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Did you know that giftedness can be seen in babies and toddlers? Well, it can! Some gifted children are formally identified at ages 3 or 4 years old. Giftedness doesn’t just magically start at one particular grade or age. Unfortunately, some schools think so and do not start gifted services until 3rd grade, 6th grade or some other arbitrary grade. Only a few school districts in the US actually identify giftedness in the preschool years and start services then. Secondly, giftedness is often not in all areas. Sadly, some schools still only provide gifted services to those who have scores in all areas. Worse yet, some schools only provide gifted services one day a week as if the child’s giftedness is only on one day. In addition, giftedness doesn’t just end at a particular grade either. Sadly, some schools stop gifted services after middle school and only service high school students through AP or honors courses. Despite school districts’ attitude or policy, giftedness stays with the child into their teenage years and into adulthood and is a daily issue. Giftedness is there from birth through adulthood.
So how does one know if their baby, toddler, preschooler, or school age child is gifted? Well, I can tell you first hand, we missed some early signs. I even blogged about it before here. However, we had urging from our son’s private preschools to seek testing. We finally sought formal testing at age 4. During the 2 years in public school, we were repeatedly told the following: public schools can’t meet his needs, grade skip, double grade skip, acceleration is not going to be enough, homeschool or grade skip, gifted services are only pull-out once a week, and you need to find gifted support groups and programs. Thankfully, our school’s gifted coordinator got us in contact with the Texas Parents of Profoundly Gifted and the Davidson Young Scholars organizations. Now, we are on an amazing homeschooling adventure where we meet our son’s educational needs at the appropriate grade level for him (currently 7th grade and above).
In order to fully understand giftedness or recognize early signs of giftedness, one needs to first understand what is considered “normal” or “typical” developmental milestones. The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA) has a great chart of “Social Communication Benchmarks” from birth to adult. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) has an “Articulation Development Chart” covering sounds children should be able to make between 1 and 8 years old. First Years has a “Developmental Milestones” chart covering hearing, speech, language, and cognition between birth and 8 years old. The Metropolitan Community College (MCNEB) has a “Developmental Milestones for Children” chart covering physical, fine motor, language, mental, and social development between birth and 16 years of age.
Once you understand what is considered “normal” or “typical” development, it becomes easier to identify a gifted baby, toddler, or child as they will be hitting the developmental milestones faster or sooner. In addition, many gifted children are asynchronous which means they might hit some milestones extremely quick, other milestones will be at what is considered developmentally appropriate timelines, and even other milestones might be slow or delayed.
Here are some early signs of giftedness:
- Meeting developmental milestones early
- Unusual curiosity
- Asking lot of questions
- Interest in language (often, early talking & reading)
- Interest in numbers (often, early counting & number correspondence)
- Sits through longer books being read to them
- Sorting things
- Doing puzzles (quickly or high number of pieces)
- Excellent memory
- Intense focus (longer attention span than others)
Another factor in helping to identify a gifted child at any age is to understand the levels of giftedness. Most people do not understand that there is in fact a spectrum to giftedness ranging from mild or moderately gifted to highly gifted to exceptionally gifted to profoundly gifted. Some specialists break it down into 5 levels of giftedness. Ruf’s Estimates of Levels of Giftedness created by Dr. Ruf explains the 5 levels of giftedness. For a fee you can purchase her online assessment to help more accurately determine the level your child is at.
For articles on early signs of giftedness, try these:
- “Early Signs of Giftedness” by Dr. Silverman
- “Distinguishing Levels of Giftedness: What Does it Mean for our Practice?” by Angela Chessman
- GHF’s blog hop on “Gifted at Different Ages & Stages”
- “Tips for Parents: How Level of Giftedness, Gender, and Personality Affect School Behavior and Learning” from the Davidson Institute
- “Early Signs of Giftedness” by Dr. Sandhu
- “Gifted and Talented Children” from the Women’s and Children’s Health Network
- “Is Your Child Gifted” by Dr. Palmer
- “Recognizing Giftedness in Young Children” by Dr. Rogers & Dr. Silverman
- “Signs of Giftedness in Early Childhood” by Sue Breen
Here are some books for helping parents raise gifted children:
- Gifted Children: A Guide for Parents and Professionals by Kate Distin
- Guiding the Gifted Child: A Practical Source for Parents and Teachers by James Webb
- Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope With Explosive Feelings by Christine Fonseca
- A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children by Nicholas Colangelo
- Parenting Gifted Kids: Tips for Raising Happy and Successful Children by James R. Delisle
- Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, Ocd, Asperger’s, Depression and Other Disorders by James T. Webb
- Living with Intensity by Susan Daniels
- Young, Gifted, and Bored by David George
- Gifted and Talented Children 4-11: Understanding and Supporting Their Development by Christine Macintyre
Remember, whether a child is gifted or not, what they most need is to feel loved and secure! And, all children need stimulation. Our brains are built to love novelty and have interesting experiences. Most importantly, all children need to be read to and allowed to free play. Gifted or not, love your child for who they are!
Acknowledgments and Credits
This blog article is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page Blog Hop on Ages and Stages of Giftedness. I thank my friends at Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page and elsewhere for their inspiration, support, and suggestions.
Please click on the graphic below (created by Pamela S Ryan–thanks!) to see the titles, blog names, and links of other Hoagies’ Blog Hop participants, or cut and paste this URL into your browser: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/blog_hop_ages_and_stages.htm
Lisa said:
This is a good list of resources for parents and others.
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babyhclimber said:
Thank you!
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Gail Post, Ph.D. said:
Great points and wonderful list of resources. Parents often have difficulty assessing whether their child is gifted because what they are used to seems normal. It is usually not until their child gets into school that they see that their child is ahead of his or her peers. Getting identified early offers a chance for the schools to set up gifted services as soon as possible – and for parents to start their road to advocacy early!
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babyhclimber said:
Exactly. We missed things with our son because we thought it was normal but we had no other children to compare him to and when I was in the schools I had worked with special education & ECI. So I knew he wasn’t delayed. And, of course in our area there was no early services for gifted. But, if I had known more earlier I might have pursued homeschooling earlier or sought out the online group and programs that we use now. Definitely think more parents need to know about early giftedness or at least have a better understanding of what typical milestones are. Of course getting schools to offer services is important too!
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Christina George said:
Thank you!!! I still struggle with “is my child really gifted” so I have high hopes of setting my mind at rest with the info and resources you provided. Also, I have been searching frantically for a parenting book that will work with MY child, so this resource list is a god-send.
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babyhclimber said:
Good luck! For us getting formal testing really helped and opened our eyes to how gifted. But honestly, if I had known some of this earlier it would have made a difference in his preschool and early elementary years. And remember that some kids are also gifted along with a special education disability (dyslexia, LD, etc.)–its call 2E. Hoagies’ blog hop this month is loaded with other bloggers discussing early giftedness and the Hoagies’ site has all kinds of resources too.
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Wenda Sheard said:
Your title asks, “At What Age Does Giftedness Begin?” I have a hunch that a large portion of giftedness begins at conception. Here’s some food-for-thought links for you and your readers:
International Journal of Pediatrics, Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 420297, doi:10.1155/2011/420297Review ArticleDevelopmental and Cognitive Characteristics of “High-Level Potentialities” (Highly Gifted) Children Laurence Vaivre-Douret1,2,3http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijped/2011/420297/
Molfese, D. L., & Molfese, V. J. (1997). Discrimination of language skills at five years of age using event-related potentials recorded at birth. Developmental Neuropsychology, 13(2): 135-156 .
For more information, stay tuned for research results of the new Gifted Research and Outreach (GRO) nonprofit organization, http://www.gro-gifted.org/ Disclaimer: I’ve been helping that organization publicize itself, as you’ll see on its homepage and in my recent blog article on GRO.
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babyhclimber said:
Looking forward to more research on giftedness! And there definitely is a need for more outreach and explanations so they can get the services they need. As my blog points out, giftedness is there from birth and through adulthood. I have a huge issue with schools that want to say it’s only at a certain age or grade and services are for only a certain period of grades. We know with our own child, he was flying through developmental milestones, but we missed the identification of gifted until he was 4 and there were no services from the public school until half way through kindergarten. And, those services weren’t much. What parents of gifted children need to learn as that they are the advocates for their child and they need to start advocating at a very young age.
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James Findlayson said:
My wife and I have never cared about giftedness but simply focussed on giving our son a normal existence as being nothing unusual. As a result, thankfully, he’s now not in the least cringe-makingly precocious or narcissistic, but really popular and really gets on well with his peers.
That said, I think giftedness is pretty easy to spot without any expert intervention. Like when a two year old asks, ‘What does “debet” mean?’. You ask why, and they point to a poster saying, ‘Too much debt getting you down?’: because they’ve taught themselves to read…
But so what? They’re a person first and foremost, and it’s our job helping them to manage that and so not come across as believing they’re special, nor a freak, but just a person, just like everyone else, isn’t it? I think the best ‘gift’ the gifted can be given is a healthy socialisation.
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