[kh79]

I have been toying with writing this post for quite a while but have refrained for fear of being slammed.

I would really love to have contact with other parents who are quite certain that thier child is gifted.

I have posted quite a bit on the gifted primary school thread and found this to be extremely beneficial, on the other hand my ds is still a couple of years away from school, so my posts are not 100 per cent relevant to the group.

I find the experience of having a child who is different quite isolating and with giftedness comes a range of issues that my ds is facing. I am looking for the support of other parents who might be in this position.

Many thanks in advance for each persons help.

[mum850]

I have been toying with writing this post for quite a while but have refrained for fear of being slammed.

I would really love to have contact with other parents who are quite certain that thier child is gifted.

I have posted quite a bit on the gifted primary school thread and found this to be extremely beneficial, on the other hand my ds is still a couple of years away from school, so my posts are not 100 per cent relevant to the group.

I find the experience of having a child who is different quite isolating and with giftedness comes a range of issues that my ds is facing. I am looking for the support of other parents who might be in this position.

Many thanks in advance for each persons help.

Hi kh79,
I have seen your posts on the other gifted group.
My preschooler has just turned three. She talks her head off, long complicated sentences, has known her letters since she was about 15 months, and is reading quite a few words, very interested in literacy. People have asked me if she is going to school next year, and I laugh and say, well she's two (she just had her birthday). Her two siblings are gifted and also read well before school. Unfortunately she is still 2.5 years off from starting school unless I try for early entry, which is a Giant Hassle. Although she is not old enough to be in the three year old kinder room at creche, she has been put in it and is allowed to join the 4-5 year old group when they do letterland etc, and she is one of the most advanced. This is by far the most accomodating child care centre any of my kids who have been in. All of the others (we moved a lot) were very unsupportive of young kids who wanted to be reading etc. The worked actually mentioned the gifted word to me recently. This never happened before!!!
She plays with the 4 year olds at creche and I know she will be sad when her friends go off to school next year and she doesn't. And then the year after when it happens again that will be worse. Ah well, because it's happened twice, I won't be surprised!
At this stage though, I would not say that she has any issues. I suspect that she might be bored with preschool by next year (in 3yo kinder) and the year after (in 4 yo kinder). Because she is my third, I am not worried about her at all although I guess I am expecting that she will have issues with boredom soon as that's what happened with my other kids. I guess I have very low expectations of preschool years for gifted kids.... so I am not going to be disappointed! Thinking that the child care centre would believe that your reading preschooler was reading despite the evidence in front of their noses, and take any sort of interest has lead to disappointment in the past! I have no plan or expectation that they will teach her any literacy or numeracy, creche is just playing and social stuff which is totally fine. I just got unhappy in the past when child care centres were kind of opposing the reading thing. I dont' expect them to promote it.
She is happy, funny and well behaved.

What issues is your DS having?

[kh79]

Hi mum850,

thank you very much for taking the time to reply. It is lovely to hear from someone with such a wealth of experience:) your daughter sounds very special indeed!!

ds doesn't have any behavourial problems at this point, he has always been very even tempered and easy to reason with. The main things are things I have raised on the other thread- being worried as ds plays on his own constantly at childcare and doesn't seem to interact with the kids and the activites unless he chooses to. The centre raised it as a little bit of an issue. The centre is not particularly great so they have not tried to help him with this and I have no idea how to help him.

The other thing on this note is that we have decided to take him out of childcare for the next 6 months and get a nanny. This decision was made prior to understanding the issue at care. The aim is to help him impove his second language.

The other thing that you touched on already is being worried about what stage he will be at by the time he reaches school. Like your little one my ds could read all letters and numbers at 16 months. He was obssessed with number plates (just at the right height for him!)

at 13 months he Began being obssessed with the world map. My 18 months he knew where over 120 countries were. Nowdays he has forgotten dime of them but has increased his knowledge of facts about the country and it's culture.

He is also obsessed with dinosaurs and gathers all the facts he can on every dinosaur.

He has memorized countless picture books (long ones) and recites them to himself.

Currently he is enjoying playing with puzzles. It's only been a few weeks and he ha moved from 20 piece puzzles to 200 pieces.

I think all of this equates to having an exceptional memory...because none of these things have been learnt because of lots of repitition, he i'd told once and never forgets.

Like you I have no expectation on the normal childcare system to support him, I also just want him to have a carefree life filled with fun and simple toddler things. It's more a fear if the future.

I also find it impossible to speak to people about this in real life because people either think you are boasting, which is not nice.

Many thanks for your reply

[mum850]

Hi mum850,

thank you very much for taking the time to reply. It is lovely to hear from someone with such a wealth of experience:) your daughter sounds very special indeed!!

ds doesn't have any behavourial problems at this point, he has always been very even tempered and easy to reason with. The main things are things I have raised on the other thread- being worried as ds plays on his own constantly at childcare and doesn't seem to interact with the kids and the activites unless he chooses to. The centre raised it as a little bit of an issue. The centre is not particularly great so they have not tried to help him with this and I have no idea how to help him.

The other thing on this note is that we have decided to take him out of childcare for the next 6 months and get a nanny. This decision was made prior to understanding the issue at care. The aim is to help him impove his second language.

The other thing that you touched on already is being worried about what stage he will be at by the time he reaches school. Like your little one my ds could read all letters and numbers at 16 months. He was obssessed with number plates (just at the right height for him!)

at 13 months he Began being obssessed with the world map. My 18 months he knew where over 120 countries were. Nowdays he has forgotten dime of them but has increased his knowledge of facts about the country and it's culture.

He is also obsessed with dinosaurs and gathers all the facts he can on every dinosaur.

He has memorized countless picture books (long ones) and recites them to himself.

Currently he is enjoying playing with puzzles. It's only been a few weeks and he ha moved from 20 piece puzzles to 200 pieces.

I think all of this equates to having an exceptional memory...because none of these things have been learnt because of lots of repitition, he i'd told once and never forgets.

Like you I have no expectation on the normal childcare system to support him, I also just want him to have a carefree life filled with fun and simple toddler things. It's more a fear if the future.

I also find it impossible to speak to people about this in real life because people either think you are boasting, which is not nice.

Many thanks for your reply

Hi KH,
I have a vision of your future!!
My oldest son sounds exactly the same. He really was never very good with "playing" and no good with kids his own age. (My other kids play.) He was obsessed by numbers and letters very early. As he was my first I didn't realise how unusualy this was. He actually started reading before we realised he could read, we knew his alphabet by the time he was two (obviously he knew it before that but I never chcked) and he was reading quite well before he turned four. ANd yes, with comprehension! We thought he was reciting for a while before realising.
With adults he is very engaging and great with older kids. Certainly every now and then I have thought, I am deluding myself, does he have an autistic spectrum disorder, but I am really confident he does not. Am I reading into your post a subtext that you or the childcare centre are concerned about this aspect of things too? If so we need to call on the fabulous badmammajamma who is the queen of highly gifted plus quirks kids.
He struggled socially through primary school, he had one really close friend but hates groups and group activities and constantly complains that the other children are immature even though he is grade skipped a year.
This year he moved to a very small school, he is in grade 6 and has just turned 11, and he really enjoys being with the year 7 and 8 kids who are 2-3 years older than he is, and he is POPULAR for the very first time ever!
I have to say his academic performance is not as stellar as it was when he was younger, or perhaps the velocity of his improvement has slowed. He has always been an amazing reader but despised writing. His maths is brilliant but careless so he gets stuff wrong. I do not think he's going to be one of those kids that gets amazing school scores, but I hope he's able to find a field he loves and is happy in, as if he does, he will do brilliantly.

I love the idea of supporting second language acquisition. I am really happy with the primary school my DD attends and my DS used to attend (she is working 2 years above grade in class) but I am thinking of sending DD3 to a different bilingual school.

Can you tell me his month and year of birth and what state you are in? There's not much worrying to do at this stage but it would be great to be a bit careful in choosing his school. I didn't and my son had two disasterous early school experiences too tedious to go into. He was reading chapter books before starting school and the school didn't like it and couldn't deal with it!

[kh79]

Hi there,

There have been times where I have questioned an austic spectrum disorder but have had him checked by a paediatrician and spoken to the school and all have said he is incredibly engaging.

He is very engaging with adults and with children 5 and over. The childcare raised it as an issue for him rather than because they think of asd.

The reasons I have questioned this in the past is because his abilities are so far from the norm I have been searching for reasons.

He has a little thing that he has been doing since he was 18 months old. When he meets a new person he creates a little game or picks up on a word they say often and when we sees them again he will enage them by using his little 'in'' he has with them. It is incredibly complex thing to iniatiate at his age.

He is 2.5yrs old with a birthday at the end of nov and we are in tassie.

[mum850]

Right, so he will start at just over 5. I do not imagine early entry is a possibility. Cutoff in Tassie is I believe 5 by 1st Jan so he will be young for grade. Could be a lot worse!
My DD is just turned three and she will start at the same time.
She will be old for grade.

[tenar]

Hi there,

I think my daughter may be moderately gifted, but it's hard to be sure at her age. She isn't doing much that is spectacularly different to other kids her age, but she does many things well. She is very like me in many ways.

The clearest indicator that I've noticed suggests to me that she may be musically gifted. She is obsessed with music, could clap in time when she was 10 months old (this amazed me at the time), constantly requests music to be put on at home and tunes into it wherever we are, whenever she hears a tune or a beat. She recognises many different instruments and tunes (which I also find pretty amazing because I can remember learning as a young child to recognise the different orchestral instruments, I certainly wasn't a toddler when that happened) I'm trying to gently encourage her interest, but basically hoping that this turns out for her, as it is for me, to be a lifelong interest and a source of joy but not the focus of her life (I've known too many musicians - it's a seriously tough field to make a career in). Anyway, I'm not going to discourage her either.

Other than that, she is just starting (26 months) to be interested in learning to recognise written letters and numbers. She loves books and has memorised many of hers, but I don't think she's reading at all yet (unlike both her father and I at this age). She likes to count in both her languages, but only goes up to about 15 (not that this is a problem, obviously), she loves jigsaws and seems to me to have a talent for solving mathematical type problems, which she could easily have inherited from either or both of her parents.

DD has an easygoing nature and I don't think that she's going to be one of those gifted kids who is so far ahead of their peers that it causes major problems at school. That said, I really don't know yet. I am certainly already considering the question of where to send her to school and how to try to find a school that will be able to extend her and challenge her appropriately.

I am also torn between the idea of encouraging her to learn things she will also learn at school or whether I should focus much more on things she won't be able to learn at school. I think that in the end her own interests will dictate what we do these next couple of years, and we'll see how it goes. I'm certainly not going to discourage her from reading, writing, doing maths, etc. But since it's quite possible that she'll go to school old for her year group (it'll have to be old or very young - she's right at the cutoff), I'm a bit worried about how far she may be ahead by then.

Anyway, time will tell.

[kh79]

Tenar, your daughter sounds amazing! I am not very musical myself so am amazed to hear your daughter's skills at such a young age.

I agree with you that it can be hard to know what to encourage. Like with everything i am 'child' led. I think that is why DS is so far ahead in somethings and then some other 'normal' every day things he is average or behind. For example he wouldnt feed himself with a spoon until he was 2. Family members told me to push him harder on it. I dont like to push him at all so i didnt and he just decided one day that he wanted to and then did.

I would like to know from either of you if your children go through phases of interests quite intensely?

I am not sure if it is something all toddlers do but my DS will discover a passion for something and be obsessed with it for a certain length of time and then finds something else and moves onto that. It is not like he is unable to play or focus on anything else but its just his main love. For example he fell in love with the classic winnie the pooh stories about 2 months ago. For about a month he just wanted me to read it constantly. They are very long stories but his attention for them was limitless. Then a month later he still likes it but has moved onto a love for puzzles. Like I said he went from doing 20 piece puzzles to 200 piece puzzles within a few weeks. I suspect in a few weeks times he will find another passion. Has anyone had experiences of this?

Can someone tell me the difference between moderately gifted and highly gifted. I have seen these terms thrown around but dont really understand the differences.

[tenar]

kh79 I think it's normal for toddlers to have phases of intense interest in particular things. Certainly my DD does so. For example, she hasn't been interested in jigsaws much recently but the last couple of weeks she's been really into them, doing harder and harder ones (I'm changing them weekly at the toy library plus we have some of our own, but at the moment I honestly wish we had about 20 more of the things as she's getting bored of each one too fast). I expect this will last another few weeks, maybe, and then she'll be onto something else.

The fascination with a particular story is also completely normal, I think. I've spent months reading the same book over and over and over, up to several times a day, before she moves onto something new (a relief to me). I think toddlers gain a lot from repetition of stuff, whatever level it's at.

If you google you'll find some descriptions of moderately gifted, highly gifted, etc. My rough understanding is that moderately gifted kids tend to stand out in their class at school, might be the "one in a hundred", but they're not "one in a thousand" and they can often be catered to in a fairly normal school environment with good extension activities offered. This was the case for me (well, I had good extension through the gifted program at my high school, not so much in primary school, which was a problem). A highly gifted child, however, is more like one in a thousand or less and may be difficult to cater to in anything like the usual way when they are in school. So maybe these kids need to be working a grade or two (or more) ahead of their age group, or maybe they need more specialised attention than that.

I'm sure that you can get much better advice about that from the "G&T school age" thread. I don't know much about it.

I don't think that anyone can accurately assess the level of giftedness of a toddler, but I gather that highly gifted toddlers are the ones who are more likely to be doing stuff that is really off the charts, rather than a bit ahead of their peers.

My daughter, I think, is good at some stuff, but not off the charts at anything, which is why I think she's probably not highly gifted (and being honest with you, that's a relief). But I'm not going to make assumptions about her until she's much older and we know more about what she is like. Mostly I just want her to be interested, happy, challenged. What any mum wants for her child.

[BeezMum]

Hello I might join in this discussion too. Perhaps if there are sufficient numbers we can make it into a buddy group similar to the school years one?

I suspect that my DS is gifted. He doesn't have musical or jigsaw abilities nor astounding memory like kh79's son (wow at the world maps) but he has met all his milestones miles early (even non-intellectual ones like first teeth at 3 months and walking at 10 months) and has quite amazing language and mathematical skills. Like mum850 I didn't actually realise at the beginning that what he was doing was unusual as I have only one child and no one to compare against. He knew shapes and colours from 18 months (at 18 months I thought 'hmm' when he called a 50c coin an octagon and then asked me what it was actually called). Just before he turned 2, he knew every letter of the alphabet by sight (both name and phonetic sound, upper and lower cases), could count to 20, and was starting to spell out words. I thought it was some kind of memory thing until he started spelling out street signs for pizza and milk bars.

Now at 2y3m he is a joy. Tiring, absolutely (no day nap since he was 2 and he still doesn't sleep all night) - the constant questioning drives me batty. But every morning I wake up and I can't wait to see what he is going to say next. Tonight he was packing away some things in some shoe boxes and he told me that the boxes were 'red' and 'black'. They were both blue so I was puzzled, until I saw that the colour of the shoes were printed on the boxes.

kh79 DS also goes through stages of 'obsession'. Sometimes it is with a particular book and other times it is with a particular task. At the moment it is the process of sharpening pencils.

Fortunately DS is a real 'boy' and I try to focus his activities more on climbing and throwing balls etc and less on the computer (he has his own login on my computer and can load up his favourite website by himself for the last few months).

Sometimes I'm quite scared of what the next few years might bring. And the whole schooling issue too. It is so early to be thinking of these things but if you have a toddler who reads then what will they do when they go to school? And DS is born right at the cusp of the school cut off, so he is already going to be the youngest in his class (and I know a lot of people recommend holding boys back for another year!)

Looking forward to chatting with you all.