Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Who Noticed First?

When you had your first child, if he/she is gifted, who noticed first? You or your spouse/SO/other family?

I was reading a book, I think it was one of Delisle's, and it said that often it's the mother who notices first and the father is actually often in denial.

That is how it was with us. I noticed when our son was a little past a year old that he was "working" beyond age level. I tried to show my husband all the "signs" that said he would likely be identified later as gifted, but he was skeptical.

Now that our DS (only child) is 4.6, and is very obviously working beyond his age group, my DH finally recognizes that he's not typical. He still can't choke out "gifted", but I'm okay with that.

Neither of us noticed. We were both floored when we met with the pyschologist after her psych-ed assessment. I couldn't even form a coherent sentence, I was that shocked. DH still asks if we're sure the pyschologist was right. Knowing her 2e struggles and learning more about GT kids has helped me to understand why she is so 'underground' with her abilities. DH has done no reading or researching on the subject. He is quite content to let me learn and tell him the highlights. He seems to get it, but he doesn't talk or think or worry about near as much as I do. But come to think of it, that is pretty much how everything else in our life works, too. I'm the planner and the detail person and he does the grunt work and keeps my OCD in check.

I think it would have been at around 18 months I feel pretty sure she would identified as gifted. My husband thought I was mad when I tentatively suggested it. Even though she was reading at 2.5 neither he nor the few family members I'd told thought anything of it. He came round a bit as he saw more and more other kids, but it wasn't until she was tested and he had an 'expert' opinion that he took it seriously. When we told the few family members we'd already been discussing things with her % they said 'oh, of course, we've all tested like that'... So I think for them what she was doing was just normal.

Kathleensmum, I can so relate to your story re you doing the research and DH the grunt work. I laughed reading that as word for word that's what happens here.

We really didn't notice with our first child. We really chalked everything up to "splinter skills" (she learned a little of this, a little of that, but maybe couldn't connect the dots.) Her grandparents were the ones that said we must have worked hard with her make her so smart. We knew we hadn't forced her or been formal about her learning. So we began to think she was "advanced", but it wasn't until she started school and she was SO bored that we realized she was "gifted". Then it was confirmed through testing.

I did at a very early age, and I can remember DH coming home from a deployment ( he was gone from 6 months of age until the week before he turned 2 the first go around ) and said are you sure he knows enough for his age, I think hes a bit behind and I looked at him like he was friggen nutso...boy has he ate his words ever since! He knew DS was smart after seeing him go through the last few years ago school and struggle with fitting in but being way over qualified achievement wise but I think hearing it from the testers in our post conference this summer finally hit home that this is something we need to deal with on a united front and he truly understood what I've been struggling to deal with all along with teachers and everyone with DS due to the levels he learns at.

With ds6 it was his preschool teachers who never stopped mentioning to me that he was gifted. I kept saying to myself, yeah, right, they just like him because he is so cute or because he is well behaved or because the class was full of English Language Learners who didn't speak English so of course he looks like a genius. I found tons of excuses not to believe them until he turned 5.

Dd's first grade teacher, public school, no less- told me I should either homeschool or move her to a private school because our system would never meet her needs. I knew she was bright, but that shocked me for some reason. We've stuck with the system, but it was a struggle until last year when she went almost exclusively on homebound- it gives them no excuse to not allow her subject acceleration.

I noticed when she was 2 and started reading billboards that announced 'Kids Eat Free on Tuesday' at her favorite restaurant. Hubs didn't believe it so we took her to the library and started pulling books off the shelf. And the rest is history...

I suspected pretty early on. For awhile i was just impressed by his smarts but then I noticed other signs. At less than 2 and a half he would sit patiently by the digital clock and wait for the minutes to go by so he could identify the numbers. He would do this for almost 30 minutes. He did this two or three times a day for a week. He learned to identify the letters both lower case and upper case in a matter of a few days just by doing a puzzle. We were using the puzzle to occupy him while he was sitting on the potty when we were potty training him but though he learned the ABCs inside and out he was still not potty trained! He was about 18 month or so. Family members as well as spouse recognize that he is very smart but not gifted. DH is gifted himself and so are other members of the family so they just see him as normal. I work as a teacher so I was more familiar with typical development. DS is now in a gifted program.

It was my SIL that noticed first, when dd8 was about 6 or 7 months old my SIL kept commenting that she's seen a lot of babies in her time, and babies just don't know the things this baby knows (dd was able to point out things like her belly button and mouth, nose, things like that when asked)