I'm still struggling with this as it seems so unbelievable what 3, 4 or 5 year old should be able to do, really? I'm sure a lot these are made so that the parents can feel good about the kids. [...] I thought that being great in puzzles means something 30+ pieces for 24mo old. Now I'm confused if 9-12 pieces is advanced as they are still very simple puzzles and don't seem that demanding for a two year old. Maybe all these ppl that have not so advanced kids never gave them a jigsaw puzzles at 2 so they had to wait till later to learn to do them!
I think you have a nice mixture of good points and "GT denial" here :-) Yes, I'm sure what children learn has a huge amount to do with what they are exposed to, and given enough bullet points, almost every child is going to be ahead on some of them, just because children are so variable. And yes, I'm sure someone putting together a check list probably does err on the low expectations side to avoid worrying people, since people will tend to see the points their child can't do, before they see the ones their child is ahead on! But when you start seeing the same child ahead on practically everything, just maybe the child isn't typical?!
FWIW, my DS-now-5 got his first 9-12 piece puzzles aged a bit over 24 months, and it was a while before he could do them unaided; the kind of while that made me think he wasn't quite developmentally ready for them, rather than just that he hadn't been exposed. He's very bright, but not very visual/spatial (he's never been all that interested in puzzles, so much so that come to think of it I don't think we even own any 30 piece ones).
