Is my 1yr old a genius?

[Thatsmoneyhoney]

Hi all.

I was just wondering if my son is gifted or if I am just extremely biased 🤣 of course everyone thinks their child is amazing!
But...
Please can you let me know your opinions if you think my son is very smart for his age.
He has just turned 22 months so almost 2.
He knows most shapes and colours. All the letters in the alphabet. Even ones at random. He won't just sing the alphabet. He is able to say each letter in the words when we read books or out on walks he'll stop and look at road signs and pick out all the letters.
He can also count to 20. For instance if he has some blueberries. He'll move them and count 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 all the way up to 20. And he also recognises numbers. So if a road sign says 30mph.. he'll shout THREE ZERO!!
He also recognises his name in letters and will shout out his name if he sees it on his lunch box or something.
Is my boy a genius??

I have 3 children but my first was a verynkate talker. He didn't talk until 3 and our 2nd child has a disability so I don't know if my 3rd son is just average for his age....

Both Ds1 and Ds2 were starting to read at age 2. DS1 is very bright and got straight A stars at A level, could get a First at university (if socialising doesn't win out..). DS2 will probably get ABB so a bright child but not a genius but he started reading slightly earlier than DS1.

Both walking at 10 months and reading at 2 but if we hadn't exposed them to letters and numbers and taught them to blend then they obviously wouldn't have been.

That sounds really good but they all end up about the same once they start school

This is a very god point.
I was that very advanced child I could read and write before starting school by looking at what older siblings were doing. This was encouraged at home and I wish it wasn't.

I wad really really bored during primary as I was always ahead of the class. Im secondary i didnt have a clue about how to study or having any type of stydying rutine and didn't pay attention during class and didn't work towards my potential (very unfortunately).
I did my university degree afterwards but I should have done much better than I did academically. I wasted a lot of time deadreaming and cramming the day before the exams.

It's better not to be start ahead of your peers, I didn't teach my kids to read or write before starting because I want to avoid the lack of interest I experienced.
So far so good they are working hard at school, that's what you want.

My BF says that when her DS started school with mine she was a bit freaked out because DS was already fairly good at reading. Her DS didn't take to it at all and wasn't at the stage my DS was when starting reception at until year 2.

Her DS is now at Cambridge.. (my DS isn't!)

Hyperlexic doesn't automatically indicate any kind of ASD though, just to be clear. I was fully able to read by 2 and have no ASD diagnosis. I'm intelligent and have remained extremely good with languages in general but I'm no genius!

He sounds a bright boy, nurture his abilities. Maybe he will be gifted, maybe not.
Just keep teaching him things and he will find his own way.

My youngest daughter hit a lot of mile stones early - walked at 9 months, potty trained at 19 months - with very little input from me. She could read 23 words from flash cards at her18 months assessment ( much to Health Visitors amazement). She did, however, seem to plateau when she went to school.
I did wonder if it was school that caused the plateau but she was a very happy child and loved hanging out with friends and I thought this was more important to her all round development than hot housing her academically.
She is now 27 and has above average academic qualifications and a good job, however, I would not class her as a genius.
Her father ( my ex) was also a very early reader and he is certainly not a genius . . .

He’s obviously a damn sight nearer 2 than 1. He’s a toddler, not a baby.

He sounds very bright! My DD was nowhere near doing stuff like this at that age. As a matter of fact she had to go to special classes to get her up to grade level as she struggled in her lower grades . However she worked extremely hard as she’s not naturally bright and graduated in the top 5 of her class☺️

@girlswillbegirls what you’re describing is the inability of the system to adjust to the real ability of children. It’s not because your parents taught you to read before you started school that you were bored. You’d have been bored even if you hadn’t done that! (IF you indeed had abilities over other children).

dc1 was and still is very able.
He was able to make reasoning way beyong his years without me teaching him how to think iyswim. He was bored yes. Because he didn’t need the 20 steps others go through to learn.
I didn’t teach him to read and he still was way ahead. We did the normal counting to 10 or 20 at home. He was able to do columns additions when others were still struggling to add single digit numbers. And no we didn’t teach him either. He learnt complex stuff from kids programs, books we and he read at home. Thank you
Did he do well at school/Alevels? He did but not massively. In his own words, he could have done much much better if he had made just the tiniest effort. Is he doing well at Uni? Yep he is. With minimal effort still.

But there is no way ‘not teaching him at home’ would have helped with him nit getting bored.

So you don't get the free tickets for u-2s then if you have a 22 month old, then? Because they're 2?

OP, he sounds very switched on and sparky and it's great that you're encouraging him so much. It's a little early to know how he will compare to his peers so just keep doing everything you're doing and enjoy him.

He is one. He can’t be any nearer to his own age. I will be 39 tomorrow but today I’m 38 and will be all day

Op - he does sound bright. My little boy was big into symbols (car ones) and shapes and also knew all of his letters. This was at age 2. However, it took him until he was about 6 before he could blend the sounds and actually read even though he knew all the letter sounds and names early.

Much closer to Two though.
My Friend teaches, and says early reading isn’t a sign of genius- It tends to level out at school.

He’s probably been taught by you which of course makes a massive difference.
Our mum taught us very early on how to read ( Teacher) and although we had advanced reading ages we were hardly Genii😂

How can he be closer to 2 than 1 when he is currently 1. This mindset is baffling me 😂

I agree that developing social skills and relating to their peers is equally important, if not more important, than what they can do academically at early primary level. For most people, while they may need a certain level of academic achievement to get into certain fields, it's so-called 'soft skills' and how well they relate to others which then determine how well they do within those fields. And it starts with building up confidence in interacting with other children at school/nursery and in the playground.

You refused to let your kid read?

I was similar when I was a kid and I taught myself because my parents got angry with me asking what things said all the time and I got impatient. The only difference it made in school was that I read higher level books from the basic reading tree ones. There were too many books in school for me to ever get bored of reading them; in fact I wasn't happy that they made me skip over so many levels because I missed out on some of the really fun stories.

Never, ever stop your kids from reading.

Genius/gifted… hard to say. But definitely very bright and in the top few developmentally for his age group. The numberblocks toys are great for his interests! I have a 22 month of ds too, he says and does absolutely nothing, just learnt to walk, squeaks when he wants something

I was reading fluently at two and was reading at an adult level by the time I started primary school.

I don't have ASD. Some kids are just very good with reading and language. And they certainly don't all plateau at school, either. I didn't.

I certainly don't think I'm a genius (I was barely above average at maths, for a start and my ability to solve spatial/mechanical problems is practically non-existent) but I remained way ahead of everyone else in English, foreign languages and essay-based subjects for my entire time at school, and I got a 1st in English at university and found it a breeze.

Medicalising being good at something with words like 'hyperlexia' isn't always helpful.

Hard to know but I'd say perhaps not in gifted category but certainly sounds more advanced for his age than typical nearly 2yo. At similar age my son was similar - perhaps less random recognition without prompting than yours but could count to 20, vocab quote rapidly grew, and was more verbal than peers. Fast forwarding to 5 id say my son is quite varied depending on the area if development but is generally more advanced (not to extent of gifted) at reading and comprehension, continues to have wider vocab than his peers and has near photographic memory. But then on other hand across his whole subjects he probably falls somewhere a little more academic than average but not staggeringly so. Hard to say at that age as they often excel in one area and not others but by ore school years it becomes more clear

Sorry OP, mine was like that too. I almost didn’t have to teach him anything.

Anyway, they’re not better, just earlier than other kids. They’ll all be twatting about in the playground soon enough and no one will remember that your kid could identify isosceles triangles at 2.

He's pretty smart. DD1 as like this, as I was, and I could read when I was three. I wouldn't say either of us are geniuses but we both did well academically, DD1 went to a top super-selective grammar, and we are both very good with anything to do with words and learning languages.

We had one like that in maths and he's still unusually good at it halfway through primary..I think it can go both ways but fingers crossed for a happy smart cookie 🍪 🤞

I'm surprised by all the posters saying it evens out – of my knowledge all the kids who were smart as toddlers were equally smart as adults

He's definitely advanced and you've clearly spent a lot of time with him teaching him letters and numbers. It's hard to tell at this age if he's an actual genius as all kids this age are little sponges the difference is your son is advanced in his speech. Keep doing what your doing as you are giving him a great start ready for nursery and school.

🤣🤣🤣