normal development compared to gifted/talented

[moomin86]

Hi there

I just wanted to ask what is normal or average development for a 16 month old and what are the signs that they may need to be challenged more as they get older or that they may be more advanced or gifted?

Ive found it hard discussing my daughter with people as I don't want people to feel I am boasting but I am unsure if I should be thinking about development and how we can support her as she gets older or if this is normal behaviour that will even out, or is it to early to tell?

When is the appropriate time to ask for help? as I feel she is completely different from her peers. I feel like I can't keep up with her but if I try and speak to friends I find the response negative and people become very defensive. I feel like a fish out of water and am concerned about getting her into an environment that will understand her needs. Her nursery have moved her up to try and challenge her more and I know she is no where near school age but I did not think she would be doing the things she is at this age but am unsure if my expectations are wrong as Ive never had a child before

Thanks in advance

Nothing to add except ooh newrule your dd sounds like Matilda!

Newrule, I think the confusion lies in what people class as teaching: reading to a child from a book, TV programmes with reading and counting, counting things out for a child as part of every day life, some people count such things as teaching a child, others as the child having taught themselves.
My dd taught herself a foreign language when she was just one year old. It was English, but that is foreign to someone from France.

My DS had an unusually good memory from a very early age. I was absolutely stunned when I realised that he reciting back whole passages from his favourite non fiction digger book when he was around 18 months. I could barely understand what he was saying. He memorised a phonics video almost instantaneously. He's 14 now and still has a good memory and he is still very clever but it's an unusual cleverness that doesn't always fit with the school system. His dyslexia has also caused problems.

Madwoman- I completely believe you as ds1 practically taught himself too. He always had stories at bedtime and once he finally started talking would point to words and ask what they were occasionally but we never sat down and did phonics or taught him to read yet by the time he was 3 he knew and could spell words dug as microscope etc. I remember my friend being astounded when he read that word out loud

What if you buy your child many books but he has one particular favourite and it just happens to be an early readers story. (Chicken licked - ladybird books). So, he asks you to read it often.
Then you find that he has memorised it and then he sits going through it himself turning the pages at the right time. Then he shows you that he's worked out which word is which.
At the same time you have a Pooh bear DVDs "now I know my abc" and he watches it sometimes.
Is that teaching your child to read?

I would not class it as the child teaching themselves to read. If a child were born to illiterate parents who bought lots of books, but left them on a reachable shelf and from them the child worked out the code for reading, I would class that as the child teaching themselves to read. All else is input, and we are simply debating what degree of input still constitutes being able to claim a child managed to learn to read all by themselves.

That's ok with me! Otherwise I would not be able to pat myself on the back that I taught Ds to read in 6 weeks.

How old was he when you started reading books to him? I must admit that a child reading six weeks after someone first reads him a book is quite impressive, particularly if under school age. Even so I don't think he would have started reading without this input, so he obviously has a good aptitude for learning.

Well I'd consider that I taught my ds to read if we'd shared books and I'd pointed out letters and words to him and he acquired the skill from my input. But ds was non verbal, obviously I tried reading to him but rarely he sat beside me or showed any interest in what I was reading. He didn't point until after he could read, he didn't share anything until he was eight.
His books of interest at 3 were my chick lit novels. I thought he was flicking through pages as one of his autistic behaviours in hindsight he was reading.He had no interest in pictures or stories his interest was in pages of text.
I discovered he could read when he used his magnetic letters to spell words because he didn't properly speak until he was seven.
The ed psych established he had hyperlexia at four not by getting him to read aloud because he couldn't speak but by getting him to identify increasingly challenging words.
Ds definitely taught himself to read.

Really I was reading to him since birth. The first book was just black and white pictures that someone gave me when they came to see the baby when we came out of hospital. However there would have been bedtime books and buggy books very soon afterwards.
I thought everyone did that?

Var, it was the same here, and I don't ever consider that we taught DD to read, we just read to her, a lot, and she worked out the rest for herself (including reverse engineering the phonics rules).

So yes in some way we did teach her, but it's a very different order of input from the intensive phonics teaching in schools. Most children won't learn to read just from being read to, a few will.

And it wasn't just our area of focus either, I would take DD out into the garden when she was about 2.5, and be chatting to her and doing the gardening, and then I'd turn round and she'd gone back in to the books inside. She made a lot of choices about what she was interested in.

Yes, most do now. It is not everyone though who, having done this, then claim their child taught themselves to read.

Sorry, cross posted

I think I taught DS to read. It definitely wasn't the school because he was free reading Horrid Henry long before he ever set foot in school. It wasn't nursery either, definitely not.

So, either I taught him, curled up together on the sofa, or he taught himself. I think it was me, but it was incredibly easy as a result of what he's done by himself.

I am not sure that it matters either way. I was just trying to understand a real life situation tested against zzzz's definition using the bike analogy.

Var, I am not saying children do not vary greatly in their aptitude for learning. It is just that as probabilities go, a child learning to read all by themselves at 2 years old seems vanishingly small and is more likely a sign that parents are either forgetting or not counting some input from somewhere.

JustRichmal - I can agree with that!

(Just for the record, in DS's case he was more like 4 for what I was describing. I wasn't trying to say i had a reading toddler).

This was the first book, if anyone is interested. I haven't thought about this book for years but this thread made me remember it.

www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Book-Beautiful-Babies-Board/dp/0525465464

Its an excellent gift if you don't fancy adding to a new born's stuffed toy collection!

Children don't learn to read in a vacuum. My DD suddenly started reading at 3 - apparently spontaneously - but she was in a mixed age french preschool class with children aged up to 6 who were being taught phonics. She didn't "teach herself to read", but her ability enabled her to get more out of the limited instruction she'd received.

You can teach most bright kids to read early if they are capable of sitting still and applying themselves and they have a good memory. My DS, who is very able but not gifted in this area, had a good grasp of basic phonics at 3. He was interested and I taught him. No shame in that. However, there is a huge difference between reading simple phonetically-spelt words at 3 (what DS was doing) to reading fluently in two languages (what his sister was doing). The difference in underlying ability in this area is still very, very apparent now and they are 12 and 14!

The bike analogy above doesn't work either. Give a 2 year old a balance bike and there's a good chance that s/he will be riding a proper bike without stabilisers at 3, with no parental input at all other than making the balance bike available. Reading is a much more complex task though and all but the most gifted require explicit instruction.

Reading is a complex task. You might pick it up quickly but everyone needs a few clues. Its a shame really, or the babies who teach themselves to read could maybe translate some hieroglyphics for us!

In ds's case it was a symptom of his obsession with letters and numbers. Reading was just an extension on his ability to spot patterns and memorise. He's not gifted at all just autistic.

DS (5yo) started to teach himself to read at about 12 months. He became obsessed with letters and those electronic toys that say the letter or the phonic when you press the button drove me round the twist he moved on to numbers very rapidly and would watch Cbeebie shows like numtums and alphablocks obsessively if we let him. By the age of two he was recognising simple words, by three he was counting backwards from a hundred in threes just to entertain himself. He simply loves everything to do with letters, words and numbers and has practised obsessively (his favourite game is hangman and he never spells a word incorrectly). He is a free reader in that he can and will read everything, including legal documents (even though he doesn't understand them he still reads them).

I am dyslexic and still read very badly and I have taken to asking him how to spell words that I am stuck on. I haven't taught him to read but then again he doesn't live in a bubble, he has asked endless questions that I and DH always try to answer. We have been reading to him since he was born and he is surrounded by books and words (I was a student when he was a baby and constantly studying myself).

I often wonder if his talents are down to his constant and dedicated practice or if it is just that he is brighter than others. Is it because he has an excellent memory and gets praise for learning or is it because he naturally loves to learn and has a huge curiosity? I see it as a positive feedback loop - he likes it, he is good at it, it gets him attention and so it goes on.

He is turning his attention to music now and none of the rest of us are musical so this should be interesting!