Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school 4yr old and number patterns

I am not sure how long she has been doing it but I have noticed often in the last week that DD will make leaps to numbers with the same digits when asked "what comes next" or to add two numbers together.

For example if she sees 13 and I ask her "what comes next" she will say "31". But if I then reply "10, 11, 12, 13..." and wait for her to continue she will say "14" and I am not sure how many objects she can count but I am pretty sure it's at least 10 and possibly in the teens. I actually have a feeling I saw her count 20+ objects recently but I can't remember what they were so I could be making it up.

When I gave her two $2 coins today and asked how many they were together she said "20", but when shown two fingers plus two more fingers she has no trouble getting 4, plus one more is 5, etc.

I am not worried about it, she's a 4y/o, she'll figure it out soon enough. I am curious though whether this is "normal" pattern matching/seeking behavior that you would see in any 4 yr old or if it is to do with her giftedness? I hope that question makes sense.

I feel like I should know what "normal" is but honestly I am getting more confused each year that I am a parent.

I have no idea what is normal. My dd4 has tested gifted...she gets 5 on a die/ 5 or 10 on fingers without counting, some simple addition/subtraction that she has learned in school, LOVES patterns with numbers, letters, colors, etc., understands a pattern is not a pattern without a repeat and so on.
I heard from the teacher that some of this is not normal for her other students -- all about 6 months older than dd. (ps, she is now almost 5)
If someone has details on what is 'normal' for 4 or 5, I would be interested to see.

Not exactly the same thing, but I do remember being surprised by what my DS couldn't do when he could do other things that seemed the same to me. E.g. I remember reading (in the PBS child development list) that children develop the ability to say which of two numbers is bigger in stages, and not quite believing it, but sure enough, my DS could reliably say which of two numbers was bigger if both were under about 7 (even if they were consecutive), *or* if the numbers were widely separated even if they were larger, but he couldn't say which was bigger of 22 or 23. Seemed really weird! I found that list interesting because of the way it split skills up and talked about what order they were usually developed in, even though the actual ages in the list never described my DS.