Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Normal?

In this forum we all seem to struggle with what is normal. As our kids are so young we they can not be tested. Would it be nice to share how you have noticed your kid being is different than others? It might also help us to find out what is "normal" or not We could come back later to add more when things surface.

I was waiting for my DD to finish up dance yesterday and while I waited I was struck with how different she was as an infant. There was a 9 month old baby in the waiting room who is full of personality. She really is adorable, but I guess she is what we would classify as 'normal'. She hasn't really started talking but is vocalizing syllables such as Ma and Da. I just kept thinking how much I was in denial because not only was DD talking in complete sentences by 9 mths (Okay, talking in sentences by 6 mths) she already knew all of her ABCs along with a long list of body parts and had started to count. DD could also scribble with control and was able to draw circles by this time. Yet at this time in her life I really had no idea that was not normal and any family member that brought it up had me laughing and thinking of course you think that. Who doesn't think their child/ granddaughter/ etc is the most special thing that ever walked the planet?

Hmmm... normal? DS plays baseball like a 5 yr old. He also can't tie his shoes yet, though I think it's more of him not wanting to rather than can't do it. Though I know some "normal" 4 year olds that can do it.

I never learned to tie shoes the normal way. People kept talking to me about rabbits and holes and whatnot. Yech. It just wasn't meant to be.

As far as my DD is concerned, I am painfully aware that the reading thing is far from normal. Otherwise, I have to read the milestones charts or whatever to figure it out. I have no intrinsic sense of what is normal or not normal. And I'm fairly certain that none of the kids we hang around are normal.

DD6 was so aware at birth, looking at us with those big eyes as if to say "I can't talk yet, but I'm watching you" It was my sister in law that kept pointing out that babies don't do the things she does , like being able to point out most of her body parts by 7 - 9 months,(I thought it was just because I told her what the parts were whenever I changed her) knowing all her letters and numbers to 10 before 12 months old, even when DD spelled her name at 14 months, then asked me if that was her name, I still didn't get it. After all her name was on wooden letters in her room, she just looked at it long enough to memorize it, right? She also loved to count diapiers and books. She would line them up from our living room to our family room, use to drive me crazy now I wish I had taped it. When little sis came along she was 19 months old, DD was thrilled! More diapiers to count, she was counting past 100 before 2yrs. Honestly I don't think it really hit me until she was 2.5 I was at a teachers store looking for books for her to read, because the ones at home were too hard or too easy. Another mom in the store commented after she saw DD reading at a table that it was a shame there are not any good schools around here for gifted children. That's when I started looking things up about gifted children. Hope that helps

I have a profoundly gifted brother, my mom says there were no signs at all before he was school age. With the exception that at birth he looked around the delivery room, calm and alert, taking it all in. He was also always careful, for example he refused to fingerpaint due to it getting paint on the hands. He didn't talk early, didn't read early, pretty clumsy as a kid, not needy or high energy, etc. The only other thing my mom has said is that it was relatively easy to have him at the same time as a son 18 months older, because from fairly early on they were interested in the same level of toys.

My own DS 2 is too young to know how gifted he is or isn't, but I think he's definitely bright and especially with regard to memory and interest in symbols. I don't have a good sense yet about creativity or ability to figure things out.

From about 6 weeks very high needs as far as stimulation went, beginning about 3 months he groaned as if in physical pain if not completely continuously shown novel and interesting things, this lasted until he could walk, a very long time as he walked at an average time. It wasn't just direct attention he needed, but to learn about things in long sittings, reading, pointing out things, singing past being hoarse, etc. Pretty unpleasant for everyone (him included because he was only temporarily sated).

Sense of humor has been a big one, he enjoys verbal humor and inventing words. One of the earliest was making silly contractions, like "Boo Mommy" turned into Bommy which was hilarious to him. When we tell other two year olds his jokes they just stare with no response, so I assume they don't do that type of humor yet.

His memory has been surprisingly good, compared to other kids and especially compared to the adults in his family. Around 22 months he started to ask for his various songs on CD by the number of the CD and then the song number on the CD, rather than the name or by words from the song. "play song 10, CD number 2" And then next ask to listen to another combination and it would end up being the same song on a different CD. "Song 21, CD number 4". I think most other kids his age either sing the songs or just listen, not request each version in a row via their numbers.

Another memory example, today I said a riddle, "what's a blue bird but not a bluebird" (he's been asking for "bird games" lately and that was what I came up with) and he replied "indigo bunting, we were in the car and mommy saw one in the wheat field, but it flew away" (I was thinking of blue jay which we see all the time, but instead he remembered an unusual event 4 months prior where he didn't actually see the bird, just heard about it and saw me look it up later).

Also I find he is specific in his answers than other kids, and cares a lot about being exact. He links things he's read in books to real life. For example, the other day someone asked, "what made those holes in the ground?" and he answered, "could have been megazostrodon" (perfectly reasonable answer as that is a small rat like mammal, except that it died off about 200 million years ago). I am pretty sure megazostrodon appears in some book of his, though no picture and no mention of digging.

At 2 and 3 mo he loves numbers and counting. He loves rearranging his fridge numbers and saying one hundred twenty three, a hundred thirty two. He gets the thousands wrong sometimes. I don't even know what most 2 year olds do regarding numbers, not much. He makes snail collections in order to count them. The highlight of any trip to town is the house numbers. With the numbers its more the love for it than the accomplishment part that seems unusual.

Polly

I didn't realize DD3.5 was atypical until about 18 to 20 months-old. A friend of mine pointed out that it wasn't typical for a child that age to know her colors. Then I told my friend the rest of it -- DD recognized all letters, numbers thru 9, knew many letter sounds, some sight words, etc. I thought it was because DD was so intense about me repeatedly reading to her, talking about the colors of the crayons and just interacting in general. She's my first-born so DH and I were quite naive about developmental milestones, especially since DD didn't start to take off until 18 months.

We used to get funny looks from my DB when DD would get on the computer by herself, launch the web browser, find her website in the drop-down menu and begin playing -- at age 2. At the time it seemed natural to me, but now that she's older and we have another DD16mo, I can't believe she was only 2 years old and using the computer by herself. The thought of it makes me chuckle because it seems so ridiculous.

Now DD3.5 is reading easy-readers all by herself without having ever seen the books before -- we're very proud! Her preschool teachers have been floored (I let them figure DD's abilities out on their own so I wouldn't sound like a crazy mom).

On the flip side, I'm a GT adult, but my DM does not tell stories about any unusual behavior from me before starting school. I was an easy-going child who always wanted to please. I didn't realize I was GT until I started reading up on all of this stuff. Go figure.

Polly, This sounds so much like my son (now 7) that I am shocked. He did walk at 10 months, but nothing like talking way early or anything. He, too, did the CD/song by number around age 2, and the christmas he was 3 1/2 he got so into calendars that he could tell you what day of the week any date in 2005 2006 or 2007 was, jsut because he had been studying them. I did think, when he was almost three and he told me, "Mummy, Nine has two n's in it!" that he was sort of unusual, but I really had no idea. We had his tested a year go because he was behaving badly (unusual), we think due to lack of stimulation at school, and he came out in the 130s (frankly, I had thought it might might even be higher). He has now skipped second grade, and is doing 4th gr maths, having just turned 7. Your kid is one to watch!

DD has been pretty advanced from day 1. Every pediatrican visit we�ve had the pediatrician has commented on this. However, it wasn�t until her 4 month visit when the pediatrician clearly said what she was doing was NOT normal in any way whatsoever and that she was the most advanced baby that she�d ever seen that it really made us think.

DH and I are both gifted so it wasn�t really a shock to us. However, she does seem quite a bit ahead of where both of us were at her age. She�s been early across the board with speech (first words at 6 months), gross motor skills (first steps at a little over 8 months), and fine motor skills (was signing early on). We also get a lot of comments from random people on the street about her...

She�s also a VERY demanding little girl. I�m wondering if she might have some sensory issues but I�ll probably make another post about that later.

We once did a totally unscientific survey of early head control here on the forum, and anecdotally, it seemed to be a good predictor of HG+ness. Many of us thought it was weird that our kids had early head control, but we'd never put that together with the GTness until so many other people here had seen it in their GT kids, too.

I'd love to see a study on it. I suspect there's some correlation.

The biggest moment for me, though, the moment when I couldn't ignore it with DS8, was when he was about 8 months or so--crawling and cruising, but not yet walking, and not really talking yet. He banged his Hot Wheels car on the wall and I said no. He stopped immediately, then he systematically tested the rule so that he understood the limits for behavior with Hot Wheels cars. He experimented with every permutation of using a car on the wall and the floor--banging and rolling, right hand and left hand--and each time he stopped the second I told him "no," a behavior was off-limits. He was entirely scientific about it. I felt like I was dealing with a much older child.

Once he understood the rule, he followed it from that day on. I never had to explain it again and he never broke it.

I remember having a strong, almost eerie sense that most toddlers probably weren't like that...

With DS5, it was a more recent realization. Just after Christmas 2008, he started doing addition in his head. It was all very sudden, and he moved from addition to addition of large numbers (10s of thousands) with carrying, to subtraction with renaming, and now he's multiplying 2-digit numbers in his his head. It's a big change--I wasn't even thinking he was GT before Christmas!

So DS8 started quick out of the gate and moved steadily all along. DS5 is my leaps-and-bounds kid.