If you are a gifted adult with a gifted child, did you ever sort of have a 'hunch' before any assessment or display of unusual development? Did that hunch influence any decisions? Or did you just keep that hunch at the back of your mind?

Yes, yes, and no. But as you know, I already have some quantitative sense of developmental milestones embedded in my general set of perceptions. And it did influence decisions to some extent, but only in the sense that we had some idea of which direction educational adaptations might need to go. My parenting philosophy has always been to meet the child where s/he is, so that short-term decisions can be fluid, but long-term goals remain the same--namely to grow healthy, happy, whole human beings who contribute goodness and beauty to others.

The practical manifestations have varied in the educational setting, and in the character-building domain, depending on the exact needs of the specific child at that moment in time. I think we would have individualized our parenting to the same extent for any child, as each person is uniquely gifted and challenged.

We kind of assumed our kids would be some level of smart because of apples usually not falling far from trees and all of that. DH and I have never officially been tested so we were a bit clueless in some ways about just how gifted we/they might be but I suspected that navigating the school system was going to be a little extra fun based on our experiences.

As for displays of unusual development - there were a few things that happened very young that seemed to raise everyone else's eyebrows which was our first clue. We quickly figured out to pretty much never talk about the things that our kids were interested in or doing except with a few very close and sympathetic friends. Other than that I can't say that it influenced any decisions. Similar to what aeh wrote above - my aim (regardless of the child) is to meet the child where they are and provide the broadest set of opportunities that I can. We'd try to dabble in as wide of a range as possible and then see what was of any interest (sports, music, science, arts, books, outdoors, etc, etc).

When they started school and we ran into issues then it definitely influenced our decisions around education.

Same here on assuming they'd be smart but not really knowing about giftedness or not. Dd7 surprised us a lot with her verbal/language skills but even then we didn't realize how unusual she was because she was our first. Ds6 surprised us when we realized how intuitive math is to him -- he's average/slightly above avg in reading so we didn't think he was gifted and then we started teaching dd7 math and he surpassed her. The final surprise was their test results. They've never been IQ tested and we think we're all MG as a family but dd7 blew the OLSAT out of the water and to my endless surprise DS6 also blew the NNAT2 out of the water (our gifted coordinator chose nnat for him because I candidly told her he doesn't test well and that I thought he'd do badly on the OLSAT... But I didn't know she switched until we got the results (

Also, I agree with long term goals being the same...I want independent, self sufficient adults. Maybe it's because we're likely "just" an MG family but our biggest challenge academically is just pushing for a bit if differentiation every year but generally keeping them in their grade. I think dd7 would have done well one grade ahead but it also wasn't too critical. It mostly works if our school lets me assign them their own math homework so they aren't stuck doing basic addition at home, but I keep them in their grade level class so they don't miss any crucial math skills I may have skipped over.

It's very possible that they are more gifted than we realize, given dd7's spontaneous reading at 2 and the way Ds6 problem solves, but it isn't something that's too important for us to figure out.

I'd recommend adding a "for now" to that statement

They might be MG or you might come to realize that that doesn't quite fit. It sounds like you're on this path already but from a BTDT perspective, listen to your gut and be open to course adjustments if needed.

(My BTDT story - we thought DS was MG (tests agreed at the time) and couldn't figure out why nothing that the school was proposing/attempting seemed even remotely appropriate for the kid we knew at home. A couple years later we had to retest to confirm some 2e stuff it was kind of a shocker when he tested much higher. The disconnect between the school's solutions and actual need made a lot more sense with the new results.)

i suspected my son was gifted when he was very young (probably about 2yo), before any assessment. and it did influence our decisions, but initially in the wrong way, at least for our son. we enrolled him in an academic day care thinking it would help satiate his need to learn, and he HATED it. lol. so we found a pre-school that met his emotional needs instead, and he was a happy clam. and i filled his shelves with books. and we built things together. and went to maker fairs.

other than feeding his brain, i kept it in the back of my mind, as you put it, and just played things by ear.

also, i've realized that i didn't fully comprehend how gifted he is until the last year or so. (he's 8 now.) he's my only kid, and my friends either had older kids or are just now having them, so the only kids i had to compare him to are family. and apparently we make smart babies because he didn't seem that unusually bright. now that i'm socializing with other parents at school and volunteering in the classroom, i'm seeing the difference far more starkly.

Thanks for the answers.

Chay, what were some of the eyebrow-raising stories? My mom cautioned us, that if DD did something like reading or math at an unusually early age, that we should probably keep it to ourselves. Like you said, without previous experience, it's hard to tell what's defies your expectation as a new parent and what just defies expectations.

When DD was closer to 1, we were playing at the library. On this day there happened to be another child there that was actually close in age to DD. The other child was walking around. DD wasn't walking yet. I asked the other parent how long the child had been walking. About a month. We kept on playing. A little bit later the other parent asked how long has she been pointing at things?

So all kids are different.

Oh boy, this is going back but here's the ones that stuck in my brain. Most are DS since by the time DD came along we were expecting this stuff. Some of our preschool fun -

- DS lifted his head to follow conversations day 1, we thought it was a fluke but he kept doing it from then on. (he wasn't 100% so there were some face-plants into collarbones or shoulders initially but if there was conversation - he seemed to want in) Even now (12) he will gravitate towards adult conversations whenever he can.
- we hardly baby-proofed anything - we would tell them that they couldn't touch something and explain why and they would listen even at 6 months old (we ended up having to do some babyproofing for visitors)
- we did have a doorknob thing on the door to the basement - DS figured out how to open it as soon as he was able to stand (he'd put his hand on the top and use his weight to push the top part down hard enough to turn the knob, we then wrapped the knob with a cloth under the plastic thing to make it harder, he figured that out instantly, pulled it out and repeat his move).
- DD declared that she wasn't going to wear diapers at 19 months old and I think she might have had 2 accidents, ever
- both kids' daycare made a few comments (can't remember the details)
- the recommended ages on games, toys and puzzles never seemed to match when our kids would find them interesting
- we walked into a room at a local museum that had some planets as decorations hanging in random order around the room from the ceiling and DS promptly pointed out that one was missing, we assumed he was talking about Pluto not being there (some of our books were dated) and he said - I know but they are missing Neptune and sure enough he was right.
- at 4 he got really, really mad at a dinosaur zoo exhibit where the parasaurolophus didn't make the right sound (he knew ALL about them and pretty much every other dinosaur)
- the dentist made some comment about brushing your teeth to get rid of the sugar bugs, DS rolled his eyes and said it isn't the bacteria, it is the waste from the bacteria that causes tooth decay (I have to assume he learned that from some tv show???) The dentist looked at me a little weird.
- the games he would try to get other kids to play with him at the park usually got some laughs

I'll also add that while all of that was going on he was in therapy for speech delay so it was an odd mix at times. In contrast, DD had an insane vocabulary (or maybe our expectations were just warped).

Definitely agree that all kids are different.

We were pretty clueless because we only knew our kid and had no real frame of reference. I remember one librarian and one babysitter telling us early on (around age 1) that DS's attention span and love of books were out there, but we hadn't thought much of it. Although I read to DS constantly and bought him things like alphabet puzzles, I fully expected him to learn to read in kindergarten along with the rest of the 5 and 6 year olds. When he spontaneously started reading at age 2, a matter of months after I'd weaned him, it was head-spinning. It didn't help that the very first thing he sounded out, at 2, from his highchair, was a newspaper headline. So, it was more of a "this shouldn't be happening" kind of feeling than a hunch. It's super cool though when your kids far surpass your expectations--even exceed what you thought was possible, right out of the gate. I found it quite humbling and definitely changed my parenting as a result, following his lead much more than I ever expected to. DS's ability to shock and awe also made it relatively easy to trust my gut. We never did pursue formal assessment.

This is pretty close to our experience. Librarians would come up to us and say variations on "she's so observant."

I'm still dismissing examples of reading as just being cases of knowing picture books by heart. I guess though that's just a stage in teaching yourself. I need to stick some words she knows on the fridge and see what happens.

We baby proofed, but in my family being smart actually makes you more dangerous. At age 3(?) my brother turned on the stove, waited for it to heat up, then put his fingers on the burner. After the blisters healed he repeated the experiment. The reason? He wanted to find out what would happen. He was later banned from cooking for a while when he got syrup out of the fridge early in the morning to make waffles, but ended up cracking the bottle and drizzling it all over the floor.

I think a little bit of it is that she's an only child who stays at home most days, so the only behaviors she can model are adult ones. And she's scary good at imitating us.

Excellent points, totally agree on the attention span and books being clues.

If there was science or math involved both of my kids were mesmerized. It didn't need to be dumbed down or made into a kids show to hold their attention (in fact they quickly outgrew many kids shows). DS would grab university physics textbooks off our shelves for bedtime.

Inquisitiveness was another biggie. The toddler "why" phase was more of a who/what/when/where/and why interrogation phase. Non stop questions as if his life depended on it. Usually going super deep and off on a few tangents. (DS in particular never left this phase - luckily now he can read and has google)

That and their memory. You couldn't flippantly promise them to do something later or next week - they'd hold you to it. Remember when you said..... uggg. I quickly learned to NEVER promise anything I wasn't positive was going to happen.

Not unlike echofuzz, my FOO is clearly not representative of the overall population either. By the time we had children, I had re-calibrated my perceptions somewhat, owing to a few years in my profession, working with a wider range of the population, but left to my own devices, I might very well have seen our children as more or less average, or even a little slow, TBH. As it was, I had several years to learn exactly what the middle 50% of the population looks like, and to distinguish between bright, GT, and extreme outliers, not only qualitatively, but quantitatively, which I found to be helpful for identifying how to focus on the common experiences of parents, while lessening the sensation of otherness.

Because of my own childhood, I think our kids would have had to be in fairly rarefied extreme PG territory for me to be shocked by anything they did GT-wise. Instead of managing my own shock, I've leaned toward building skills for trying to help other parents to be not only not shocked by our children, but to develop more inclusive ideas of giftedness and value in their own children.

I have a daycare story from when DS was around eight months. I had a friend whose son is very close to the same age and was at the same daycare. One day I was a little later than usual at the daycare and our boys were the only ones left in the room. My son was being fussy and the teacher (not his usual teacher) was having trouble getting him to settle down. When my friend came to pick up her son and saw that DS was giving the teacher trouble, she told her to show him a book (clearly she knew DS well). The teacher thought this was crazy talk, but figured she shouldn't contradict a parent of a child in the daycare, so she tried it. DS instantly calmed down and was quiet and happy for the teacher (and for me for the rest of the evening).

When he was a few months older and had moved up to the next room, they had to put his designated nap location next to the bookshelf. Otherwise, he would crawl right over the top of other napping kids in order to reach the books when he woke up.

Yeah, we once left a babysitter with instructions to simply read a book if toddler DS was upset over anything for any reason. She commented, with surprise, when we got back that it really worked.

Not really, giftedness is relative and I just thought that all kids are bright.

Every parent wants to have a child with a reasonable level of smarts so I just stopped myself from reading too much into DD’s occasional flashes of brilliance.

I honestly thought that the ages printed on toys and puzzles were inflated by the manufacturers to make every parent proud.

We knew she was a pretty sharp cookie but that was it.

The DYS level achievement and IQ scores were met with surprise and no small amount of disbelief until she was accepted into DYS (5 years ago now - time flies). Only when I had had the experts telling me Psychologist and DYS - did Infully comprehend her LOG.

lol! i thought the same thing!

that was my boy, too. we had a couple playdates with other kids which were a bit eventful because of it. and more than once were accused of negligent parenting because people didn't believe a baby understood and complied with, "Don't touch. You'll get hurt."

we're also lucky to have a number of teachers as friends who confirmed our suspicions. one of them would babysit him sometimes. one time, when we got home to free her from his clutches, she just gave me this squinty-eyed LOOK. "Do you know your son knows the word 'buoyancy'?" they'd been playing with a toy boat in the sink, and she'd asked him if he knew why it didn't sink. he told her it was buoyant because it had air in it and because it's shape. he was 2 or so. we didn't see it as a big deal, but she insisted that this was not "normal" knowledge at his age. we took her word for it and just kept doing what we were doing.

So, the opposite of movie ratings?

I think we're perhaps the opposite. Hubby and I are both gifted, and expected that our daughter would be too, but while we're on the lookout for evidence of it, it's actually really hard to tell.

She hit all her milestones really early, but she has none of the 'burn to learn'. Almost the opposite. She's seriously opposed to anything that requires sustained effort/focus. But she still seems to accumulate knowledge and skills at a faster rate than her peers.

They gave her a test at school to see if she qualified for the enrichment program, and her scores were all over the place, but the test was given in a foreign language that she's only been learning for a year. So who knows (but they let her into the program anyway - yay!).

We'll test her again when she's older (she's still only 5), and we're also thinking about testing for ADHD. Which we suspect we both have too.

Yes, we expected him to be gifted based on our family history on both sides. We had a hunch from the delivery room when the nurses commented on how he was responding right after birth. We were certain by about 4 months, my wife was certain earlier than that.

I don't think it influenced our decisions very much early on. We were always going to parent the child we had, not the child that people were going to tell us we had. We were fortunate that we had the flexibility to do this - my wife worked 3 days a week so we used a nanny for the other 3. DS never had to move at anyone else's pace for the 1st 18 months.

It did influence our decisions later on. By the time he was 2, we had moved to a daycare 3x a week for exposure to more kids. Shortly thereafter, the daycare was having him help teach the other 2 year olds so he wouldn't be bored. We took him out again within a few months.

That's when we started looking at gifted education options more aggressively. We had him tested at 3.5y.o. just so we'd have some external validation when we started shopping pre-k options because we didn't have any teacher experiences for reference.

No real hunch. Like some here we just thought all kids were smart little sponges.
We were once sitting at a wedding reception with our probably 3 yr old son beside a lady we had never met. She kept asking him all kinds of questions and he would elaborate on his answers. She tipped us off.

Looking back we kind of knew I guess but we are a pretty nerdy group and he just blended in.

When he was three he was always wanting to read parts of the books at bed time. Anywhere we went he had to read everything at the library or museums. Every morning he would read the nutritional labels on boxes of cereal and trying to figure the percentage values for a full day of eating.

Again around three maybe four we went to a pool party and all the kids were swimming and the adults were sitting around with their feet in the pool. He pulls in several life jacket and was reading type code and warnings on the tags. Asking questions about certain words he was sounding out and asking questions about drowning. The others were looking at us like we were the most crazy parents, almost like we were torturing him. I remember just shrugging.

I don't remember speculating on whether my kids would be gifted, or even really having much awareness of giftedness per se, although I must have had SOME exposure to the idea (I knew my husband had been in school gifted programs, for example).

Looking back, there were a few early signs that made an impression on DH and me, but "gifted" didn't occur to us until much later. For instance, at about 8-9 months old DS watched me open a newly installed baby gate, just once. He then crawled over and perfectly imitated the rather complex two-handed maneuver needed to open it (luckily, his little hands weren't strong enough to pull it off!). At 18 months, he would independently insert CDs of story/song books that we had, press play, go find the corresponding paper book, and turn the pages at appropriate times to follow along with the story. This was his favorite activity for a few months. We thought that was cute and smart but that was about it.

I first started to realize something more was going on when he was about 2.5 and developed the first of a series of obsessive interests (musical instruments and orchestras). His extreme need to learn, along with his ability to concentrate for extended periods, quickly assimilate and remember massive amounts of new information, and apply it in new contexts then became very apparent. Also around that time I found the PBS child development tracker and realized that he looked more like an "average" 5 year old than a 2 year old by their descriptions. It was then that I started to research giftedness.

We knew from very early on... and so did casual onlookers.

Rather than go into detail, I will just share that lists like the following would have been a great comfort to us at that time... so I post (and re-post) the list with hope that it may be of some assurance to others.

A roundup of common Behavior characteristics and early milestones which may indicate giftedness:
- Characteristics of intellectually advanced young people
- Parenting Gifted Preschoolers
- NAGC's list borrowed from the book A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children
- Characteristics and Behaviors of the Gifted
- Characteristics checklist for gifted children
-Tips for Parents: Helping Parents Understand Their Profoundly Gifted Children
- Profiles of the gifted and talented which lists 6 different types, categorized by personality/temperament and achievement
- Bertie Kingore, Ph.D.: High Achieving, Gifted Learner, Creative Thinker? (hat tip to sanne)
- A common trait in gifted children, often listed amongst identifying characteristics, is alternately described as: "advanced moral reasoning", "well developed sense of justice", "moral sensitivity", "advanced ability to think about such abstract ideas as justice and fairness", "empathy", "compassion". Links to lists of gifted characteristics include several articles on the Davidson Database here and here, SENG (Silverman), SENG (Lovecky).
- ages at which gifted children may reach developmental milestones
- thread about Early Milestones - what do they mean?
- SENG video: The Misdiagnosis of Gifted Children
- book: Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults
- old post with link to article comparing gifted characteristics and ASD characteristics
- post with checklist comparing gifted and ASD traits (hat tip to BananaGirl)
- post with link to Gifted Resource Center of New England (GRCNE) article comparing gifted and ASD traits (hat tip to Nolepharm)

I *still* get surprised that my kids are considered unusual.

For example, my 6 and 7 year olds regularly play Settlers of Catan with us. I didn't think that was weird but apparently most of our friends didn't even think about introducing the game until 12. I'm still thinking they are just underestimating their kids, but who knows.

My third kid, 18m old, knows about 30-40 words and loves books. To me, that's completely normal. Dd7 had 200 words and spoke on sentences at that age and listened to me reading books starting at about 4 months. We didn't think Ds6 was gifted because he couldn't sit still for a book and only had 3 words at that age. So I'm still on the train of, "sure, he's not*behind* like his big brother so he's probably just average". Apparently he's unusual, according to anyone who spends time with him.

And at 18 months old DD7 started identifying letters, which my current 18m old absolutely is not doing. So everything keeps getting filtered through my experience with her, and I'm not convinced she's *very* gifted or anything.