Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Feedback please: Is this normal for your children?

Also, memory card games, magnadoodle, duplo, and wooden blocks are all big hits here.

I also have a big Tupperware full of oats that he likes to scoop in and drive his hotwheels around in. It is like a sandbox but easier to clean up and vacuum.

It's just my own limited, personal experience, but I'd played catch with 4-5yos who were just as likely to throw the ball behind them as towards me, as likely to bounce at their feet or sail over my head. Compared to them, her ability certainly looked unusual to me.

As for kicking a ball... she was doing better than I, a full-grown, semi-athletic adult. That was clearly unusual. If I missed her by more than a couple of steps, she'd look at me like I was doing it on purpose. It wasn't hard to diagnose how she did it, either. If you factored out the height differences in her kicking arc, and plotted the various points on an X-Y graph representing the plane of the floor, you'd see that all of these points are on the same line:

- The ball
- The target
- The furthest point her foot is drawn back
- The furthest point her foot advances on follow-through

Not that she was thinking about any of this consciously... she'd just automatically turn her body square to me, pull her foot straight back, and kick straight through the ball.

Fast forward to age 7, her soccer coach is frequently praising her passing ability (she's far and away the best on the team), while simultaneously trying to get her to use the side of her foot. She tries it his way, gets frustrated with the results, then goes right back to using her toes. He and I both know it shouldn't work that way with any kind of reliable consistency, but it's working anyway.

My youngest loved his leappad - especially the famous musicians. What was nice is that he could use programs for older kids while still only three or four because of the interactive, tactile, intuitive interface of the leappad.

You asked what you should track:

Beyond the basic milestones, some things I am sorry I didn't record or document:

"Wow" behaviors - like my kiddo reciting Living Books software stories when he was two or three, complete with sound effects. "Harry opened the door. Screeeeeeeee. The door squeaked." The stories were 15-20 pages long, and he would play them over and over until he had them completely memorized.

Musical accomplishments - songs he picked out on the piano when he was three. He would play for hours. They showed complexity and nuance, but we never recorded any of them.

Extreme interests - he carried a pocket-sized encyclopedia of dinosaurs with him everywhere when he was three or four. It was about 150 pages, and he knew the details from cover to cover despite not being able to read a word. He badgered all of us into reading the same page until he knew the material.

Making videos of things that are way out there for the age your child has served us well. Videos even helped friends kids qualify for DYS. DS
Started reading easy readers he had never seen before at 15 mos.
And we have kept a video record of his progress. He Just turned 4 and reads at late fourth to early fifth grade level. We have a video record to show his teacher when he starts K.

One thing you asked is for kids who looked PG early what then happened?

At around 18 mo to 3 I thought DS5 might be PG in a mathy way, and now I think he seems more "regular gifted" in that regard. He could count very early, for example spontaneously counting 11 objects and pronouncing there were 11, right around 2. He loved counting things, it was a big social activity for him and DH.

Also around 18 mo to 2.5 he had memorized all his favorite CDs of kids songs by the numbers rather than the names. It was clear he knew which ones he was asking for, because if I would say the name he'd confirm yes. I had to make a chart because I couldn't remember the numbers myself. The other way I could be sure he knew exactly which was which because sometimes he'd ask to listen to several different versions of the same song, all in a row. "Want song 32 on red CD" "Now 19 on the new one". But this is more memory than math, the number could as easily be any other name, although he did usually seem to understand what number would be before or after.

And then nothing. Well not nothing, but the pace of his math learning slowed way down. He's 5 and can do addition to 100, subtraction to 20, understands paying for something in coins (this year we slowly taught him that last one, he didn't just pick it up). Multiplies with 5 or 10 to 100. No division. Easy adding a few easy fractions. Still likes numbers and uses a lot of numbers in everyday activities, but doesn't seem PG at it to me. Or at least not yet. He doesn't intuitively "get" things like volume or division, and he doesn't seem to like complicated things in general.

At around 2 he also had PG looking reading skills, ie that he knew all the letters and could sound out short words. That has continued so that now at 5 he can read and understand everyday adult level stuff although he still only likes things with pictures and is impatient with too much text. He plays with words nonstop, making up puns and poems and stories as he goes, repeats himself a lot trying to get it to sound like he wants both the word choice and intonation. Barely can use a pencil though so output has waited years solely on that, has turned the corner on that just the last month.

I think he'll get more attention over the next few years for reading/composition skills than math.

Overall I think what made DS stand out as advanced early on was a combination of his memory and drive. I read a baby book where they said a typical 6 month old can remember something for 1 or 2 days, and that seemed to be a ridiculously low estimate. DS seemed to remember whatever the adults could remember. Also he slept way less than other kids and he needed constant stimulation. I really I think a huge part of him looking bizarre at 1 or 2 was that in those years he'd likely had and remembered hundreds of times more "life" than most kids.

He's not been tested yet but my guess is while he "looks" PG because he has a ton of drive and a fantastic memory and a good imagination, that he's not PG across the board due to either a lesser ability or lack of interest in mental analysis.

You asked about teaching letters. Now having been through one kid I think I could do it more logically the next time, we didn't really do it at all with DS other than playing around with letters on the fridge and providing a fridge magnet thing that says the letters. If I were to do it over I'd start with a handful of commonly used letters that can be easily combined to make highly relevant 3 letter words. Such as M O D A and maybe C or T. Only ever refer to them by the sounds they make in the words you are later going to make with them, such as mom, dad, cat. So O would always be "aw". I still remember at some point showing DS how a few letters went together and he got all quiet in a stunned sort of way, and I realized I should have shown him that earlier. I've read that its better to do lowercase first because they are more commonly used.

If you haven't checked out starfall.com DS loved it just before 2 (and your DS sounds a bit ahead of him so perhaps would like it now).

Last thing -- On Geopuzzles, does it irk anyone else's child that you can't put them together? Wouldn't it be great if you could take some edge pieces off one and attach another continent?

More on gross motor... my niece's son (not gifted, as far as we know), could kick and walk with a soccer ball (as in, purposefully direct it as he walked) at 12 months! I've never seen a kid do that before. Made my DS look really bad when at the age of three he still had to reach down and hold on to curbs when stepping over them (he was pretty delayed with gross motor, but he seems to have caught up now).

Fine motor... my DD could add missing pieces to a face drawing (ie if you drew a circle and say, a mouth, she'd draw the eyes and nose) at 12 months. Nothing fancy, but still! She was purposefully writing letters at 26 months (before she finished potty training at 28 months... ha ha ha... I always found that funny). At 26 months she could only do the letters with just straight lines (didn't have the control yet for curves), so she could write things like W, X, M, Y, etc etc. She intently stare at you, crayon in hand, waiting for you to tell her which letter to write. I find that interesting... that there was such a delay between letter recognition (16 months) vs. written output ability (10 months later). It makes you wonder what else is going on in their little heads that they can't express yet.

DS could control a soccer ball at 10 mos, but can't now, at 3 yrs. Jus' sayin'. Now, he's too busy doing a million other things. At 10 mos, it was cool he could do it, so he did. He'd do it now if his life depended on it, only it doesn't.

Michaela my 2nd child could dress herself beautifully at 2, but can't at 6.5. Because it was interesting then and clearly isn't now. She can't even get her undies on right anymore... I can't tell you how frustrating THAT is every morning!

FWIW, I did think my DD might be PG or something like that when she was a young toddler, and she has not tested as such. I think her IQ (which was gifted, but MG) might be a little higher than the # we have, from the RIAS, but not a LOT higher. I'd say she's not above 140 and I don't think she would ever qualify for DYS.

For instance, at 14 months she knew all letters, all numbers, all shapes, all colors, and many birds and plants (she liked field guides). Her early verbal development was just light years ahead of peers. At 18 months she had 50 or so sight words. As I mentioned, she also could ID most countries of the world and many flags at around 2. I kinda wish I HAD taken a video of that. There's a video of a 2yo whose skills with this were very similar to my DD's on YouTube and it's got 10 zillion astounded comments. I didn't realize at that time how unusual this was. She also could reciite very long books, like 50+ pages, in her twos. Letter perfect. My DS had exactly the same ability. In that case, I knew it was unusual because people outside the family were loudly and frequently amazed by it.

Again, she is certainly gifted, and I think she will be able to get into a very good college and achieve almost anything she wants to. However, at third grade, she reads probably at 8th grade level (this hasn't been tested to my knowledge, so it's a guess) and her math ability is probably 2 years ahead. Gifted, but not OMG COLLEGE AT 12.