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....

I think your son sounds very bright. Enjoy him and encourage him but I wouldn't stress about him being gifted yet. Some kids develop before others and it can all even out. My Ds was like yours, he is 17 now and still very bright, I wouldn't say gifted but he is really great with languages, fluent in 3 and learning another 2. He always comes out at the very top in CAT tests/percentile rankings etc.

I don't agree with this I know many children who started of advanced then got to secondary and got interested in boys/girls, hanging out with friends, games consoles, sports, drugs/alcohol and just lost all interest in school which meant the kids who did still care took over.

Yes, I agree with you. I am in my 40s so this was a long time ago. Your son is a lot younger so I'm sorry to hear its still the same.
I remember the feeling that everything was explained in a very slow motion in the class and was terribly bored. So I got used to disconnect and became bad habit and that is difficult to get rid of. Teachers would say I should be getting all As if I made I bit of an effort. Your son also feels that if only he made an effort he could have achieved a lot more, I feel that too.
I agree maybe whatever your parents do it wouldn't make a big difference and is the system that needs to adapt to different children.
I hope your son is not frustrated. I carry this frustration for life. I have a good job but still feel I wished I achieved my potential.
I hope your son will end up in a field if work that is fullfilling for him. To me it was great to have a career in a foreign country. I had to work hard for a couple of years to learn English so that was my achivement!

I do think effort is way more important than intelligence or hability!!

Clearly bright but a lot of that is just by you clearly doing lots with him and him learning it. My DS can do most of that because I’ve done it with him mainly through play (EYFS teacher) and I don’t think he’s a genius - just that I’ve actually taught him it and he’s picked it up ☺️ keep going though! It’s lovely for them to have a little head start! Makes life so much easier for them starting school.
You haven’t mentioned how his fine motor skills are - what’s he like with playdough, scissors and pencil control? All great things to work on next, ready for writing.

I think he is advanced for his age op but it might not mean anything long term. My ds seemed very behind but is the brightest of my dc, my youngest was brilliant with numbers and letters at an early age and she actually has a learning disability. There is no way of knowing how smart he is but it sounds like he is bright and enjoying learning new things which is a great start.

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

A year is quite a long time (especially for children). 😂 Which is probably why we often describe age in months until a child is 3 or so.

’My child is 1’ can mean my child is 365 days old or my child is 728 days old, and there will be a huge difference in developmental terms between those ages.

DD could do this at 2 - she has ASD. She could actually count (and not just memorise) before she could say 'Mummy'.

Its a lovely skill to have!

Of course there’s a huge difference between a 12 month old and a 23 month old. But both are one year olds. People saying the one year old isn’t one but is two are incorrect. Until the day of his second birthday, he is one.

I'm not sure this is really the point of the thread though. Yes, it is accepted Im sure by all that the child isn't running around wearing an "I am 2" birthday badge yet.

My DD was like this. She's now 7. Bright for her year - yes. Genius - no.

She's advanced in reading, spelling, maths, logic etc. but is possibly ASD and social skills lag far behind academic. As you can fairly easily teaching basic reading and numbers but it's much harder to teach social skills I'd recommend that you put your focus on social opportunities and recognising that being bright is wonderful but without good social skills life will be terribly hard. I'd trade DD's academic skills for some social skills, confidence and living for the moment any day.

With great depth of thought about impressive things, can come great depth of thought about everything. DD's happiness and sleep are disrupted by her overthinking.

My now 21 year old son was like this at 2. And then he hit school and everyone rapidly caught up, overtook him and he lacked any interest in working hard. This carried on into secondary school. got crap GCSEs and then a minimum wage job 🤣

It really doesn't mean alot

My little boy could do all these at this age. I think it's just slightly ahead for the age but they all even out. He is now 3 years 2 months and still advanced for skills like this but refuses to dress/ undress himself and potty training is like a stand off as he's having meltdowns at it. So in those senses he's very much behind. I think some kids pick and choose which bits to develop / work on. My little boy knows all the car makes by logo and also around 30 different airlines by tail logos. He gets me to put YouTube logo quizzes on to challenge me (and beats me lol) so if anyone saw that they'd probably try say he's gifted but then he goes and does a poo in his nappy and denies he's done it when I try change him haha. Infuriating. Just keep encouraging a love for learning and absorbing information. It's always a good thing to have

He’s clearly advanced for 22 months. That is not remotely ‘average’. Genius is quite specific though and only time will tell. He might ‘just’ be bright and precious. He sounds fab either way though!

This sounds really advanced to me, yes

Because developmentally 10 months makes a HUGE difference. Of course it doesn't matter for adults but there's a reason why paed doctors, child psychologists, child development professionals ask for exact age

He sounds like a bright boy. Nurture it, but don’t make it his entire identity - that’s where anxiety and perfectionism comes in.

Have you heard of growth mindset? Clever children who are praised for being bright instead of their effort can often struggle because they don’t want to try unless they can definitely do.

He is also very young so you can’t tell who he’ll be when he grows up yet. Private schools (4-18 ones) who have admissions at 4+, 7+ and 11+ often find that the 4+ children are actually the least academically inclined / intelligent by the time secondary rolls around as it’s not always possible to tell so young (of course that gets complicated by the fact that 7+ and 11+ children are often the malleable and heavily tutored ones, and not resistant to that sort of thing…). But worth keeping in mind.

Because developmentally 10 months makes a HUGE difference. Of course it doesn't matter for adults but there's a reason why paed doctors, child psychologists, child development professionals ask for exact age

OP wrote that he was aged one in the title and then also clearly wrote his age in months in the text of the OP. She wasn't trying to trick anyone. People are being very weird about this. OPs child sounds bright, he may or may not be a genius but people really show themselves up trying to shit all over this. 🙄

I think he sounds pretty smart tbh, have worked with many children in nurseries and as a nanny and this level of memory, letter reading ability is pretty rare for this age. Are you quite intelligent too? Probably genetic or do you read to him a lot? When did you start reading to him? Teaching him spellings?

No need for you to get offended! I was literally just answering the question in general terms, as the person I replied to didn't understand that adult age is different from children age. This isn't about OP's child!

I used to work with children in my previous career and mere months can make a huge difference. I always used to reassure parents of later-born (in the year) children.

Definitely bright/well above average.

agree with boredom being an issue even in top infants I’d sometimes done the exercise before the teacher finished explaining it.
it was nice as I cruised through most of school.

I’d focus energy on physical coordination and skills. arts and crafts, sports etc.

Pushing intelligence rarely leads to balanced and contented individuals
ideally you want a well rounded happy child so I’d keep that goal in mind

Don’t know why some are diminishing this child’s abilities. He sounds super bright to me. I bet most his age cannot do all these things, yet some here claim to have little Einsteins!

He might be neurodivergent. Autistic or ADHD kids may have splinter talents like reading, maths or art from an extremely young age which obviously get noticed because they are unusual. Other things like sensory issues, social anxiety, masking only crop up much later or well into adulthood. There's a theory that high intelligence and what schools used to label as "gifted and talented" are simply higher functioning neurodivergent kids without SEN. Many never get diagnosed due to their natural skills at academics but may struggle later one in adult life.

That was basically me. I taught myself to read around age 3 and could write numbers up to 100+ by age 4. I later realised I'm almost certainly ADHD, most likely AuDHD. But it's not all bad though, I did have a successful and reasonably happy life. Some MH issues thrown in there but nobody can have it all right?

My dc was very bright at 2. Was prety much fluent verbally at 15m
Like other posters though she is asd.
Op child does seem very bright. Though saying 3 zero for thirty means hes only part way there. We used to watch peg + cat and there was a lot of counting in that.

The gifted kids have amazing memory but also are interested and want to work or learn. Trouble with asd is they just may not be interested.

DD was like this, she's autistic and an IQ of around 147 "extremely gifted".

I don't do anything I think is particularly unusual, ensure she is engaged with the outside world, provide her with the resources and choices to do things that take her fancy. Keep an eye on event brite for free/cheap activities in our area like poetry readings and tech a thons. She hates reading fiction/ novels but had a reading age of 16 at 7 but wont pick up a novel, however she loves language as a tool so reading poetry and play scripts is her thing.

Being gifted is only half the battle, remaining engaged at school when they are flying above their peers, giving opportunities to apply their skills and see a future, supporting their emotional side as often they think in such a different way that friendships can struggle or if they are mature with it treated far older than they actually are is the other side.

When he is older it's worth having a WISC V done, it'll show how his brain works and was massively useful. DD can do extremely complicated maths written down but still uses her fingers when doing simple mental arithmetic, her WISC V showed that her working memory and processing speed were comparatively low compared to her actual cognitive skills which is why she struggled with those things

He shouldn’t be bored with good teachers. I have 2 daughters who could read fluently and write before starting school and could do addition, subtraction and basic multiplication too. They are still working far ahead of expectations aged 10 and 8, but have never been bored at school as their teachers have stretched them and made sure they’re developing their particular interests.