When my daughter was quite young, we started to wonder if she might be gifted. She was extremely alert as a baby, picked up all three of our spoken languages with no delays, as well as using signs we taught her. She has always been very sensitive emotionally, and very observant. The comments we got about her from strangers were always based on being impressed with something - but we really don't know how much of that was just our parenting style.
We followed child-led weaning, and along with that she was introduced to regular adult food at an early age and has been eating independently even in restaurants from toddlerhood.
We practiced elimination communication and she has been permanently out of diapers since age 18 months.
She speaks three languages and knows a lot of signs, and she is studying Latin and Tagalog in our homeschool.
She was interested in the written word early on but I did not want to push premature academics on her. When I finally sat down to teach her to read, she picked it up in no time, and at age 9 she is now reading at about a 5th grade level. I stopped ordering grade level readers for her after she completed the 4th grade one because I was starting to worry about the content being too advanced even if the language was fine.
My son likewise hit the ground running. While he's much more social than his sister, he's still very sensitive and observant to his environment. He notices things we wouldn't expect him to notice.
In church daycare one day, when he was a little more than a year old, when we picked him up, the care taker commented how impressed she was with his talking - he was naming colors and generally interacting with her beyond what she expected.
He, too, speaks three languages with some signs. He listens in to his older sister's Latin lessons and often picks things up without being taught.
He insisted on learning to read at age 5, and in less than a year he was reading at a first grade level.
Just the other day he made a mental connection we hadn't been expecting. We were watching The Parenting Test, a show assessing different parenting styles. One of the styles features was "free range". He commented that he thought probably free range parents must be either sanguine or phlegmatic in temperament. (We had taken a temperament assessment several months ago and he really latched on to everyone's temperaments.) Did I mention he is 6 years old?
All this to say - so what? Does this prove they are gifted? Or are they just very bright, and sadly, most of their peers are not being challenged enough and so the disparity between them looks bigger than it is as far as potential is concerned?
Most Americans make multilingualism seem like a miracle almost. We know around the world this is no big deal. Most Americans are married to the diaper industry and fight their toddlers during "toilet training", while the majority of the world simply cannot afford 3 plus years of diapers and cloth gets old real quick, so they're motivated to get their kids toilet independence much sooner. Most Americans send their children to public school, where - let's be honest - the curriculum is anything but academically rigorous, and everyone is put into cookie cutter age-based grades without the sort of one-on-one attention homeschooling affords that allows each child to develop at their unique speed.
So it is quite possible that our children are not gifted in the measurable sense of the word but merely have a lot of benefits that their peers do not that are allowing them to succeed in learning.
What would change for us if we got an unbiased third party to tell us that, indeed, there's more to it than that?
I think I would push a little more. Give a little more challenging work. Be a little more intentional.
But that also comes with certain risks. I could turn them off from a love of learning. It could lead to burn out for all involved. I could prioritize academics over more important things, like mental health or character development.
What if we simply proceed as if they really are gifted? Why not challenge them as-is? Why not gently push until there is a steady resistance? Why not keep a balanced outlook in mind and just proceed right away?
