Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school SO says DD is perfectly "average" but..(long)

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Your husband needs to hang around a typical nursery school to see what average really is. Or print and show him a typical milestone development chart.

There is no way that any of what you are describing is normal. Of course the fact that most people marry someone close to their intellectual ability (shown or hidden) and that therefore their children are generally similar in intellect to them may also help him accept that she is not average at all. Not even on the gifted continuum I would hesitantly say.

You are doing great to keep going according to her interests and readiness, so just keep doing that. Let her explore and learn on her own, and just keep having interesting stuff around for her to figure out from. She sounds delightful and self-motivated which is a great combination! Provide her with an interesting environment and trust that she will do what she needs right now. Exploring and experimenting on their own is not bad - it has merit, in that it creates the ability and desire to self-teach, which in the long run will make your life a LOT easier, esp if you decide to homeschool / unschool

Everything Madoosa says, and... Even for PG people, it's quite unusual to remember in accurate detail how things were when you were 2.5. Do you think your SO really can, or is he maybe mixing in memories from later? Are his parents around to ask?

Fwiw, my DH also persisted in thinking DS not so unusual after it was clear to everyone else that he's seriously unusual. Wishful thinking, in a way, I think, combined with fathers often getting little exposure to children other than their own.

Highly gifted kids are normal, all natural children same as any other kid. Maybe the environment that he was raised in made him feel the way he does. At least now we have access to more information and true stories from other families that our parents did not have. These forums help with perspective. Giftedness is not a dirty word in my own family, and I humbly think we have a healthy attitude towards it (something like- you have more to deal with than most people, but you have more resources to deal with it too.) I would say, though, I don't know. By reading the internet discussions I have come to learn that a few people have baggage with the concept of giftedness. I don't see where it would do any good to press your hubby on the issue. Browse the forum, check out Hoagies gifted, read the articles in the database in the sidebar of this forum. Remember, you have your daughter's whole childhood to raise her, and even after that, you have your whole lifetime to be her mother. In my non-professional opinion you will not have missed any magic windows of once in a lifetime opportunities in her preschool years. Really, no matter what, you're just raising your own kid. Just be yourself. LoL. My feelings fluctuate between wishing my kids had more and thinking they really have all the stuff a kid needs, and we're in this togeather. My hubby seems to fluctuate between saying keep teaching them as long as they want to keep learning and how are we going to afford this, especially about teenagers. But, again, giftedness is a greater resource to make do with what's around you.

Is there giftedness on your side of the family as well or just your SO's?

Either way, I don't know that it is vital to know if a child is going to be gifted at 2.5. I'd be more concerned when you get close to school age if her father is too convinced of his way of viewing her development to be open to other possibilities.

Do you go out into "the world" with your little DD? What sort of feedback do you get about her on an everyday basis? Unless you live in HG+ land, if she's in daycare and she displays this type of development there, you must have heard comments by now - would your husband have heard them? If you're at home with her, do you do things like play groups and library story-time type things? When my DD was under 1 year I started hearing things from the librarian who ran those programs, and a couple of key doctor's appointments that started to lay the groundwork.

Also sometimes not-so-positive feedback from other moms whose children were led down a straying path by my leadership-skills baby DD, who would crack childproofing devices and head out, a few fellow crawlers in tow.

So, if you have these activites, outsourcing them to your husband sometimes would allow him to hear first hand and get an inkling of how your DD is viewed as compared to her age peers.

My dh thought ds5 was normal until homework came home in kindergarten. Then, he realized wait, the other kids don't read and do math? Now, he is totally onboard with all my suggestion. Also, dh was very concerned ds2 was delayed in comparison, when really he is just a different kid- also very bright, but more witty and not so willing to perform.
Enjoy! It's exhausting but fun!

At the end of the day she is not "normal" or "average" and forcing her to be so will be more disastrous than following her leading (I know having watched it happen to my niece and nephew). We knew preschool was not going to be able to meet DS's academic needs at all so we looked for a non-academic, purely play based one where DS could develop socially (and kept following his lead at home) and then have skipped him into gr 1. He will need more than this soon but we will cross that when we need to.
All the best, it's an isolating experience as it is, even more so when there is no-one at home to talk with about it.

Ok- it doesn't sound like he was *that* happy in school.

Your SO sounds so... negative -- even his first sentence!

If he doesn't "believe" in gifted, you could perhaps go about advocating for the right thing for your dd without using that word. For example, kids don't actually have to go to pre-school. Until fairly recently, most kids didn't. There is actually a fair amount if good research that shows that for kids from an enriched home environment, a little bit of high quality pre-school is neutral, but more is harmful to social development.

When mine was a toddler, I wasn't thinking in terms of gifted. I didn't use that word. But I did really want to homeschool. I just felt in my gut that school would take something away -- maybe because of my own experience. It took a lot of convincing to get DH to give it a try. The public schools here are awful, and the private schools are expensive. He reluctantly agreed to let me try it for kindie, and then after that for one year at a time.

Fast forward six years. DD tested EG/PG on the WISC. Academically, she is doing great. (My husband's area of concern.) For much less $$$ than the local private schools, she is able to take interesting, challenging above level classes through local homeschool resources and on-line through places like Center for Talented Youth.

Socially, she has a wonderful group of really smart interesting friends. These girls are kind and inclusive. My friends with kids in school are worried about what's coming. Already, they see social pressure for certain clothes, dating, and drugs. Social pressure to conform. The kids trash the bathrooms at the bar mitzva's. (My daughter is almost 11.) My daughter went to a birthday party for her friend who is turning 12 yesterday. There were 10 or so kids there, ranging in age from 10 to 13. It was a Mad Hatter's tea party. The kids were all dressed up as characters from Alice in Wonderland. My kid and her friends are "nerds" -- happy, smart, interesting kids who don't need to be mean to other kids to feel good about themselves.

If you look around for info on homeschooling, you will find a lot of stories like these. You may be able to make a strong case for homeschooling without even using the word "gifted," since this is a word that your SO seems to dismiss.