I think someone like Ruf tends to see families who have parent's IDed as GT and these parents introduce their kids to things that someone like me wouldn't have thought too. Her sample size is small and quite homogeneous. On the other hand, both my kids had deep knowledge and problem solving skills as preschoolers. But very little of that knowledge show up on Ruf's lists. I know a number of kids locally that were early readers but had hours of exposure daily, and have now really leveled as 3-5th graders. I know a child with Down's in an early literacy program that gets those kids as early readers before K. I don't think these lists account for exposure and they didn't work well for my kids.
This is something I have been giving a LOT of thought to. There are lots of things I hear parents of gifted kids saying "they taught themselves" where it is clear that they weren't hothoused exactly but they were provided an awful lot more exposure than other kids were. My kids have not been early readers and did not skip count but do tick pretty much all of RUFs other boxes for RUF level 4s. One of them I would say is a level 4, the other has CAPD and we are waiting for a dyslexia and ADHD assessment so I have no real idea what is going on with her.
Skip counting is one I found interesting because I didn't even know what skip counting was myself until I read about it on the RUF site and had to research it. So I certainly didn't do anything remotely like that with my own kids, just not on my radar. They were doing simple addition on their fingers and toes as 2-3 yr olds though, which came from them asking to add things and my telling them to use their fingers and toes.
