Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Infant Alertness

My friend's dd was like that. After not sleeping in utero, she continued to not sleep until she was 4-5 yo.
I don't know if not sleeping correlates with genius or just hyperactivity, but either way, she has been both exhausting and delightfully unique. ;-P

A health care professional who had never met me before and knew nothing about me, my husband or our child examined DS at four days old and then turned to me and said, "this one will be clever, he's already taking everything in."

I'm a bit worried about DD because so many people told us she'd "been here before" and we got frequent comments about her alertness and interest in the world... I think she was more alert than DS so we might be in trouble there!

I have a midwife friend who insists she can tell gifted kids from 'average' kids in their first weeks of life - among those she's managed to keep track of she hasn't been wrong yet.

Neither of mine were particularly restful in-utero either... and both had very clear music preferences from before birth, although I never knew if they liked or disliked the music they moved the most for, lol!

When I emailed my boss a picture of my son at 10 days old, he emailed back that he'd never seen a baby look so alert. DS was looking right into the camera with a look that said, "What is that and what are you doing?" DS was my first, so until that point, I hadn't thought anything of it.

I also had a lactation consultant tell me really early on that DS was going to be bright based on his terrible sleeping habits.

Gifted children are supposedly more alert as infants. So it could be true- however, it could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a parent believes their child will be gifted, for whatever, they may interact differently with them.

I would personally take with a grain of salt the comments on giftedness by people who work with children in an unrelated capacity. Is every bright-eyed child gifted?

I'm guessing that a child could be very alert but not gifted, or at least not ultra-bright. (FWIW I have two children who were both very alert after delivery, one now speech-delayed with giftedness unknown.) We see testing results from people's children here who have fast processing speed and good memory, but lower scores in other areas relative to what I think of as a more typical highly gifted pattern (which often includes low processing speed etc.). Is it a stretch to think that some similar fast-processing kids might be wired quite right in some ways, be extra alert at or before birth, and still not be extraordinary in terms of deep rational thought later on?

I also question the weight that is sometimes given to early physical or other milestones. Very bright children sometimes have slow physical development, and others have apparently slow early verbal development. This leads to the easy conclusion that observations of early alertness or other development are not necessary for a person to be gifted. But are those observations necessarily sufficient, even for a supposed expert, to draw a conclusion of giftedness?

I'm not aware of any rigorous research in this area. Someone who works with children often may seem to have authority in this area, when they have absolutely none. And though I think alertness might be some evidence that a child will possibly turn out to be at least somewhat gifted, a correlation is not proof of anything in a particular case. I don't believe for a moment that random child health care professionals, lactaction consultants, etc. can accurately determine giftedness at such a young age, when even testing at later ages by gifted-specialist psychologists may be prone to error.

However, I do believe in confirmation bias, insufficient sample sizes, etc. I also think that in our current IQ-obsessed culture, a person may make positive, meaningless noises about a child's seeming brightness as a way of complimenting the parents. I give this about as much weight as hearing that a person has a "bouncing baby boy" or similar statements.

(Honestly, I always enjoy learning about each child's unique story, including interesting development information and especially when it involves cute pictures. I've just been ruminating over some of these ideas for a while.)

I agree completely with lucounu.

The Womb Raider was far more alert than Mr W when she was born and continues to study the world deeply and has said her first word, but Mr W's early milestones in comparison are far beyond hers.

His innate drive and attention span is far higher than hers at the same age. This may change as she notices details and things in the way he did, but we do not see the almost daily leaps in her that he made. And she is far less exhausting.

Oh you guys - the baby pictures are distractingly adorable! I could spend all day looking at those cuties.

locounu, I don't care what you say, I'm hanging on to the reason for my current sleep deprived state being because they are bright. Just like I hang on to the idea that massive toddler tantrum will lead to teens who are peer pressure reistant. Don't rob me of my delusion yet, please.

Geomamma: Yeah, eh???

But on the other hand... I was looking at the Womb stories thread too, and I'm currently gestating, so ya know...

We don't know if either of our kids will turn out to be gifted or not, we just know that both parents are, and that the one kid who'se actually been born is being severely underestimated by his grandfather, who has raised at least one PG kid in his time (and two who are at least G, but I don't know details).

I don't even know if DS#2 will be alert as an infant, but DS#1 most certainly was.

What I *do* know is that the two of them are night-and-day different. So much so that it's blatantly EVIDENT at 20 wks gestation. And that siblings are generally not hugely different in terms of intelligence. And that second kids are typically more laid back than firsts.

So right now I'm having a hard time counting on the old wives' tales about active, sleepless, alert babies. I've been known to wonder, though if delayed childbearing could possibly trigger some kind of k/r selection bias where a late first kid demands more intensive parenting on the grounds that it's clear mom ain't gonna have 19 more. If intellegent parents typically delay childbearing for educational and career reasons, and typically have intellegent kids... welll......

Just a thought, with no real basis.

-Mich.