in grade 1 She always seemed more like a high achiever to us. oops!
However, I have thought my DD2 son was gifted since he was 1yo. He had learned his letters on his own, and had a very advanced and intense vocabulary.

Similarly, days to weeks old, DS5 would pout on queue. Pouty Face became part of his nickname.

And looking back at another thing. I can remember at DS5's 24 mos well check appt, our pedi asking about how many words were in his vocabulary. She wanted to make sure he had at least 20-30 or something similar. And when I said he had at least 200 or so, she reacted in a way I should've picked up on. It wasn't that she was shocked, but it was more of a "I knew this kid isn't average".

With DS9, when he was a day old he looked at me with the wisest expression on his face that it is seared in my memory. At four months, he would acknowledge my question as to whether he wanted to nurse (without my giving any physical clues) by panting loudly and turning his head toward me. He would also look directly at things if you said "where's the....?"

When he started learning the alphabet at 12 months (he would crawl over to a letter on our alphabet puzzle mat and smack it when you called it out), that's when I KNEW he wasn't a "normal" baby.

For my DS7, he was a very alert baby from birth. What made me certain he was gifted was when he was 18 or 20 months old, and I held him up to a window and said "Look at the pretty birdy." He turned in my arms and dryly replied, "It's a robin, actually." He had a 250 word vocabulary by 18 months, which I remember his Kindermusik teacher commenting on with great surprise.

Fun to have a "safe" place to tell these stories....

Well, my DS is just 22 months old, so we don't "officially" know (in terms of testing), but I'm certain he's gifted. In retrospect, there were signs from the very beginning - even the delivery room nurses commented on how alert he was - but for his first year, I mostly just thought he was very physically coordinated since he was very advanced on gross/fine motor skills (lifted head at 1 day old, sat unassisted at 3.5 months, walking at 8 months, etc). I figured "well, he's an early walker so he'll be a late talker" (I'd heard that somewhere).

He started talking at about 11 months, not exceptionally early, and initially I didn't think much of it. My first real "is there something going on here?" moment was at 14 months when he randomly flipped open a colour book and correctly pointed out yellow. I thought it was a fluke at first, but within a month or so he had the basic colours (yellow, red, green, blue) down pat and was starting to learn and point out letters and numbers.

By 18 months, he had about a 300 word vocabulary (I tried listing, but gave up after 250), knew 10-12 colours, recognized all the letters and numbers up to 9, could rote count to 12 and was starting to do one-to-one counting up to three or four. By that point, I KNEW something was out of the ordinary and started doing more research, which led me here.

With DD8, there were many signs that we denied. I strongly suspected once she started public school because she was so far ahead of Public school and also DH and I were in a GT programs of sorts. But we're engineers and needed numbers to come out of denial I guess, esp DH. He was floored and it was a group test, no individual testing yet. she hides her abilities well, learned this very early on.

With DD4 (only possibly), after getting DD8 test results and subsequently having the montessori school tell us they want DD4 to go to K at 4 and then thinking about what we had seen her do. She shows off more, so it's a bit easier to see. This makes me wonder when DD8 really knew at the same ages.

I always would have glazed over eyes when the pediatrician asked how many words the kids said. It wasn't that it wasn't enough but I hadn't bothered to count so then I would try to count them up in the office but I would lose count so I would ask well how many are they supposed to be saying? Dr would say at least than X and I would just say no problem, LOL! Those were funny appts. I was so clueless. Meanwhile DD8 then 2 was dismantling the office and asking how everything worked.

LOL!! I thought I was the only one who had the deer in the head lights look when it came to those questions. I always left the baby appointments thinking I should have been more prepared.

I had inklings with my dd9 when she was 7 months old. She would never sit on my lap so that the book was on my legs. She sat on my lap facing me with the book on my chest (I felt like a talking easel! lol) She would insist that I point to the words as I read them. She would watch the book and my mouth with intensity. This was the only way she would read with me until she started reading on her own at around 18 months. Then she would sit as most kids do, BUT she would point to the words and read the ones she knew.

Her other interesting trick was at 12 months, she would dump ALL of her wooden puzzles, then line them up and put them together (she had as many as 6 at a time.) Then after she did it, she would try to close her eyes and try it again!

DD2 was just busy busy busy. She loved to take things apart. She was a bit more secretive about her abilities. We did not know that she could read until we caught her reading a book to her stuffed animals around age 3!

I knew it was unusual for a 12 month old to identify letters but at the time I was concerned about his gross motor skills which were about 50% delayed at the time. When he was tested at 12 months, they told me he was 50% advanced in expressive/receptive language skills. While the testers watched, I opened up an alphabet book to the letter A and he said A. His favorite letters at the time were A, B, P & Z. He never did learn things in the order they are supposed to be learned. They told me it was very unusual for a child with motor delays like my son's to be so advanced in other areas, in fact they had never seen another baby like him.

Mr W (16mo) really impressed me a few months ago when he played four notes on his kiddie piano that he just had heard on Sesame Street. And then did it again.

We spend time on Starfall every morning. When he wants a certain letter played, he uses my finger to press the letter he wants to hear as I won't let HIM touch the keyboard! LOL.

The baby might be. She is starting to walk more with out holding on. She came into our room and was playing with a clock. I told her it was a clock. Later in the day she came in our room again and I asked her what she was doing. She said clock and went past me to play with the clock again. She also will look under things . She will bend down and look under the couch to find a toy and pull out the toy. It is funny because she is so tiny. It is funny to see her move so fast. Her expressions seem much older. She is starting to say a few words like up, bottle, cup mostly if she wants something.

DS2 is annoyed because she will follow him around and try to take his toys. DS2 wears this sparkly cape or a lion suit at home most of the time. DD8m has her eye on the cape and she will chase him and pull on it until he lets her play with it. Today he did not want to share the cape and DD8m bit him.

He was appalled and surprised and said, "that baby bit me". Then he went in his room all offended and shut the door. She only has two teeth so I guess she mostly gummed him. They are pretty funny.

Um, when we had the assessment done. We thought it was just that DS6 was one of the older kids in the class, so we didn't tell the school we were going to test in case nothing showed up.

Is baby head-turning towards noises really "a sign"? He did that before we left hospital - towards the TV earpieces mostly, when they were playing music.

Yeah, I was wondering about the turning towards noise too, I just thought that all babies are able to do that from the get-go. DD was really calm in the hospital, but alert, all the staff was so delighted with her. The baby next door wouldn't stop hollering and Dh and I kept looking at each other. Of course now she's the loudest bossiest thing in 3 counties.
At 6 months she would do things like take books and hide them behind her back to play a game, since before 1 her speech and vocab has been astounding us. Yesterday in the line to checkout at the store, someone really 'fell out' when they found out she was 3. They said she is really well spoken, which is true.

The main thing I remember about ds being unusual was the constant drawing, very early and very well, and also puzzle enjoyment/ability. Also other projects, building things or coming up with more complex ideas and having me help him build some really interesting things. I would be cleaning under his bed and find cars made of shoe boxes+jar lids+chopsticks+some other stuff and so on. One interesting thing he did was to take a stack of construction paper and make a large design which covered most of the living room floor. I stood on a chair to get some aerial photos of that one. Recognizable drawings started before age 2.
DD3 has yet to turn out any recognizable drawings besides a few nice circles and ovals.

for my DD who is now 5 and HG+, there were a couple of signs, though we did not really take it all seriously until this past year, and regret that. The main reason we did NOT see her as HG is that we thought all HG kids were early readers, and my daughter had little interest beyond three letter words, which she stopped reading when she got possibly too much attention for it at age 3.

what she did do:

age 22 mos- came to me with scraps of paper with letters on it. "O", "A", "B" very clearly.. never showed her these things.

age 2y1mo- started preschool "play group" and wanted me to leave immediately, saying to the teacher and i "i want my privacy at school". At this time she was also thought to be the oldest child in the class when she was the youngest by three months. Other parents and even teachers flustered when realizing their error.

age 2y3mo- could sight read all the names of the kids in her school and i was "accused" of teacher her, though i did nothing of the sort.

age 3 y1mo- started reading three letter words, but when it got a lot of attention at school, stopped immediately. Was not interested again until almost 5 (reason we thought NOT gifted).

age 3=4= told me FedEx brings the christmas presents, not Santa.Told me tooth fairy "doesn't make any sense" to her.

age 4y10mos- told me the teacher at kindergarden orientation lied to her: "she said it was going to be a big day for us. It was only 2 hours!!".

irene

It is funny to look back at all the "signs" we ignored. But I'm glad we were so clueless... we just did our thing. Now with dd#3 I've been thinking back to #1's 3rd birthday when the kids had to go upstairs and find princess shoes one with their first name and one with their last name... and thought it was so silly the moms went along to help their kids... or why none of the 4 year olds liked their Junie B books we gave out like candy for bday gifts that year. Duh.

But the first... a librarian showed #1 a picture of a lobster when she was 16-18 months old and said "crab" and my dd kept shaking her head and saying crustacean (like, lady I don't know what that is but it isn't a crab). I tried not to laugh and pretended like I had no idea what my crazy kid was talking about.

I have an 8x10 on our bedroom wall of DD age 4 days looking at me/the big ole camera with open, intense eyes and a little bit of a knit brow. It's clear she's thinking, "What the heck is that black thing stuck to your head?" I wish I could post it, because there is so much expression in her face. I felt like I became a mom in that moment, when DD looked at me with complete recognition.

Well, I am fairly confident my DS will test out as gifted, but I'm not sure what level at this point. He's now 23 mos.

First signs for us:
extremely alert/attentive baby.
Repeated the word "hi" back to DH at 4 weeks old,
attended to books well from 3 mos on, and turned pages at 5 mos.
Refused to crawl- seemed "insulted" by it- wanted to walk upright desperately and did so at 8 mos, ran very well by 10 mos...It's so hard to accurately describe his frustration here- but I have videos of him arching his back to a stand- he definitely was MUCH happier once he was walking.
First word "cat" at 6 mos 3 weeks,
Could point to "nose, hat, mouth, eyes, chin, cheeks, ears, toes" by 7 mos,
Used to open the cabinets at 8 mos and look at the screws that hold on the knobs- could use a screwdriver by 14 mos, and LOVES tools/mechanical things. Built a mini simple seesaw out of scrap wood (no screws/nails, just a simple fulcrum)
Started to ID letters at 14 mos, sight read first word (that I know of...) at 18 mos.
Knows colors, shapes, can count item up to 5 at 20 mos...
At 18 mos had vocabulary of 500+ words, and now at almost 2 yo. I'm not sure, has to be over 1500, knows words like exhaust, vulture, dangerous, slippery...

I'm a bit lost as to what to do with him somedays as he's SUPER active, energetic, and seems to have some psychomotor overexcitability...

Thanks for this thread, feels really good to share this in a safe place.

I figured it out at about 2. Someone had given G a toy caterpillar. On each leg was a letter of the alphabet. On one setting, the caterpillar said the name of the letter when you pushed the leg. On a different setting, the caterpillar would say the sound the letter made. G memorized all of those when he was a bit older than 2.

At about 2 1/2, I used the word "cat" to show him that different sounds formed words. That was it. Literally one word.

He was reading full books (Biscuit, Spot, etc) by 2 1/2.

Math, numbers counting, etc. is exactly the same way.

I agree that having a safe place to talk about this is so valuable. I can't discuss this with my friends.

Our biggest clue was at our 4 month well-baby visit when the pediatrician couldn't stop raving how DD was the most advanced baby she'd ever seen.

Some of her major milestones were:
Smiling/head control/alertness almost immediately
Repeating "hi" somewhere between 4-6 weeks old
Turning pages in her books/pushing buttons in her electronic book to play songs at about 3.5 months
Sitting up for extended periods of time alone at 3.5 months
Crawling backwards at 4.5 months
Taking first (assisted) steps at 6 months
Has a vocab of 3 words at 6.5 months (up, eye, hey)
Can sign about 5 words at 6.5 months and has some other gestures she's made up to get her point across


Now at 6.5 months some of her favorite activities are playing with building blocks (mostly she just knocks them down still...), pointing out facial features to get their names, practicing walking, taking out and putting back in the numbers in her floor mat, having books be read to her with an insane intensity, playing peekaboo where she removes a cloth from her face or my face, and posing for the camera.

She's way too young to be tested but since DH and I were both gifted growing up and most of the things she's doing are just too obvious to ignore we have our suspicions.

Hmmm... I was too tired during the first few months to really recall much - LOL! He was running and climbing by 10 months - that I do remember!. I never gave early physical development much thought. Is there empirical-based research that supports early physical development equals a gifted IQ? Maybe after I finish my summer reading list I'll look up some articles.
A few things do come mind though I don't recall which, if any, being the first time I noticed.
I recall parking in a public garage and ds saying "G4 orange" over and over. Then I noticed he was pointing to the section marker infront of my car which was orange and labeled G4. He wasn't quite 1 yet. I was shocked bc we were not teaching him these things. No fancy flashcards...
Somewhere between 1 & 2, he correctly pointed out the colors on the pediatrician's tie which led to the good doctor dropping the "G" word. Around the same time he spelled out the phrases on my Uncle's t-shirt, including numbers -first time he ever saw the shirt. I remember thinking then that having a gifted child would be a breeze in terms of school.

Lot of things we have missed as we thought that it was normal development At 5mo I had her with me at the office holiday party. She was sitting on my lap the whole 2 hours reading Elmo peek-a-boo book. I did not understand why everybody kept asking how old she was. I thought that all the 5mo can turn pages and enjoy looking at books. At 7mo she started crawling so I placed all the books close to the ground and she might sit there for 30min to look trough all of them. Lot of the books had normal thin pages and she was able to turn the pages anyway. When reading the ruf scales, I realized that it is not normal.

DD is bilingual and started to walk early. So with DH we were sure that it would take while for her to stat to talk. MIL visited us when DD was 9mo and noticed immediately that DD was talking several words. We thought that she was only imitating us and could not really talk LOL

I started to think that she might be gifted when she suddenly learned abcs (uppercase, lower case, sounds and the song) without really any teaching. At the same time she amazed us by learning to count to 10 in two different languages and actually understanding what the numbers mean by commenting how many things she is seeing (like two busses driving by, 5 markers etc.). She also finds is hilarious to look numbers or letters from different angles as they might look like something else (6&9, 7 & L, M&W). Then at 23 mo she started to write letters like A, I, S and M.

She also started imaginary play at 18 mo by pretending to be someone else or doing something like going to the grocery store. I think that it might not be normal for an 18 mo old.