Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Who Noticed First?

I work as a physical therapist for kids under 3 so I know child development like the back of my hand. I knew each of my kids were way ahead developmentally from the very beginning. My husband and I were both identified as gifted so I kind of expected any of our offspring to be accelerated.

The only one who shocked me by exactly how "gifted" she was was my dd. I thought her older brothers were so advanced and then she came along doing everything more quickly and just had a different approach to everything.

It was pretty clear to us by the time DD was oneish. I'd say we both noticed at the same time. She was a very precocious toddler, though, and looks a little less "out there" now. Her ped also said something about it at her 1-year visit.

With DS, we had the expectation that he would be similar. His early development was slower and his speech was not as startling as DD's, though still very precocious. His fine motor skills well outpace hers at this age. I'm still not sure how he will test. He is not as obvious as DD.

I didn't really even know what it meant to be "gifted". I didn't realize that a child being advanced meant that they were gifted. That label floated around for a long time. I think the teachers thought we knew all these things about our child when we had no clue. Being in montessori was part of this, as she was pretty much able to work as far ahead as she wanted, but it obscured what she was doing versus other children.

I think it was a given that DD1 would be intelligent. DH and I are high testers/underacheivers. She was also very alert and calm from the start, like she was just taking it all in. I don't think we actually considered the "g word" because of the way the schools use it and I didn't want to use it until we had the tests last year...but when she was 2 1/2 exactly, a friend did a psychological test on her and said she was 2 deviations above normal...when he told me her answers to some of the questions, I could see how her mind was working differently...she was also trying to say "no thank you" well before her first birthday, it sounded like "monkey shoes". She also read a billboard out loud and I almost crashed the car, I was so shocked! lol!

DD2 is only 4 1/2 and we haven't had any formal evaluations, but she has a very keen mind for singing and song lyrics. She makes up songs constantly. She's VERY VERBAL and correctly used the word deadfall in a sentace the other day, then confirmed it's meaning and who had told her and where they were...Other favorite words of hers are fabulous and glamorous. She is very "conversational" in tone and people often think she is already in kindergarden (grrr age restrictions, but we are working on that!). She is likely gifted, but in a very different way than DD1.

My DH and I were both in gifted programs as kids, so I suspected that our DD might turn out to be gifted. I spotted the signs first, probably because I was looking for them.

However, I think I was more surprised than my DH at how highly she scored on her assessment tests when the school tested her.

She had not reached many milestones as early as I had as a young child, so I think I underestimated her giftedness. Looking back, I think her giftedness traits follow the pattern of her father's instead of her mother's and so she didn't mirror my own particular development that closely.

Dd was 2 months and we were at the Harvard Yale game in Cambridge and I went with her to the Charles River hotel to wait for the others and get some water. A woman came up to me and was talking about DD and her intensity of looking at her surroundings. I was struck that this woman would come out of her seat to talk to me about it, that it was that unusual. A month later -- you know how you had those car seats that fit into the stroller and the kid faces you -- Dd would not let up screaming as we were doing errands, I finally turned her on her belly so she could see forward. I had to pull the stupid stroller and hold her since I couldn't strap her in. I knew something was up with this kid.

It took my husband, the pediatrician, two WISC-IV tests, and two psychs to convince me. Saying the "g" word only became possible after the 2nd WISC, and it was still said only to my dh --in a whisper and with an apologetic look.

my parents. they both made numerous comments when DS was just a baby and I thought they were just doting grandparents. at 18m-20m is when i understood they were right.

When she was just a baby my mom (a former teacher) kept remarking on it and asked when DD would be old enough for an IQ test. I thought she was out of her mind. It wasn't until DD did get that IQ test that I started to really see it. I just assumed all kids were like mine.

We did, but we chalked it up to bias. Our son's daycare teacher came up to us and asked what are we going to do about him?