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

I guess I a still having problems with this. It's hard to really wrap my head around the things DD is doing that aren't normal. At 2.5 she recognizes all letters Upper and Lower case, can match them, knows their sounds, can do beginning and ending letters in words, counts everything, and not just rote counting like most kids her age, but actually counting. I never realized it wasn't normal for kids not know most colors by 18 months, or that apparently most kids don't know the difference between pink and purple until around 4....she has known this since well before 2. She's alreading is writing most letters, recognizes site words.

I guess one thing that happened really early, that at the time I assumed was normal.....I can't remember exactly when, but it was sometime after 12 months, but before 18 months, DD began memorizing entire books.... these were short board books, but after reading them once to hr she woulld memorize the entire thing. Now at 2.5 she memorizes books with over 500 words after hearing them only twice.

She also while not reading yet, completely surprises us by "reading" signs. She obviously recognizes words. The other day we placed an icecream place that has been closed for a long time. We have never been there. There sign is still up. And DD knew we were going for icecream and asked if we were going to that ice cream place as we got near it.....It had no pics or anything around to help associate, it jut said xxxxxxx icecream. DH and I were both floored.

Well...I'd be cautious about identifying something like not putting things in the mouth with giftedness. I think that putting things in the mouth or not is more of a preference on the part of the baby/child.

Just my 2c.

Val

True, it probably is a preference. However both of my guys stopped mouthing MUCH earlier than most children so I think that it's a pretty interesting idea.

Great thread! It' so true that we have warped sense of what is "normal!"

DD6 was also very alert and aware of his surroundings at birth. He cried for a couple of seconds and then just stared around the room and at me with this little "o" shape to his lips. The funniest thing I can remember though, is when he was 2-3 months old, my dh would read him this story about a funny little monster who tried to sound scary. The "monster" would try to sound scary (and dh would make the noise and show his muscles), but he wasn't scary at all. The little monster just sounded silly and made everyone laugh. I assume ds didn't know what we were reading to him, but he started making his own little monster noise and motion with his body (arching his back, scrunching up his face, tensing all of his muscles, and making a little noise) when dh would get close to the moster-noise part of the book. So, after that we'd just say, "show us your monster!" and ds would do it on command. We thought it was hilarious and definitely curious, but we had no idea what we were in for! LOL

Ds also talked in complete sentences very early and always pronounced words correctly from the beginning. No developmental mispronuciations of words. I'm a speech therapist, so I always thought that was different.

I was labeled gifted and sucked my thumb until I was 5. But it's an oral fixation, not because I put everything and anything in my mouth. DS never sucked his thumb or took a paci and NEVER put anything in his mouth.

It's not the label of a paci/thumb sucker that they were talking about, Val, but babies learn by putting things in their mouths... so not doing so at this age or that age (the normal "baby sticks everything in mouth" age) will either mean the child is slightly ahead or slightly behind the "game".

DS5.5 never had to have his head held, and he "stood" pretty much right at birth (would push against my legs if I put his feet on them). He also physically pouted after I said something and pouted myself (at him) at less than 2 weeks old.

This, I think, is normal. DD did it too, and my research indicated that newborns have a primitive walking reflex.

Oh, I know. His was just unlike any other newborn that I have ever held - including his baby sister. She would push, but not push up to a standing position like he did. Everyone always commented on it. He also rolled early and held his head up early. and of course, I thought something was wrong with DD b/c she couldn't at a few weeks.

I didn't notice anything unusual about my sons (now age 7) until their second birthday. They were given 24 piece puzzles by my MIL (who, of course raise DH, so had some experience with this). I was ready to put them into storage until the boys were older, but turns out to be an appropriate difficulty for them. Then I did some research, and realized other things they did were also unusual. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me that a young toddler's first words usually aren't identifying letter of the alphabet. What stood out was that they were very very slow with gross motor and didn't speak many 'real' words at the time. Thus, we worried they might be slow.

One of the difficulties in understanding that my sons were not, in fact delayed, was the fact that they had very poor gross motor skills (still do) and followed the family tradition (from both parents) of talking late, and then suddenly becoming intelligible when they were speaking sentences - except letters, of course, and a handful of other words.

Looking back, I remember a comment or two from the nurses in the regular nursery (after NICU for prematurity) explaining to me that their eyes tracked better and they were more alert because they had 'more experience' looking around than children who spend the last two months in utero. That comment was 3-4 weeks before their due dates, and she was comparing them to other 4 week old babies so her reasoning for her comparison didn't make sense, but I didn't question it at the time, or think much about it because I didn't know there were any differences and I was a sleep deprived new parent. I remember repeating it to my grandmother when she commented on it.

My youngest is now 14 months old. She is entirely different from her brothers. She doesn't get overstimulated, but understimulated, which drives me batty. She has been physically very strong and advanced with gross motor stuff and also with her receptive language, loves wooden puzzles, knows at least some shapes and colors and a few letters, and has a terrific memory. One thing that is the same, is that she is somewhere on the slow side of things with expressive language and does not seem to want to follow a typical pattern of early speech (her brothers went from incomprehensible to an enormous vocabulary between 25 and 26 months old). She rarely tries to say the same thing more than twice, usually once, and if I don't get it, too bad. I was kinda hoping she would break family tradition there. Nope. I don't know where she will be, or is, on the gifted spectrum, but I suspect she is at least quite bright, but probably not PG. Just a guess.

Hmm...I'm not convinced. My eldest is 9 and has skipped two grades and has further acceleration in 2-3 other subjects. He never put things in his mouth. Ever.

My daughter is 5. She skipped kindergarten and does 2nd grade work in reading and language arts. Today she spent the 20 minute drive home from school barking at me to give her more multiplication problems. She started putting her fingers in her mouth before she was a month old. We had to hide everything from her because everything went into her mouth. She still puts stuff in her mouth!

So: two kids, equally gifted, polar opposites on this point.

Some of the correlations I've seen here are nice anecdotes, but I'm not convinced that a lot of them are causally related to giftedness. I did a couple Google and PubMed searches and didn't find anything to support things-in-mouth with giftedness (not that my searches were exhaustive!).

That said, I'm pretty sure that figuring out how to use your hands is a two-three month milestone (see Physical under months 2 and three on this site.). So using hands before this time could be considered a potential marker for giftedness.

My understanding of neonatal behavior is that alertness in the delivery room is common, but that constant alertness after that in the first weeks of life is not common.

I'm not trying to be a bummer here. This is just an example of the scientist in me!

Val