One of the earliest signs I saw with my particular HG+ child was an incredible persistence when he was interested in something. He learned his letters early--he had most of them down by 14 or 15 months--but not because he'd seen them once or twice. He had wooden alphabet puzzles that he OBSESSED over! He'd play with them every waking moment if I let him. I'd try to put them away and get him to play with something else--anything else!--but he'd throw a fit if he couldn't use his puzzles. He HAD to learn how to put the puzzles together AND what the letters were. I think the complexity of the problem the puzzles posed to him were why he loved them so much. It was all he wanted to do, and he would not be dissuaded.
Most toddlers that age are far more distractible than that.
He did something similar with learning to spin those stackable plastic "donuts" made by Fisher Price. We adults would spin them on the floor for fun, and DS8 apparently decided wanted to learn how. For days, for hours at a time, he would practice his technique until he was far better at spinning the rings than anyone else. I'm not sure he was a year old at the time. There was no way he had the eye-hand coordination to learn this "skill," but he was so focused on it that he managed it, and he figured out a better new technique that none of the adults in his life used.
So DS8 didn't exactly learn things faster at his young age--speed has never been his strong suit! But he zeroed in on things that were really much too hard for a kid his age and he worked on them until he learned them, no matter how hard the adults in his life tried to keep him from them.
He's probably not the stereotypical HG+ kid, though... (If there is such a thing! LOL!)
(And before anyone asks, he's not on the autism spectrum. He was just smart enough to get that there were things he didn't yet know, and focused enough to chase after them until he learned them.)
Just another take...
