It's not the label of a paci/thumb sucker that they were talking about, Val, but babies learn by putting things in their mouths... so not doing so at this age or that age (the normal "baby sticks everything in mouth" age) will either mean the child is slightly ahead or slightly behind the "game".
Hmm...I'm not convinced. My eldest is 9 and has skipped two grades and has further acceleration in 2-3 other subjects. He never put things in his mouth. Ever.
My daughter is 5. She skipped kindergarten and does 2nd grade work in reading and language arts. Today she spent the 20 minute drive home from school barking at me to give her more multiplication problems. She started putting her fingers in her mouth before she was a month old. We had to hide
everything from her because
everything went into her mouth. She still puts stuff in her mouth!
So: two kids, equally gifted, polar opposites on this point.
Some of the correlations I've seen here are nice anecdotes, but I'm not convinced that a lot of them are causally related to giftedness. I did a couple Google and PubMed searches and didn't find anything to support things-in-mouth with giftedness (not that my searches were exhaustive!).
That said, I'm pretty sure that figuring out how to use your hands is a two-three month milestone (see Physical under months 2 and three
on this site.). So using hands before this time could be considered a potential marker for giftedness.
My understanding of neonatal behavior is that alertness in the delivery room is common, but that constant alertness after that in the first weeks of life is
not common.
I'm not trying to be a bummer here.
This is just an example of the scientist in me!
Val
