Looking back, at what age did you know your child was bright?

[saladodger]

Just curious about whether a bright child is 'obvious' at a young age- was your early talker a bright child or did you have a late bloomer? Did you recognise it yourself or was it picked up at school?

By todays standards, Einstein would have been put into a lower stream at school because he had speech development problems and was not considered numerate.

IMHO, most children labelled G&T are not, they are just bright. How and when this manifest itself will vary from child to child.

I recently found a letter written when dd was 2, saying that all her friends seem to be speaking better than her, and all seem very advanced compared to her

Yet what I now remember is dd at 2 being this incredibly verbal child who had a very good understanding of things like the future and the past.

Clearly thinking of different stages of being 2. She must have started being bright sometime after I wrote that letter.

My db did not show any precocious signs until he was at secondary school age- but as an adult he is clearly very gifted.

My Dd1 is still only 5, so may turn out to be distinctly average yet, but she always did things early - crawling, talking etc etc with the exception of walking (That was fully walking by 13 months, very average I think).

I noticed however, when DD1 was 2 years 9 months, I was having a scan for my second baby and DD1 sat down and picked up a book about clocks. She looked at the book and said 'one o'clock', turned the page and said 'two o'clock' and so on! I never knew she could tell the time (to the nearest hour). We tested her out with a clock and sure enough no matter what time we turned it to, she could tell the hour. I checked that my mum hadn't taught her, or the nursery - and no, she just seemed to have learnt it (although she did have an obsession with clocks mind!). She's five now and in reception, and is now 'learning' it all again in class, despite the fact that she has been telling the time for about a year though.

I don't know if she is G&T though, I know she gets pulled out of class for extension reading and at parents' evening, the teachers said she was "very bright" but I have no idea how she compares to other children because she is the eldest and so I've not got anyone else to compare her with (I could speak to mums in real life in case it looked like boasting - on here, I'm anonymous!)

Sorry - couldn't

Aged 11 when the school wrote home to say CAT's results put her in the top 5% nationally. I knew she was coming on in leaps and bounds and had a very mature outlook on life beyond her years but hadn't realised how she compared to her peers.

She is still doing well and I am hoping she will go to uni.

got an inkling when she never slept, seemed to be looking at everything form the pushchair. like she was to busy to sleep!! When she was about 12-14 months she was playing with some shapes, one of which was a heart. She looked up at me and started pointing to her chest/heart!!!

freaked me out i can tell you.
She is on g+T list at school for reading. Yet to me she has alot more going on that makes her seem very knowing and bright. Wise beyond and all that.

My 2 both go to grammar school and I think it was when they got in that I thought they might be fairly clever. I never really believed the reports at primary school because they seemed to be very positive about all the children (quite rightly so).

My eldest is bright, but not brilliant - she has to work hard to get good results.

The younger one does no work/revision, and does exceptionally well at everything. I realised that she must be very bright when she was top of the class at grammar school, which is no mean feat as there are some very geeky kids there (and many who are tutored from cradle to university).

She also seems to be a dab hand at everything she tries - music, maths, dancing, swimming, drama - she is a bit of a jack of all trades which has made choosing a hobby quite difficult.

As for sleeping as a baby - she would have slept round the clock if I had let her!

I feel slightly bothered by this thread and others - don't think it helps dcs to be diagnosed as g or t, and there's evidence it does harm. Just let your dcs do their thing/s. Plenty of time later.

That said, I actually thought ds might be erm challenged. He couldn't write very clealry even at 4. But he could zoom through very long books... Turns out he's exceptional... but in a way all children are outstanding.

But this thread isn't about children being diagnosed as G&T Abby. It's simply when did you know they were bright. I have very little interest in dd being "diagnosed" or formally labelled bright or G&T or anything of that description. But for me as her mum it was useful to have noticed that she was bright as you naturally gauge the level of conversation to the level of the child. Dd and I have had some very good conversations over the years that I couldn't have had if I hadn't known that she was up to it. Also it helped in buying books for her birthday.

If my parents hadn't suspected I was bright, they might not have bothered teaching me dead languages at home in the evening and then I would have missed out. If they hadn't known that my brother was musical he wouldn't have had his violin lessons with the maestro. I think it is a shame that my niece was never encouraged to do anything with her very obvious artistic talent.

To me, it's about letting a child do their own thing. And recognising that "their own thing" might not be the same for every child. For me, it was discussing Roman poets with my Dad. For my brother, it was playing duets.

sorry, my grammar came out all mixed; that's the problem with word processing, you move things round and forget about them. What I meant to say was: 'you naturally gauge your child's level and adapt the conversation'.

when the various professionals involved with his developmental problems told me he was. shame that the receptive language delay holds back his learning though.

Wow, herbietea.

My kids are bright in school, they can be decided dunces in other realms. I had friends tell me they thought they were bright as preschoolers, but I didn't see it for myself until I realised that they were in the top ability groups within their classes, Y3 for DS1, Y1 for DD, reception for DS2.

I knew my DS was bright when at three and a half he knew all the organs of the body and how they functioned!! You know you have a child with a very high IQ because they come out with things that are so incredibly smart it feels a bit spooky!

My dd was a FREAKISHLY early talker - and I mean freakishly. I thought she was very bright,and so did others because she could express what she was thinking so clearly. But she is now on the bright side of average. Ds was an earlyish talker, but not particularly so, and is very bright, but the very brightness didn't start to emerge until he could read, which wasn't til he was 6ish. he showed no interest in learning to read, then all of a sudden decided he wanted to and learned almost instantly. He then shot ahead in most areas and is still doing so. So it can be hard to tell!

6 weeks.
Bizarre but true...
playing purposefully with activity board, dinging the bell etc.
Talked very early too
Walked early
In fact all his life been early for everything.

you knew your child was bright at 6 weeks because he was playing purposefully with an activity board?

how hilarious.

When at about 3, ds dropped something and a stranger said "don't worry it was just an accident" and ds looked at him and said "no - it was gravity".

Actually I don't know how bright he is, I think he is clever but not brilliant. He complains (at 5) that school is too easy - and that the numbers and spellings he is given are boring. He wants to do much harder things (eg he would prefer to do 352 + 497 because he simply finds the numbers more interesting than 7 + 9). I don't really know what to do about this as I don't want him to have extra work or be labelled G&T, but I don't want him to be bored either.

DD was an early talker and as we had a friend with a dd one month older it was pretty clear that our dd's speech was way ahead of hers. However, I had no idea how dd would compare iwth the general run of kids until she went to nursery, when the staff were constantly on about how bright she was and how her speech was fantastic etc. She is in the top groups in her class for all subjects, but is the youngest (August baby). I assume therefore that she is bright, though afaik she is not on the G&T register (but that might be because we are persona non grata with the Head ) and simply haven't been told. Her teacher last year said she was gifted, so hey.

I've always thought my DCs were a bit dim to be brutally honest. Always a disconnect between actions and consequences with DD (leaps first, oops after). DS lazy beyond belief, will not pick up a book ever.

The school seems to think they are both very bright though.

So it wasn't obvious to me at all.

my ds would copy people coughing at around 5 months and we would say o dear have you got a cough and he would cough again. At 10 months he knew animal sounds and would point to all the major colours. and at 3.8 started to sound out the first letter of word and then tries to find other words beginning with same letter