Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion how old was your child when you suspected...

Hi, Katelyn's Mom!

Your DD sounds like an amazing little girl Have you read Ruf Estimates of Levels of Giftedness ?

A great place for information on testing is the Hoagies' Gifted Eduction Page

There are IQ tests for two-year-olds:

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence� � Third Edition (WPPSI� � III) (2yrs. 6mos.)

and

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (SB5), Fifth Edition (2yrs.)

These would be administered by a psychologist. You should be able to get a referral from your pediatrician. Most people wait until kids are a little older (4-6?) since two-year-olds are not known for being cooperative But if your daughter has the right temperment, it may be fine to test her earlier. The version of the WPPSI-III for age 2:6 is shorter than the full version, so you wouldn't get as much information about her abilities as you would if you waited a couple of years. I don't know much about the SB5.

I took my daughter to the supermarket when she was 4 months old, and a teenaged guy outside the store saw her, smiled, and said, "Hi baby!"

She freaked out: sobbed until she shook, buried her head in my shoulder, etc. The poor teenager was crestfallen. This shyness continued until she was past 2. It was so bad at daycare that other parents would deliberately look away from her. They knew from experience how she would react if they caught her eye.

My eldest son didn't cry like my daughter, but wouldn't talk to anyone he didn't know extremely well until he was 2 1/2. I knew people who thought he didn't start talking until then! And he wouldn't stop talking at home.

My middle one, on the other hand, has always delighted in talking to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Val

Cathy A,

Thanks for all the information. I have come across Ruf estimates of levels and have the book ordered. So I should be getting that in the next few days and am sure I will have my nose in it and tagging pages. I found one site with a minimal list of the 5 different levels and from what I could tell she was either 4 or 5 but really want to look at the book because from my understanding it is very detailed.

I had not come across the Hoagies site so thank you for that and will bookmark it.

So again thank you for the information.

You're welcome

And feel free to start a new thread, you may get more responses that way.

Have you read Exceptionally Gifted Children by Miraca Gross? If you order it, make sure you're getting the latest edition.

If you are considering the Davidson Young Scholars Program, you may want to wait until your daugther is at least 3 to test since you would apply when she's 5 and they'll accept test results up to two years from the time of the test.

At two weeks old, I was nursing him. He looked into my eyes very deeply and searched them. I was startled because it was just like an adult would see through you. At 6 weeks, I was interacting with him. I told my husband, "He seems beyond his age in what he's giving back to me." At 14 months, he built a cross out of blocks. Same time, he laughed uproariously at an ironic type of joke on Sesame Street which I never thought he'd get. At 2, he was addicted to 1-2-3-Contact, a science show. And was he precocious and irrepressible. He stood up in kindergarten and announced to the whole class that Santa wasn't real. One little boy was very upset and started to hyperventillate. His teacher called me and was furious.

well, dh and I both come from smart families so our children seemed just normal to us. DS9 has always been intensely focused on learning what he wants to learn - I remember food shopping with him in one of those warehouse stores and him insisting I stop the cart so he can point repeatedly and yell "Dat! dat! dat!" at the large "C" on the sugar bag so I would tell him what letter it was. That was interesting. And his first 6 word sentence was a paraphrase from his favorite book at the time.

And then the first time he "saw" the moon - he was about 9 months old and was absolutely transfixed. Or when he was about 18 months and saw a rainbow, pointed and said "Circle! Round!"

And I know he was less than 2 1/2 (before DS2) when he came into the bedroom one morning singing the "Abc song" then "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" then "Baa Baa Black Sheep" just to let me know they were the same tune (which I had not previously realized!)

Ah yes. DS6 is a totally diffrent kid, yet he was 12 days old when he fixed his gaze on a particular toy, reached out and grabbed it - repeatedly.

He wasn't two yet and couldn't say the word "truck" but could use the phrase "dump car" so, "fire truck" was "hot dump car"

thanks for this thread!

I remember looking at the monthly milestone checklists in the What to Expect... books. Ds seemed to hit all the milestones early, but I thought the authors set up "easy" milestones because they wanted parents to feel good about what the children were doing.

When oldest ds, now 9, was a toddler I got a LOT of comments (and awe) from people. Especially strangers. Hubby and I thought people just communicated like that to make small talk. It was just "something you said" to young parents.

When he was 3, our next door neighbor asked if she could do a Kindergarten screening on him. Apparently she was going to be in charge of screening all the town's K-er's for K readiness the next month and convinced me that she just neeeded a guinea pig. Ds impressed her and she gushed while telling me that he was READY for Kindergarten. (Me, scoffing -- What? He's only 3!)Later I saw how she did the test. What kind of silly rubbish was that? Why do they bother??? (More scoffing from me.) Okay... I now better... NOW.

Later that year his sister was born. She was very alert, as he had been, and repeatedly tried to throw herself out of my arms in order to join her older brother in play. She kept trying to look past me -- at him. (I kept getting in her way, apparently, and she was miffed at me.) She was 2 months old. The very next month she was laying on her back on my lap, grabbed my shirt, and pulled herself into the sitting position. Strong kid.

At 18 months she pulled off the diaper and told me she was going to use the potty from now on (no previous attempts at training). She had no accidents and was instantly "potty trained." Okay. I remember thinking that THAT was a bit unusual.

When dd was 3 she walked up to a violin teacher at her big brother's Suzuki school and introduced herself as the woman's new student. Although this particular school usually takes the kids at 4, the teacher was tickled and agreed that dd was ready. During one of her first lessons dd was asked what the violin was made of. Her answer? "Molecules." (I told myself it was because she was listening to her older brother, then 6, and I discuss molecules in his science book.) Great teacher, BTW! Without missing a beat she asked dd "What KIND of molecules?!" We LOVE her!

3 year old dd also built Lego walls and yelled from the other room about the "Mondol hosemen coming!" Her brother had been reading about the Great Wall of China. See, there's always a "reason" they know these things! I still didn't get it.

I broke down and had the two older kids take the WPPSI and WISC IV when they were 4 and 7. Ds was in shock at the results. (I had tried to tell him what I suspected, but he insisted that all mothers thought their children were smart.)

The third child (now 2) doesn't seem to be setting off any alarms, but then, each child has been so totally unique anyway. When he was a year old he was screaming "A!" in the supermarket and pointing behind me as I was in line at the checkout. He was grabbing my face and trying to turn my head. I was a little slow on the uptake -- finally figured out that he was showing me a large letter A in one of the signs hanging from the ceiling. The elderly gentleman behind us in line was very impressed, but I tried to explain it away: "He doesn't even talk yet. His name starts with A." Thought that would help. At this point I had already learned that the two older kids were "gifted" according to those tests.

Littlest ds *is* showing interest in learning to read, pointing to words everywhere, asking what everything says, demanding that I run my finger under the sentences as I read aloud to him... But he's not reading yet. He *does* wake up in the middle of the night to use the toilet (without wetting the bed), but he isn't day-time potty trained yet. He has an extremely active imagination (copying older siblings?). He repeats EVERYTHING everyone says by starting with "he said." This kid never stops talking, but he didn't say his first sentence until after his second birthday. Just another kid in the family... Gifted? Who knows. I decided it doesn't matter.

Smiles,
Kate

san54,

That is hilarious. I was that kid that insisted it was just not logical. I told my mom when I was 3 that Bunnies don't lay eggs and later argued that Santa had way too many hand writings. My DH is scared to death that our DD will take after me and by her already logical approach to everyday, his fear is probably justified.

Don't panic. A logical kid can make life a lot easier for a parent. Since about age 8mos., I could explain why a rule was in existence to DS7, and once he understood the logic, he would follow the rule without argument. It made things soooooo easy!

Logic is a lot simpler than emotional freak-outs for no apparent reason...which is what I'm getting from DS4 (still!).

I have another logical child here. At DS5's Harvest Party on Friday Night at school he only lasted about 10 minutes into the Magician Show. He just couldn't take the fact that the guy was trying to trick everyone since magic is just slight of hand. He thought the jokes were too babyish and corny--he told me that, "He just needed to get out of there!"