Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school First signs of giftedness

Well, my DS is just 22 months old, so we don't "officially" know (in terms of testing), but I'm certain he's gifted. In retrospect, there were signs from the very beginning - even the delivery room nurses commented on how alert he was - but for his first year, I mostly just thought he was very physically coordinated since he was very advanced on gross/fine motor skills (lifted head at 1 day old, sat unassisted at 3.5 months, walking at 8 months, etc). I figured "well, he's an early walker so he'll be a late talker" (I'd heard that somewhere).

He started talking at about 11 months, not exceptionally early, and initially I didn't think much of it. My first real "is there something going on here?" moment was at 14 months when he randomly flipped open a colour book and correctly pointed out yellow. I thought it was a fluke at first, but within a month or so he had the basic colours (yellow, red, green, blue) down pat and was starting to learn and point out letters and numbers.

By 18 months, he had about a 300 word vocabulary (I tried listing, but gave up after 250), knew 10-12 colours, recognized all the letters and numbers up to 9, could rote count to 12 and was starting to do one-to-one counting up to three or four. By that point, I KNEW something was out of the ordinary and started doing more research, which led me here.

With DD8, there were many signs that we denied. I strongly suspected once she started public school because she was so far ahead of Public school and also DH and I were in a GT programs of sorts. But we're engineers and needed numbers to come out of denial I guess, esp DH. He was floored and it was a group test, no individual testing yet. she hides her abilities well, learned this very early on.

With DD4 (only possibly), after getting DD8 test results and subsequently having the montessori school tell us they want DD4 to go to K at 4 and then thinking about what we had seen her do. She shows off more, so it's a bit easier to see. This makes me wonder when DD8 really knew at the same ages.

I always would have glazed over eyes when the pediatrician asked how many words the kids said. It wasn't that it wasn't enough but I hadn't bothered to count so then I would try to count them up in the office but I would lose count so I would ask well how many are they supposed to be saying? Dr would say at least than X and I would just say no problem, LOL! Those were funny appts. I was so clueless. Meanwhile DD8 then 2 was dismantling the office and asking how everything worked.

LOL!! I thought I was the only one who had the deer in the head lights look when it came to those questions. I always left the baby appointments thinking I should have been more prepared.

I had inklings with my dd9 when she was 7 months old. She would never sit on my lap so that the book was on my legs. She sat on my lap facing me with the book on my chest (I felt like a talking easel! lol) She would insist that I point to the words as I read them. She would watch the book and my mouth with intensity. This was the only way she would read with me until she started reading on her own at around 18 months. Then she would sit as most kids do, BUT she would point to the words and read the ones she knew.

Her other interesting trick was at 12 months, she would dump ALL of her wooden puzzles, then line them up and put them together (she had as many as 6 at a time.) Then after she did it, she would try to close her eyes and try it again!

DD2 was just busy busy busy. She loved to take things apart. She was a bit more secretive about her abilities. We did not know that she could read until we caught her reading a book to her stuffed animals around age 3!

I knew it was unusual for a 12 month old to identify letters but at the time I was concerned about his gross motor skills which were about 50% delayed at the time. When he was tested at 12 months, they told me he was 50% advanced in expressive/receptive language skills. While the testers watched, I opened up an alphabet book to the letter A and he said A. His favorite letters at the time were A, B, P & Z. He never did learn things in the order they are supposed to be learned. They told me it was very unusual for a child with motor delays like my son's to be so advanced in other areas, in fact they had never seen another baby like him.

Mr W (16mo) really impressed me a few months ago when he played four notes on his kiddie piano that he just had heard on Sesame Street. And then did it again.

We spend time on Starfall every morning. When he wants a certain letter played, he uses my finger to press the letter he wants to hear as I won't let HIM touch the keyboard! LOL.

The baby might be. She is starting to walk more with out holding on. She came into our room and was playing with a clock. I told her it was a clock. Later in the day she came in our room again and I asked her what she was doing. She said clock and went past me to play with the clock again. She also will look under things . She will bend down and look under the couch to find a toy and pull out the toy. It is funny because she is so tiny. It is funny to see her move so fast. Her expressions seem much older. She is starting to say a few words like up, bottle, cup mostly if she wants something.

DS2 is annoyed because she will follow him around and try to take his toys. DS2 wears this sparkly cape or a lion suit at home most of the time. DD8m has her eye on the cape and she will chase him and pull on it until he lets her play with it. Today he did not want to share the cape and DD8m bit him.

He was appalled and surprised and said, "that baby bit me". Then he went in his room all offended and shut the door. She only has two teeth so I guess she mostly gummed him. They are pretty funny.

Um, when we had the assessment done. We thought it was just that DS6 was one of the older kids in the class, so we didn't tell the school we were going to test in case nothing showed up.

Is baby head-turning towards noises really "a sign"? He did that before we left hospital - towards the TV earpieces mostly, when they were playing music.

Yeah, I was wondering about the turning towards noise too, I just thought that all babies are able to do that from the get-go. DD was really calm in the hospital, but alert, all the staff was so delighted with her. The baby next door wouldn't stop hollering and Dh and I kept looking at each other. Of course now she's the loudest bossiest thing in 3 counties.
At 6 months she would do things like take books and hide them behind her back to play a game, since before 1 her speech and vocab has been astounding us. Yesterday in the line to checkout at the store, someone really 'fell out' when they found out she was 3. They said she is really well spoken, which is true.

The main thing I remember about ds being unusual was the constant drawing, very early and very well, and also puzzle enjoyment/ability. Also other projects, building things or coming up with more complex ideas and having me help him build some really interesting things. I would be cleaning under his bed and find cars made of shoe boxes+jar lids+chopsticks+some other stuff and so on. One interesting thing he did was to take a stack of construction paper and make a large design which covered most of the living room floor. I stood on a chair to get some aerial photos of that one. Recognizable drawings started before age 2.
DD3 has yet to turn out any recognizable drawings besides a few nice circles and ovals.

for my DD who is now 5 and HG+, there were a couple of signs, though we did not really take it all seriously until this past year, and regret that. The main reason we did NOT see her as HG is that we thought all HG kids were early readers, and my daughter had little interest beyond three letter words, which she stopped reading when she got possibly too much attention for it at age 3.

what she did do:

age 22 mos- came to me with scraps of paper with letters on it. "O", "A", "B" very clearly.. never showed her these things.

age 2y1mo- started preschool "play group" and wanted me to leave immediately, saying to the teacher and i "i want my privacy at school". At this time she was also thought to be the oldest child in the class when she was the youngest by three months. Other parents and even teachers flustered when realizing their error.

age 2y3mo- could sight read all the names of the kids in her school and i was "accused" of teacher her, though i did nothing of the sort.

age 3 y1mo- started reading three letter words, but when it got a lot of attention at school, stopped immediately. Was not interested again until almost 5 (reason we thought NOT gifted).

age 3=4= told me FedEx brings the christmas presents, not Santa.Told me tooth fairy "doesn't make any sense" to her.

age 4y10mos- told me the teacher at kindergarden orientation lied to her: "she said it was going to be a big day for us. It was only 2 hours!!".

irene