Hello, my name is Cheri and my daughter, Rory, turned 2 five days ago. At her check-up yesterday her peditrician said "these abilities are not normal for a two year, they are not normal for a four year old." I am having a lot of trouble accepting his words, nothing she does seems that exceptional (keeping in mind I have no experience with toddlers). I checked out several books from our local library which all have conflicting information. Now I am left wondering if these are early signs of giftedness or just a bright child with a lot of attention. I would welcome any input you have.
Rory is "homeschooled" with a kindergarden curriculum. She begs everyday for "tuelle". I do not doubt that she has an exceptional memory. She knows and can say every letter, knows the phonics as well. Can count to five and can recognize letters 1-20. Knows every shape I've ever shown her (pentagon, cresent, etc). She knows all her colors and enjoys distinguishing between teal and blue, black and grey etc. Rory can identify hundreds of pictures in books or on flashcards (maybe 300-400, I'm not sure). She can read and spell small words- she is not reading sentances yet. She can identify about ten large countries on the map as well as about five states. She makes up songs (her biggest "hit" is Hot Noodle). She has been role-playing for about a year. She seems a little advanced in art but then again she began painting since 6 months. She shows extreme concentration while painting. She has been potty-trained since 15 months. She understands the vast majority of what I say and can follow complex instruction.
Here is the thing, despite these abilities she is not advanced with spoken language. Although she was using a few words by 9 months she communicated mostly in sign language until fairly recently. Her vocabulary consists of about 100 spoken words which she can combine into 5 word sentances, add to this 200 ASL signs. Much of what she say is unintelligible to strangers.
Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated. I want to do what is right for her but I don't want to jump to conclusions.
Thank you!
Cheri

It's interesting how deep the myth that if a child is 'truely gifted' that they will be advanced in every area. It may be that the muscular control to speak clearly is just 'age appropriate' for your DD, while other areas are clearly well above average.

Check out TalentIgniter | Ruf Gifted Assessmentwww.talentigniter.com/
for a good way to keep track of your daughter's progress.

I know you'll love her no matter where on the levels of giftedness she turns out, so just enjoy her. Be careful when placing her in group care. Spend some time with a truely heterogeneous assortment of toddlers to get some confidence. She isn't following the normal path of development.

Smiles,
Grinity

Here's Beckee's link:

http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_rufs_tips.php

Thank you Grinity for your suggestion. I am not planning on putting her in group care, in fact I had wanted to homeschool her. She socializes in gymnastics and Kindermusic. I will check out the links. Thank you both.

If you are interested in homeschooling, I have found this book very useful, although it is aimed at older children.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Creative-Home-Schooling-Lisa-Rivero/9780910707480

Good luck!

Thank you very much for the link Geomamma. I need to stop browsing this site. I'm starting to freak out.

I wouldn't worry about anything. She sounds like my daughter. I took my daughter to the dr about 21 months concerned because she didn't say anything. She did use sign language. Then one day about 3 months later, I heard her thru the baby monitor perfectly singing her ABC's. LOL After that, she would never be quiet and constantly asking questions.
If I were you, I would keep reading this sight and read anything and everything you can get your hands on about gifted children.
Good luck, you are going to have your hands full.

The bragging thread is what worried me. I never imagined having a gifted kid, if it were up to me I wouldn't choose it. But of course it's not up to me, she just came in to ask me to read five books, when I refused she counted down until we agreed on two.

**chuckle** I remember those days. The little negotiators that they can be!

LOL!

Our Mr W got the same comments from his pediatrician when he was barely 3 months old. Around the 2 year mark she made a point to have a long discussion with us about him and what our plans were.

Mr W did not say a lot until he was 2 and a half. His longest sentence was "What is a mercedes?" when he was 11 months old. But he could say very complex words and would say them aloud the first time he heard them. Now at 3y9m, we have long, complex discussions with him and he will argue and negotiate if he does not get what he wants!!

When you put your child in with kids her age, you will see the difference. Go to a daycare and ask to visit the toddler room or even the 2-3 year old room. You will have to go up to the PreK or K room to see anything that she would be doing.

Those "normal" milestones that you find everywhere really are true.

Its easy to get used to Mr W's uniqueness by observing him with others. We have finally found some accommodation on this. The next brick to hit YOU will be when your child is formally assessed on a standardized test and the psych who tests kids like your says she has never seen someone like your child.

Another brick now coming is that Mr W can do some complex visual puzzles, ie the Set Game, faster than I can. At some point your kid will surpass you in some areas.

I'd get Ruf's book and I also liked this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Gifted-Kids-Everything-Exceptional/dp/0814473423

She quotes parents who say you should just take all the regular baby and kids books and throw them away.

DW and I have an agreement that we will take things one month at a time with him. And the last few months I've just focused on listening to him and enjoying every day.

Thanks Austin. My Ped admitted to not having much experience with this but offered to refer to a child psychologist. R is having some obsessive issues and up until recently the ped thought Asperger's. We are now clear of any autism suspicions. The only time I really see her with kids close to her own age (she is the youngest by four months) is in gymnastics. I really have no idea if they know the same things as her since thats not what the class is about. She is not advanced physically and the only glaring difference is that she understands/follows directions better than anyone else.
The ped said most two year olds can identify 1-10 pictures in a book. That is extremley hard for me to believe, R was doing that as soon as she could point. She just seems normal to me... I need to stop worrying about it I guess, but I'm concerned mainly about her fitting in with peers. Like all parents I just want her to be happy.

LOL - most parents would say the same.

I'd read Ruf's book to give you the basics then come back here to read the forum.

I think if the rest of us replied to your comments it would just get you worked up!!

She will fit in with her peers just fine...once u find them, which can take some doing! Just dont expect her agemates to nescessarily be her peers. Start meeting the local homeschoolers and local giifted community...that will help with finding the peers.
Smiles
Grinity

I know it is shocking to realize that what your kid is doing is so not within the normal range. Take a deep breath...take it day by day. You are on your way to taking the most amazing ride. Yes, it is very frustrating because society is not at all geared towards dealing with highly gifted children. But as far as dealing with your daughter's abilities you will do just fine.

Make sure you start to read up on all things gifted including the possibility of "overexcitability". Since learning about that I can be so much more supportive of my DS4's sensitivity to noise etc. Whereas before knowing it is part of his giftedness it made me extremely frustrated. You have a highly gifted child, what a blessing! What we need to do though, I feel, is to learn everything there is to learn so that we can nurture them, understand them fully AND advocate for them.

I am with you. My mouth drops when I hear about what kids are "SUPPOSED" to be doing at a certain age. My DS,23 months (don't know yet if HE is gifted) is currently obsessed with learning the sounds of the letters since he already mastered the alphabet, upper/ lower case.. this is what my DS4's classmates are doing in PreK at the moment....Ds4 was never physical. As a matter of fact he couldn't even jump until he was beyond 3. Needed help stepping down from a 5 inch ledge for the longest time (DS 23 months is the same). They are just so focused on the intellectual areas to bother with the physical.

And about the talking, DS4 was not an early talker. At age 2 he would say 6 word sentences but he didn't really start to talk until about 18 months. Being bilingual MAY have had something to do with that though.

Sorry, this is long. All I really meant to say is, you'll be OK. Get the recommended books, read up and enjoy the ride!

Annie

Annie- thank you very much for your helpful, supportive response. I am a bit calmer now. I realize that she's the exact same kid she was two days ago when I was proud of her love of geography. There is no need to label or do anything drastic at the moment. I'll do research- thanks everyone for the links and books- and I'll continue doing what I'm doing.

Good, because what you're doing is raising her like she's your own. Lol. What kind of things have you not heard about yet? "Asynchronous development" is a good one. Some people say it means that different skills develop at different times, like, the reading comprehension may be ahead of the emotional development or writing. I think gifties have a wide developmental range at any time, kind of like an agelessness. Yup, they march to the beat of their own drummer.

When DD was 3, we took her to a Doodlebops concert, and we were there for maybe three songs before she asked if we could leave, because her ears were hurting. DW was furious, because we'd spent all that money on tickets, plus drove an hour. I just hugged DD and told her it was okay, because my ears were hurting, too.

DW does not share our sensitivity to sound, but foul smells make her physically sick. I could never understand why she'd run the bathroom fan 24/7 if I let her. Now, we all understand each other.


Definitely. There is tons of research that supports the idea, because bilingual kids are simultaneously absorbing two different linguistic sets, with all the sounds and grammatical rules those entail. They typically speak later, and then they take off like rockets in both languages. This is true of normal children as well as gifted children. My wife's brother has a whole brood of bilingual gifted boys, and we've seen it in all of them.

In fact, I'd attribute Cheri's observation of apparent non-giftedness in speech to bilingualism, because if Rory can make herself understood in sign language, that means there's less urgency to work on spoken language. Rory is absorbing the concepts of both, and will likely take off in spoken language very soon.

My DD went the other way... we originally planned to start teaching her baby signs at 6 months, but by the time we got there, she already had spoken words for everything she needed, so we threw away that plan.

YES! Reading up on overexcitabilities answered A LOT of questions about my girls! It was like a sense of relief to know that these are "normal" quirks in gifted kids.

Welcome to the club =)

I agree about checking into overexcitabilities. It was like the world made a little more sense when I realized there was such a thing.

I wouldn't worry just yet about the language, especially if she is doing so well with signing. She could be asynchronous like someone else suggested. My DD wasn't speaking at 2 but could read. He does have ASD but, it was also very apparent something was wrong besides lack of speech. It sounds like your daughter has no issues with receptive language which is a good thing! If you want to talk any more about concerns related to ASD, I'm more than happy to chat with you. =)

Starting points... this "place" is terrific! Starting reading points, I loved starting with Your Gifted Child (may help push you to seeing even with in gifted you are out there), Ruf's Five Levels of Giftedness (ppt online and I know grinity posted a service site), and Genius Denied is great to read now so you are mentally prepared for how the educational system is set up (to not serve gifted kids inherently).

Just my favs.

I've done some websurfing and read many different lists of normal milestones, and I really can't get a feeling for what normal is, because of all the inconsistencies.

For instance, RUF level 2 says
"between ages three and four, they count small groups of objects"

I've seen lists stating that "normal" 3 year olds can count up to 5 objects. I've seen other lists claim that normal 3 year olds can usually only count 1 object.

I saw a list the other day that said most children can't tell you how old they are until they're 4.

Another strange thing I keep seeing that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me is block stacking. Lists will claim that it's normal to stack X number of blocks at 2, Y number of blocks at 3, and Z blocks at 4. I don't understand how you can stack 7 blocks but not 12. I know at some point a well stacked tower gets wobbly, but that's well after 12 I think. I have a similar feeling about puzzles. Once the puzzle is big enough that the picture contains more than 1 or 2 items, what's the difference? It seems like the difference between 50 pieces and 5000 is attention span, to me.

The other thing that's unfathomable to me is the supposed late use of adjectives and prepositions. I've seen lists claiming 3 year old children use 2 or 3 adjectives, and the same number of prepositions. I know the folly of anecdotal evidence and small sample sizes, but of the 6 toddlers I know, 5 of them know and use a lot more than that.

At any rate, I really wish I knew what normal was. Does anyone have a particularly trustworthy list of normal milestones?

DDA2- I know what you mean. I wish I had my hands on another kid to quiz them, but as my sister pointed out most toddlers don't have facts and names memorized TO quiz them on. I feel my peditrician's office takes a very conserative view of what kids can and should be doing at a certain age. My old "What to Expect the Toddler Years" which I haven't looked at in years says that by 36 months your child "may possibly be able to" name four colors. Since R was signing 6 colors by 12 months I simply can't believe the average two year old can't do that.

utkallie- No one believed me until they saw the video that R could read words she couldn't speak. She could read by signing well known words at 18 months, well before she began speaking these words. I still have my secret autism fears, the other day when she flipped her fire truck over and spun the wheels, my heart stopped. She likes to adhere to her own routine (which she doesn't describe in advance) and kind of freaks out if I deviate from her plans. Also if she "messes up" while painting she will melt down.
Thank you everyone for the book suggestions. We just got back from the library and they don't have any of them, lol. So I'll be ordering them I suppose. Thanks again for all your support.

You say she will have a melt down if she messes up. Makes sense to me. Remember these gifted kids are HIGHLY perfectionistic and will have a hard time tolerating failure.
It may even get to the point where they will not even TRY doing something they know they won't master immediately. With DS4 I try to encourage the fact that he is TRYING and if he does something well I compliment the EFFORT. I actually never tell him that he is smart and don't like when others do either. I feel it will set this high standard in his mind to ALWAYS be smart and make him not want to do something unless he knows he can do it. I will say instead "Wow, that is great! You tried really hard to do that and look what you did! Wonderful!"

Seems it takes a bit of the pressure to perform perfectly away. I will tell him that as long as he tries hard, that is all he can do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

DAD22, this whole thing about counting objects. I didn't know they are not "supposed" to do this until age 3. DS is 23 months and just counted 9 toy cars correctly yesterday. Interesting.

My guess is that in addition to being gifted, she is 'Intense.' So here's another Book suggestion for parenting Intense kids -
"Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook" by Lisa Bravo.

I would also encourage you to use us to brainstorm ways of getting her 'internal plan' out into the open. For example, can you cut out pictures of her common activities and put them onto index cards (I used clear packing tape to strengthen and attach the pictures) and let her sort them into the order she is planning to do them it?

I can tell you that I get a little 'gulp' feeling over the idea that you can't at least split the decision making about how the day is going to go for fear that she'll melt down. If you can't get to a place where there is a daily schedule that suits you in place, using the ideas in 'Transforming' then I'd get some help. I'm sort of one of those 'flexible' sorts of parents, so if it was all the same to me if my son ate breakfast first or got dressed first I didn't give a fig. But it's so easy to slide from flexible into 'I'm accomidating him so he doesn't melt down.'

So maybe I misunderstood what you meant to say. If so - sorry! If not, let's get into some details and brainstorm, ok?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Grinity- thanks for the great idea! I think she would enjoy planning her day in that way. She has been on a rather strict schedule for the majority of her life, only the activities change. The problems come mostly from changing/ending activities or my choosing the "wrong" activity in the first place. I think discussing and planning the day in the morning would really help. In addition to "circletime" and an hour of storytime, free and guided play etc she has for 4 months been having two 30 minute "classes" each day. I call them "preschool" for lack of a better word. She has English (reading,writing) Math (we have moved from shapes to counting and simple arithmitic), Science(nature), History (it's all geography and cultural studies right now), Classic Literature (Winnie the Pooh, Beatrix Potter etc) as well as Art, Music and Gymnastics. I really try to keep these sessions to a half an hour or less but she often throws a tantrum when I want to stop. Art is impossible for me to end and if she is painting it may go on over an hour and even through meal-times.
Even if I immediatley engage her in something else the transition is very difficult. My parents recently visited and she basically forced me to carry on with our routine rather then entertain our guests.
Sorry to write a novel. It may sound like a hellish situation but sometimes many days will go by with her being rather complient. It may just be wearing on my mind since today was a tough one (at dinnertime she stood at her map screaming "Russia please!" at the top of her lungs). This is why I worried about Autism for a long time. Thank you to everyone who has replied. This is really a wonderful and supportive forum.

Sounds like you are one the right track. Keep journaling and writing novels. You need to get it out so that 'other' parts of your brain can be activated to help you. Plus we like knowing we aren't alone in this.

Our situation has it's hellish dimensions. That's why I worry that you are overfunctioning without help. 'One can boil a frog if one goes slowly enough' So try the book 'Transforming' and get some help if that doesn't do the trick. You can teach transitions, you can teach self control, you can even teach her to meditate. She is lovely and marvelous, but she needs a parent to maintain an independent perspective and parent, not just be the biggest cheerleader. I say this because I was/am more of the cheerleader type by nature.

find some friends with kids of a similar age, even if you don't actually 'like' them, just so you can get some outside perspective. Keep looking for the ones you like, but start somewhere. ((wink))


I think you are brave and wise to post here. Go You!
Love and more love,
grinity

Also - what would happen if you did as much Math as she wanted on Monday, as much Science as she wanted on Tuesday, as much English as she wanted on Wednesday (etc) up to about 3 hours, and then let her do art to her hearts content on the 'non-playdate' days? I'm just curious. There was a popular diet in the US about 20 years ago called 'Deal a Meal' and on Monday one got a deck of cards that counted for a serving of protein or fat, etc. One could use the cards at will but had to make them last the week. I woke up wondering if your DD would be happier with that sort of structure?

Smiles,
Grinity

Here is where the "normal" milestones got their start and I see a huge number of cites when I dig into bibliographies or talk to people who know.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....old_Gesell_Child_Develop.html#Post113991

I also think this is the source of "Don't Accelerate"