I apologize that this is long. I've been saving my question for over a year, and have finally decided to post.

I once posted over a year ago, about my 12 month old son using a 3 word sentence. He held up a remote control and looked me dead in the eyes, and said "What is this"? I had asked on this forum is this a sign of of being gifted? A helpful poster suggested I read RUF ESTIMATES. I took this advice, and bought the book and gathered all the milestones I had marked down, and began to keep note from that day on.

So fast forward a year later, and my son is now 25 months old, and he could fall into category one up to category 4 of RUF ESTIMATES book? Besides getting the "aha" moments all throughout the book I felt like he could fit in almost all categories?

Here are some of his milestones i've noted

. He said Mama at 2 1/2 months super clear. His step-sister was with me, and instantly looked at me, and said did you hear that? Of course I did, but was still in shock to say anything. Almost in disbelief that it was even possible at that age.
. Says Dada at 7 months
. Says What is this? and I did it at 12 months old
. drinks from a straw at 6 months.
. Knows sounds of Alphabet at 15 months from Leap Frog DVD's
. 24/25 months knows alphabet & their sounds. Counts 1-10, knows his colors, shapes, and body parts.
. 1 to 1 correspondence at 25 months - he was taking toys off a shelf and counted 1 for 1st toy, 2 for 2nd toy, 3 for 3rd toy as he took off each toy one by one. Also likes to jump and says 1,2,3 then jumps in my arms.
. 18 months (memory) - At 18 months we traveled to our vacation home (condo) and he heard his voice echo in the main lobby hallway. So from then on when ever we walked that hallway he had to hear his voice echo. We would come back to visit 6 months later and as soon as we step foot in that hallway he yelps to hear his voice echo and keeps doing it until we reach the end of hallway. This happens every time we go to the condo usually 6 months apart.
. 25 months (memory) - we played on a merry-go-round at a park, and I kept saying my baby, my baby as I chased him. We visited the park 2 weeks later, and as soon as he got on the merry-go-round the first thing he says is my baby, my baby so I would chase him.
. 20 months (humor) - once we were riding a train and a man coughed, and my son copied him and coughed. So the man coughed again, and my son coughed again, this went on a few more times where the man noticed and starting laughing causing my son to laugh and said are you copying me?
. 25 months (intensity) - his buzz light year action figure is meant to have bent legs, but he wants them straight. He keeps saying sorry, and for me to straighten them, and is bothered every time his legs are bent and cries. He cried for the whole 30 minute car ride home because Buzz light year's helmet wouldn't shut all the way. He cried after we got home where i ended up taping the helmet shut, and eventually hid the toy in a closet because I was mentally exhausting over a toy not functioning right. He has no patience for anything and melts down when things are not perfect.
. 20 months - my nephew showed my 20 month old how to strum his guitar and hold the cords at the top. So he let my son try and my son held the cords at the top and strummed the guitar at the same time. my 17 year old nephew got a kick out of this little guy doing it perfectly for a baby, and that he paid attention on how to do it right and hold both parts of the guitar at the same time.
. 20 months old - he has watched every pixar animated movie there is. These movies are at least 90 minutes long. Shame on me for that much TV time, but it was the only break I got.
. 25 months - memorized a lot of his books and says them out loud as I read. He's also memorized his movies and says parts of scenes throughout the whole movie.
. 25 months - speaks in 5-10 word sentences. Hey dad are you alright are you ok now?
. 25 months - He Loves emotions - his favorite is "SURPRISED" at the moment where he stares blankly then screams surprise with the biggest eyes.. laughs then stares blankly and repeats this a few times laughing cause he knows this makes me laugh.
. 20 moths old - Husband showed him once how to test the water in the shower to see if it is hot or cold before getting in.. he tests the water everyday and takes a shower by himself at 20 months till today at 25 months . We trust him, and I know it seems dangerous to some people, but it's normal in our house.
. He's never touched anything that he's not suppose to. We never moved anything in our house after he was born. Friends, who have toddlers, thinks it's nuts that we have glass vases, etc in the corners, etc Never used baby gates. We put them up, but they were never shut or locked. He moved through them freely every day. He's always handled electronics with delicate hands and uses my iPhone, iPad and has his own (old) computer because he's shown that he is careful with electronics.

and last I feel a little alone - I have tons of friends with toddlers and I have slowly started to keep his accomplishments to just our family. Even though they tell me everything their child is doing.. when i do it it feels like i'm bragging when I'm just a proud parent just as excited as they are for something new my son has done for the 1st time.

So tell me is he gifted? What category would he fall into?
I feel like I can relate to so many posters on this site.

Again sorry for being so long.

Nobody here can tell you whether he's gifted, in what ways, or how much. Also, the Ruf levels have some issues even when applied to older children (tied directly to IQ scores, which AFAIK aren't directly correlated to milestones, but essentially heavily tied to milestones as well; disregarding the cases of late-milestone gifted children; vague, sometimes contradictory criteria; small sample size; etc.). Your son sounds like he's definitely got some early milestones, which can be an indicator, but there's actually not a way for anyone here to give a hard prediction based on them whether he's gifted. If I had to take a wild guess, yep, he's probably gifted to some extent.

You can get testing done using an early-age IQ test like the DAS-II (2.5 years and up) or SB5 (2 years and up), but the numbers you get will probably be highly unreliable-- they'll help tell you where your child is compared to others of the same age, in terms of rareness, but the results will probably be highly influenced by the amount of richness of your child's environment, more so than for older kids. I read all the time that numbers can be quite skewed even for kids 4-5 years old, depending on how much they've been stimulated to learn at home (even quite regular exposure to some PBS programs could IMO put many children ahead in recognizing letters, shapes, etc., or similarly the Leap Frog toys you mentioned).

What I would do is just keep him happy, playing and learning, which all children should naturally be naturally doing at that age. Whatever you're doing is working for your particular child, so keep it up!

I'd agree with lucounu. He does have a lot of things that remind me of my dd13 at that age and she is HG, but I also know kids whose early childhoods didn't stand out as remarkable who turned out to be gifted and others who developed early who are not gifted at all.

Gifted wasn't on my personal radar until my oldest was about six so I guess that I wasn't paying attention to much other than her serious sensory issues, intensity, and my lack of sleep due to her constant screaming at that age - lol! I wouldn't worry terribly about where he falls in terms of IQ at this point but keep it in the back of your mind for later as you are getting closer to him starting school or homeschooling if that is where your family goes.

As far as feeling like you cannot share his milestones with other parents, do you have anyone with whom you can just share the joy of your child without worrying about it appearing competitive? Grandparents? Childless friends or ones whose kids are much older?

There is something about parenting that does bring out the worst in people in terms of it feeling like a competition. I remember it becoming worse, honestly, when dd13 was in elementary school b/c so many other parents were so focused on reading levels and one in particular quizzed my kiddo incessantly about what level she was reading at, 'can you read this to me, my kid is reading at this level,' etc. Now that she's in high school the parental pissing contest seems to have mellowed a bit, thankfully.

I'd expect that the feeling of needing to hide isn't going to get a lot better for some time if your child is standing out as being different than most of his peers in many ways. I struggled with not making dd feel like she should pretend to be someone she wasn't to appear typical and with not using her weaknesses as a way to assuage others' insecurities. For instance, she was a late walker and generally slower on gross motor skills (riding a bike, etc.). It is easy to fall into downplaying strengths by pointing out all of the ways in which the child is average or below as well.

Thank you lucounu for responding to my post. I'm just trying to make sense of it all, and The RUF Book just added to my confusion. I appreciate the specific test geared towards toddlers.
I'm learning so much from this site that I didn't even know being gifted can be passed down genetically. Although my husband has never been tested I believe now that he is gifted. He frequently says that his brain is moving at 300 mph while his body just sits there and it drives him crazy. He takes a sleeping medication to shut off his brain, and even then wakes up at 3-4am because he starts thinking about work. He owns his own company and works 7 days a week not because he has to, but because he wants to. He thrives on jugglings many things at once, and if he's not he gets restless. We are complete opposites in our wiring as I am very clam, and laid back, and I don't understand how he can't turn off his brain? His daughter is the same way, and complains that she can't sleep at night because she can't shut off her brain either.

His 3 children (my step-children) are very intense and very bright as well academically. I never knew them as children so I can't compare the way they were as toddlers to their 2yr old brother, but I can only imagine they were very similar. I consider myself average and living in a household of intense individuals (including the 2 year old is trying at times. I don't understand their complex brain, their sensitivities, etc the list goes on and on.
I haven't thought about preschool yet because I tried to put him in the gym daycare so I could workout and he cried straight for the whole hour that I took him for 2 months. Every time I picked him up he was wondering around almost hyperventilating. It broke my heart, and every day the front desk said it would get better.. that it would take time. I even went at 8:00am to be the first one there so it was very quiet, and he seemed fine and by 9:00am it was a zoo and I started to see that maybe it wasn't separation anxiety, but the chaos of all the kids, the bright lights, the loud TV blaring in the background was to much for him and after 2 months -5 days a week I trusted my gut and never went back because it never got better. Even the front desk felt bad and a little confused why he never let up?

I have so many questions swirling around in my own brain as a first time mother. I don't need a title for him I just want to understand my son better because after reading other posts it seems as they get older it becomes very intense at times with emotions, academics, almost everything.

The Ruf books was a great resource, and if you have any other resources that can help me understand my son better it would be greatly appreciated.

I think that it's not a bad idea to start by reading up here and at the Hoagies Gifted website, and also check out sengifted.org, nagc.org, etc. (there are sites listed here and at Hoagies).

Based on the original post, it sure looks like giftedness. Some of your boy's milestones are well ahead of my MG daughter's.

But if he is, I'd say it's too early to start worrying too much about it. You're in the calm before the storm, so enjoy this time while it lasts. The time to deal with schools who don't understand him and don't know what to do with him is still some time away.


Ugh... yes. To put it mildly, this is a pet peeve of mine. I absolutely detest parents who use their children as a source of personal achievement or validation. Children have enough to worry about without carrying the burden of their parents' emotional states. "If I don't get straight A's, Mommy will be sad."

Yes, my daughter's mind appears to work very much like mine, and I'm very happy for her, but the reality is that I only contributed half of her DNA sequence, and she could just as easily have gotten one of my dumb sperm. Plus, everything she accomplishes is driven by her decisions, her interests, and her experiences. All I do is guide, advise, and provide opportunities as best I can.

If you ever find yourself talking to a parent who uses the royal "we" when discussing things their child is doing that don't directly involve them, just excuse yourself from the conversation.

Cricket2 I do have a loving family (5 sisters) and we all have children from ages 2-18) we are very non-competitive and are very close. I also have my own family and we really enjoy seeing what he does next as proud parents and older siblings do).
It's hard to hide my excitement, and i'm a sucker every time my friends start sharing their joys of their kids accomplishment that I open up too. Such as their baby walking at 9 months or 1 year (mine did not walk until 15 1/2 months where I was almost sent to a specialist) I am happy for them (even though I had my own insecurities with him not walking) they had no problem telling me that their baby is walking, or has been walking. But when I shared with them saying his sounds of the alphabet at 15 months not because I'm sitting there coaching a 15 month old, but because I turned around to see him sitting on the couch says his sounds blew me away). He did it so much I easily was able to film it on video, but instead of my friends saying wow it's sometimes just a shrug like ok? It hurts because I just expected the same kind of happiness that goes along with being friends, and having same aged children doing new things.
I'm def building a thicker skin and learning to just keep it in the family, and with both sets of Grandparents.

I am now starting to understand what sensory and intensity is all about. I didn't even know kids had issues like these, and that these specific issues had a name. It's his intensity, impatience, melt downs over his toys not standing up perfectly, him not being able to finish his breakfast because one cheerio has fallen on the floor and he can't let it go, and has to find it before he will eat again every single time. Him wanting all his action figures legs to be straight even though they are made to be bent at times. That his hands have crumbs on them after he eats, and is extremely bothered and screams like its the end of the world for his hands to be cleaned. Never being able to sleep not once as an infant in the car seat when I drove anywhere and screamed the whole time. Even though I heard these mythical stories of how a car ride makes most babies sleep, but never mine, and how I turned his seat around 2 month early cause I became a nervous reck trying to drive (sleep deprived) with a non-stop screaming infant stuck in traffic. miraculously he stopped crying when his seat was turned around facing me???
These are my reason for starting to take notice of what he's doing? I joke that this is what my husband must have been like as a child because he is this way as an adult in a great way. He just does everything "more" than any other person I know.

Thank you Cricket for your advice. I was starting to downplay his strengths by pointing out his weaknesses without realizing I was doing it?

I'm enjoying reading older posts and seeing a lot of similarities in my 2yr old, but in my husband and 3 older step children as well.

I have a facebook friend who is constantly making posts about how smart his daughter is. I think it's in poor taste. My daughter is also very smart, but I don't post about it. Every once in a while my daughter will say or do something that's actually funny, and might be suggestive of advanced ability at the same time, and I have posted things like that for their comedic value. Meanwhile he's posting about times his daughter used advanced vocabulary just because she used advanced vocabulary. There's no other interesting element to the story. It's just bragging. He's gone so far as to list her advanced capabilities and proclaim her a genius. She may very well be gifted, and he should be proud of her, but ultimately what you do with your knowledge and capabilities is more interesting than the fact that you're advanced.

Sometimes I contemplate pointing out the tackiness of such posts, but he's a grown adult who doesn't need me to point out such things... right?

How long have you been my Facebook friend??

Honestly, I've always believed that if you have to tell people you're smart, you're not smart. Just be yourself, and people will figure it out from there. So if I post a picture with my DD6 giving her mom a guitar lesson, or post a hilarious quote from DD that happened to include some advanced concepts or vocabulary, people will figure it out on their own.

I don't know if it's profitable to assume adults will naturally act like adults. For example, my daughter has had issues with a playmate across the street for years now, and the friendship officially ended this month... but not because of any behavior between the kids. The other mother decided she needed to intervene, so she called my wife to tell her how to parent our own daughter. And the mom's behavior got worse from there.

I've seen the opposite end of the adult dependence on the child for validation, too. I have an aunt whose two daughters are very bright. At some point the oldest started becoming demotivated, though, and every single time I saw them, my aunt would publicly shame her to me about how her attitude needed to improve, grades needed to improve, etc, while talking about her in the third-person invisible. And I was left wondering who else she was saying all this stuff to, how often she was hearing it, etc. This kid ended up dropping out of college and working at Walmart. I can't help but think there's a relationship between her underachievement and her mother's demand for perfection.

SLB, your son sounds a lot like mine (26 months), which is also why I'm here. I first started looking into giftedness months ago because of his drive for perfection and the related meltdowns. I couldn't believe it was starting so early!



This really resonates with me - sensory issues, intensity and lack of sleep. I'm new here but I already feel comforted that others have gone through this. I like Cricket2's ideas for sharing too. I have an older friend who is childless and it's fun when we get together because she just enjoys my son. Sometimes she asks me, "Is that normal?" And I say, "I don't know." Then she says, "Neither do I," and we laugh about it.



I'm also looking into having my son evaluated for Sensory Processing Disorder, because he melts down about many things and getting through the day is tough sometimes.

Hope it helps to know you're not alone.

Sounds a lot like my DS 25 mo. Milestones are very similar. I have not yet decided weather I am pretty sure he is gifted though. DS4 have the signs of being a level 4 according to Ruf's estimates. Just turned 4 and can read any kind of book. Also writing stories now with pretty much perfect sentence structure. Doing 2 nd grade math as well. Knowing about DS4 being gifted I am much more aware of DS25mo and his milestones.

But it is hard with the first child. I had no idea DS4 might be gifted until friends started to point it out to me. Sounds to me you DO have a gifted child. To what level is hard to tell at this age. DS4 wouldn't have been a level 4 at the age of 2, but he is now, for sure.

I guess it could go either way at this point. That is why I am not coming to a conclusion at this point with DS25mo. I am doing the same with him as I did with his brother, as far as experiences and "teaching", just to be fair..:-)

Sensory issues, oh boy do we have them here. Actually DS25 mo has it WAY more than DS4 ever did. This is why I am thinking that I might have another gifted child, along with the ease of learning. BUT, now I hear that there is actually such a thing as "Sensory Processing Disorder" that has nothing to do with giftedness...or is there? I always thought overexcitability and giftedness go hand in hand. Or is it just more common in gifted kids?

Somerdai, what do you know about this? Is the child you might have evaluated gifted?
Sorry SLB for hogging your post...:-)

My son is 26 months and I'm just starting to look into both giftedness and SPD, but IMHO my son definitely has signs of both. I have some doubts as well because of the giftedness/overexcitabilities, but he has enough of the "red flags" at http://www.spdbloggernetwork.com/red-flags/ that I hope to have him evaluated the next time I'm in the U.S. (possibly this summer). He has mostly seeking and some avoiding behaviors, which added to possible giftedness (based on my observations of his verbal/reasoning skills and memory, along with family history), has helped me understand a lot of whats been going on in my house for the last two years. The SPD foundation talks about the possibility of SPD being more common in the gifted (vs the general) population (see http://www.sinetwork.org/gifted.html).

THANK YOU for those links. Very interesting information. My DS does not have most of those red flags. The only thing he does have is an EXTREME awareness of what is going on around him. (Has been this way since he was a baby) Visually, things like something being out of place, a sock on the wrong way, a piece of lint laying on the floor, a hole in something etc. Hearing, a song he doesn't like, something being too loud. He has SOME sensory issues but the above are the main issue.

Ds4 is the same way with the hearing (needs ear muffs when I run the blender etc, although he doesn't react to music the same way.) He doesn't have as much of the visual sensitivity.

What is it your son is sensitive to?

I disagree with some of the other posters on a few points. I think a child who is reaching those milestones at those ages is almost certainly gifted. Hard to know how much without testing and/or more time, but I certainly think it is safe to assume giftedness. The research I've seen suggests that parents are actually very good at determining whether or not their young child is gifted, and they are usually better at this than teachers.

When my daughter was that age a few years ago, I felt bewildered, overwhelmed, and isolated. The best thing I did was connect with other parents of gifted kids. Among them, you can usually talk about your child without sounding like bragging because they've been there. They know how challenging it can be. I strongly second the recommendations of getting hooked up on Hoagie's Gifted website (They have an active Facebook page too) and SENG (online, on Facebook, or via a parent group or yearly conference). There are also excellent email lists out there for parents of gifted children, such as Brightkids and the TAG Project lists.

Keep tracking milestones because in the future those records could be invaluable in advocating for your gifted preachooler's education. I'm filling out applications this week for gifted preschools, and I'm so glad I wrote some of that down so I can refer to it.

You are not alone!

Jenny

Jenny, reading what you said I know you are right....For me, DS25mo. being my second child I compare everything to my DS4..normal I assume. Their milestones have been somewhat identical. There are differences though and that is what I think is throwing me off determining if DS25 mo. is gifted or not. I know all kids are different, but I as far as giftedness I only know what I saw DS4 do, and I compare it to him.

You are right, I am sure he is gifted as well. The question is to what level, and THAT we can't know until they are older. You are so right about connecting with other parents of gifted kids. There are no groups in our area but this board has been a great help. It is sad you can't openly be excited when your child hits a milestone just because it is way ahead of the norm.