Support for advanced toddler?

[TwoGirlsAndOneDog]

My daughter (2 years, 9 months) appears to be very advanced in her language development. She has also shown signs since she was a baby of other potential indicators of being “gifted”. I don’t particularly like the term but am aware that advanced children can get bored, frustrated etc and we obviously want to do the best for her. She is at nursery atm and is able to join in with older children (up to 4 years). Is there anything more we should be doing at her age to help her? Or just let her be and work with her teachers once she gets to primary school? A quick google search suggests that there is quite a lot of support in the US but less so in the UK? Thanks very much!

DD1 (now 4 years old) was similar. Our approach was just to meet her where she was at, but also to treat all her interests as equally important and encouraged, from reading stories to going to the park to playing with numbers to playing 'mums and dads' – because they are all equally valuable activities for a small child. If she was interested in something, we tried to help her learn about it or make sure she had the toys/books/craft materials to let her continue developing her skills/interests with it. I guess the other thing is that I try to keep an eye that her development is relatively balanced, that she's not, say, falling behind in gross motor skills because she's so focused on talking and social interaction or whatever. Thus far that hasn't actually been a problem, though.

A lot of the activities nursery offer should be sufficiently flexible and open-ended that children can enjoy them across different levels of development, but it will help if they are willing to support her playing with the older children when practical (ours mix ages in the garden, and DD1's primary playmates were generally 12-18 months older, although she's had to adapt now that they've started P1). They also supported with specific resources where necessary (jigsaw puzzles are not much fun if they are too easy, so they brought harder ones in for her from the older rooms, for example), and will run with it or extend topics when DD wants to take something further. She's always been happy to dive into a wide range of topics, so I don't think they've done too many activities specifically following her interests, but a good nursery should do some of that as required as well.

All sounds super sensible - thank you!

I agree with @skkyelark . I had two very articulate girls who were bright, but not super out of this world gifted. Being articulate was good because they could express what they wanted and didn't have that frustration in the way children who are less verbal can do, even if dd2 used to give me a lecture why she needed chocolate at every meal from 18 months onwards, and then was frustrated because I still didn't give it her. 🤣

The thing was to let them do what they wanted and enjoy. They learn through that, and when they're bright they can work out their own things to do, so don't tend to become bored. With dd1 that was fantastic, with dd2, well, she found things to do you wouldn't have either expected or wanted...

What I would watch is the social side if they're not with their own age. I know it seems good that they're playing with older ones, but what can happen is the older ones make allowances for them that their own peers won't, and it actually hinders their social development. It can be a sign of social immaturity rather than the opposite. I saw this with one of mine especially.