What was your gifted child like at 18 months?

[pranava]

Anything you saw early that in hind sight you can see was truly beyond average?

[whatsnextmom]

Well, I have two and they were both very different at 18 months.

DD was extremely verbal... more like a 4-year-old. She was very serious, not particularly social outside DH and myself. She loved fine art and could recognize artists by styles even if she'd only seen a couple of their paintings. I knew that was unusual. She pretty much absorbed all the preschool skills at that age but at the same time though had no interest in traditional academics at all. She had an intense imagination, took on characters and tried new voices. She spent most of her time curled up with books (either having me read to her or just looking at them herself.) I'd take her to playgroup and she'd sit and talk to the adults.

At 18 months, DS had yet to say a word. He was outgoing and friendly. He had a fantastic sense of humour and anything slightly topsy-turvy would throw him into a giggling fit. He was musical and would hum melodies with perfect pitch and rythym. The other side was that he could get intensely frustrated, stubborn and angry. Lots of things set him off like loud noises, clothing tags, certain sheets, shorts, ect. He still couldn't eat solid foods without throwing up, ect. He used to mix 3 or 4 puzzles together before sitting down to complete them. I know he knew all his letters because you could say "L" and he'd grab the right letter (of course, he wasn't saying anything so that was the only way you could tell.)

That's sort of all I remember though. They are 10 and 13 now... 18 months seems like a long time ago!

[no5no5]

At that age the differences were pretty subtle. She was just starting to really talk a lot, but she still didn't have great articulation, so often we thought we were imagining things. She knew her letters, numbers, and colors, I think, but we didn't quiz her at all so we hadn't realized it yet. She was very attentive to the world around her, loved books, etc., but that is hard to quantify. She had physical milestones that were very advanced, but others that were average or a bit behind.

All in all, there was no way that I could have known that she was gifted at that age.

[ellemenope]

Although, not gifted, DD was/is very bright and has been very precocious, and 18 months wasn't all that long ago for us, so I remember well.

By the end of the 18th month she had hundreds and hundreds of words, perhaps over a thousand. She was speaking in short (3-7 word) complete sentences regularly.

She also could identify every letter, shape, and color, after very little instruction (just basically me labeling them for her when she asked over the course of a few days. We never had any electronic learning toys or videos.) Some of these things were proven to be known before she could verbalize them.

These are anecdotes I have written down for when she was 18 months old:

• "I see purple circle," as she held up a purple rubber band was one of DD's first sentences at 18 months.
  
• Once on an aiplane, as soon as we sat down in our seat, DD (18 months) pointed to each letter on the back of the seat in front of us and yelled out each name: "Life vests are located under seat cusion."

She was and still is sensitive, perceptive, observant, empathetic, cautious, and non-violent. She was much easier then. She was ridiculously well-behaved and had an unbeatable attention span at that age. Stranger anxiety was still going strong at that point. That was probably the hardest thing.

She was very much in tune with adult conversations and has been since 4-6 months to some extent. At 18 months we could still talk above her, although we had to make a consious effort to do that. Now...we can't. If we purposefully use a word she doesn't know, she will ask about it. She is constantly asking us what we are talking about. And, she gets way too much out of reading body language and tones (This was true at 18 months as well.) We need to leave the room if we want to have privacy.

Like I said, she is not (ETA: tested) gifted. I believe her to be very much verbally advanced and fortunate to have dedicated parents (ETA: who talk to her a lot.) Right now, I can't see her needing accomodation or acceleration in school in the future. She does not seem to think different or 'gifted'. Truly, the only thing that really nags is that mommy and daddy were gifted and she is so different from peers. Sadly, some of my nights are spent wondering if not 'gifted' then 'ASD' and normal never enters my mind. And if someone mentions accomodation, I think special needs first for SPD/ASD or anxiety.

ETA: Ah, yes. DD was just starting to potty train herself of her own accord at 18 months. She was also very imaginative. That was my first question here on this forum. At 12-18 months she was pretending to be a dog, feeding her dolls, pretending she was in a boat, walking her little people around, etc. This was something I did not see in her peers for a long time.

[Freeman]

What really stopped and gave me pause, though, was the uncanny (to me, at least) ability to memorize books; I think this was happening around that time.

[MJB]

Around 18 mos., my gifted son was speaking in complete, grammatically correct sentences. He went through a phase at 18 mos. where he was obsessed with death: "Mama's grandma died? Is mama gonna die? Am I gonna die?" He knew colors and could recognize some letters (he liked to help his dad cheat at scrabble). I have an older son who was 4.5 then; they played pretend together all day long. They played dress-up EVERY day, built with blocks, played with the toy kitchen and dollhouse a lot. He played outside with the other neighborhood kids a lot and was very active; he had a Radio Flyer trike he liked (he upgraded to a bike with training wheels at 2 and w/o trainers at 2.5). He potty trained at 20 months. He had a few books memorized (I remember "Are You My Mother?" quite fondly. He had a lot of songs memorized (John Prine's Paradise was his favorite).

He seemed precocious to us but we were still thinking other kids would catch up.

[Linda on the move]

both my kids are officiall tested as gifted. One was completely nonverbal at 18 months and the other seemed "normal". After her older sibs multiple delays, we were just happy with "normal" and didn't register that she was super bright.

[KCMichigan]

My two very bright 5 yr olds (untested, but suspected gifted) were very different people at 18 months.

DD1 : delayed- gross motor & socially. Lots of echoing, but large large vocabulary--little communication though. Very very aware of surroundings and alert. Some sensory difficulties- ASD suspected.

DD2: delayed in gross motor, & feeding difficulties. lots of words (after never babbling as an infant), simple sentences. Lots of communication attempts-- very very talkative.

Both DD could name colors, shapes, letters, numbers 1-10, and sounds-- but DD1 more in an answering ? format rather than a conversation.

They were preemies and at 18 months- were still catching up.

Both were in EI and had OT & PT therapies. DD1 just finished therapies for delays and at 5 has caught up gross motorwise and though quirky, no longer has an ASD dx.


It is hard to tell at 18 months what the future will bring.....really I never imagined with the delays and rough start my 2 had that they would be super early readers & writers!

[Daffodil]

My kids aren't officially confirmed as gifted, but I think they probably are at least mildly gifted. At 18 months, DD knew colors, most capital letters, and a lot of letter sounds. She had a really long attention span compared to other kids her age (or even older) that we saw at places like playgroup. She loved being read to, and had since she was a baby. She didn't talk much yet - she had motor planning problems that made it hard for her. At about 19 months, I recorded this list of words she said regularly: Mom, Dad, more, on, in, dry, hot, blue, book, bread, bowl, hat, foot, O (as in O cereal), dig, cut, hide, roll, cuff (as in "cuff up my pants"), and hang. Plus the names of some letters. At about that same age, I started working on getting her to try to say at least the initial sound of some words. I'd say "f-f-foot," and if she said, "f" I'd respond as if she had said the whole word. I didn't do very much of that before she generalized and began using the initial sound to represent every word she wanted to say that was too hard for her, and that became her main way of talking over the next few months. That strikes me as pretty clever for a 1 1/2 year old - to be able to hear the word in her mind and separate out the initial sound.

DS was a bit slower to learn things like colors or letters, but a much better talker. At almost 19 months, I tried counting how many words he had, just out of curiosity, and stopped when I got to 200, but he had a lot more than that. He wasn't yet combining them at that point, but less than a month later he was. I wrote at 19 months that he used color words a lot, but it wasn't clear whether he actually knew which color was which - my guess was that he knew at least some of them. By 18 months, he could recognize when there were 2 of something. (I'm sure DD could do this, too.) By 19 months, he could count 2 things, pointing to each in turn and saying, "One . . . two." At 19 1/2 months, I wrote that he was doing a lot of simple pretending, like waving a toy around in the air and saying "plane" or holding a toy dinosaur against the wall and saying "climb."

[loraxc]

DD recently tested as gifted. At 18 months she was super, super verbal, with a 500+ word vocabulary, and knew all the letters, colors, shapes, etc. She also was memorizing books a lot and could recognize species of birds and plants (ones many adults would not know) because she loved looking at field guides. She knew about 20-50 sight words at 18-20 months, though this did not progress and she actually forgot many of them before learning to read. She spoke somewhat strangely despite her huge vocabulary, and was slightly echolalic. We had some worries about ASD. She also reversed pronouns till she was almost 3.

She was very noticeably different from her peers from 18 months-2, and it was actually a rather hard time for us. She started blending in a little better around 3.

DS is only 2.5 and hasn't been tested, of course. He was also quite verbal at 18 months, but probably had more like 100-150 words. He knew some letters and shapes, but not all. He memorized books, too, but not as precociously. I would hesitate to say how he compares to his sister, though, because they do appear to have somewhat different strengths. I think he may actually read earlier than she did--despite having many prereading skills in place for years, she did not actually read till late 4. He is very different socioemotionally--stopped reversing pronouns (though he did do it!) before 2 and never caused us any concern re: ASD.

[kgianforti]

My small girl self taught herself to object count 10 things at 17 months. She was very verbal at that age and speaking in at least 3 word or so sentences. She was also saying larger words like "Backpack" (at 15 months). She also said a lot of words.

A couple of things that really impressed me at that age was her understanding and all the things she knew - like in pictures or in the house. She was able to follow multi-step directions too. She also had a long attention span for book reading - I eventually limited reading session (for both girls) to 30 minutes because my voice couldn't take it.

Of course, I don't know if she gifted. I'm fairly certain my big girl is...on the "lower" end of giftedness.

[excitedtobeamom]

My son knew all his letters and sounds at 18 months without me "working" with him. I just answered his questions and he watched the Leap Frog Letter Factory with is big sister. He has always loved letters. He would shout them out while driving when he saw signs. He loved to tell people he was 1.5 but sometimes when he was being a comedian he would say he is 5 then laughs and says he is 1.5. He talked up a storm, was very active, very much a Momma's boy, loved to ask Why? and had such insight. People have always assumed that he was older from his behavior and knowledge. I hated answering the question how old is he when he was younger because certain people would go on and on about how advanced he was compared to their kid, ect. ect. They would do right in front of their own kids. Ugh, I hate that!

[crunchy_mommy]

I'm very interested in this because I feel we're already facing some challenges with DS due to the way his brain works. He's 20 months.

He has a vocabulary of hundreds (maybe a thousand or more?) words, and can repeat back pretty much any word you say for him. He can speak in simple sentences ("mommy pick me up" -- though he often reverses pronouns -- or "what color is that?") and sing entire songs i.e. Wheels on the Bus (as well as do all the hand motions to songs after seeing them just once or twice). He seems to understand phonics as well (he's obsessed with the alphabet and can tell me different words that start with P for ex.). He knows his shapes (including diamond, octagon, etc.) and can easily sort shapes in his 15-piece shape sorter as well as do puzzles. He LOVES books and would sit listening to books for hours & hours, though I tend to limit it for my own sake. He memorized parts of his books (and by 13 months could pick out any book from a pile if you told him the title or a phrase from it). He has been recognizing '2' for many months and points out whenever he sees 2 of something and I suspect he knows larger numbers though I'm not positive... He has a great memory and will bring up things from months ago or things he's only heard/seen once. We were at the playground the other day and saw a bug & I thought it was a weird bug but he thought it was a grasshopper; when we got home he reminded me to look it up on the computer and sure enough, it was a grasshopper, though I have no idea where he learned about bugs and this was a weird looking grasshopper. So he does things like that, that always take me by surprise a bit, he seems to know things that he's rarely - if ever - been exposed to.

He is incredibly shy & very clingy (to mommy). He doesn't eat well or sleep well, and I can tell he's processing things in his sleep (apparent in the way he sleep-talks). There are many times when I can see by his expression that he has a complex thought that he struggles to convey (and then he starts mixing his words up a little). I feel like he's mentally far ahead of where he is physically and that really seems to frustrate him. I don't know if this is something he'll outgrow as he continues to develop or if there will always be a slight imbalance, though if he takes after me, I suspect he will struggle quite a bit in coming years...

[emmaegbert]

My DS, who has been tested and IDed as gifted was not reading or counting at 18m. One thing he was doing that might have been the most unusual was some rudimentary representational painting and drawing. He drew what he called lizards (he had a sort of stylized way he always did it), he would draw "a snake" or "a ball", and also a simple face. However, at that time, he did FAR more non-representational drawing and paintings than ones he identified as having representations of animals, things or people.

I don't really remember a lot of detail about that age. I am not a big one for keeping records of the kids, but I do know he had potty trained himself for poop. He was close to riding a trike. He was very good at jumping. He played "pretend" with animals, trains, etc. He started having some much more extreme tantrums and he had a lot of separation issues (from me).

He was playing socially and cooperatively with his best friend (who was a couple months younger and is very precocious verbally and academically). He did not play this way with other friends although he enjoyed seeing them.

He always had excellent gross and fine motor skills. I didn't think to give him a multi-piece puzzle until he was more like 22 months but at that point he had no problem doing it (didn't require much in the way of "training" or help from me).

[St. Margaret]

Gosh, I'm another one who can't quite remember for sure. I probably have some stuff noted in my old blog. I know by 18mo DD (she's 3.5 tomorrow, and not confirmed, it's stll early, all that-- but I'll be surprised if she's not gifted because, well, I could tell you all about my day... )-- anyway, she had hundreds if not thousands of words (we stopped counting right after a year, couldn't possibly keep track-- she could learn and say any word she heard, and was adding plenty of words every day). I wonder if she was doing sentences then? Hmm. She knew the alphabet I'm sure, and many shapes and the colors... she definitely had some sight words before then. She was also cool about breathing to get calmed down and got a lot of concepts. And memorized books, reading them to herself with the same little things I did, like bubbling her voice (you know, flapping your finger over your lips as you talk) when the guy is talking under water in Green Eggs and Ham .

[meemee]

at 18 months dd had a huuuge vocabulary. i had kinda stopped counting when she was a year old. however i remember she had a huge language explosion then.

she knew her alphabets and numbers till 12 (alphabets i have no idea how, numbers because her dad taught her to count the stairs).

i cant remember much. she knew more ...

however the two things that stood out for me was how extremely empathic dd was at that age due to certain incidents and the questions she asked. it was at that age that she at the park instead of playing sat with teh park guy and watched and talked to him about the sprinkler system and the hole in the ground for a couple of hours.

[physmom]

We can't know for sure that DD is gifted but DH and I both are so there's a pretty good chance that she could be.

At 18 months she had a large vocabulary in 3 languages + signs. We had a list going for awhile but stopped counting words at 17 months when she got over 300 (in a combination of signing and her languages). She could sign already in sentences but wasn't speaking in them consistently yet. She knew a few numbers by sight (but enumeration and real counting came a month or two later), she knew her colors and her letters too. She had some sight words. She also was very interested in opposites like up/down, big/small etc and gender differences were something she had noticed for awhile. At 17 months she was potty trained but then we had a potty regression when she started daycare. She also has always been obsessed with books and wants to be read to often. She's the same with puzzles but still doesn't have the fine motor skills to put interlocking ones together (but she'll tell me where the pieces go). She's also always been very, very interested in pretend play (especially with her dolls). Her gross motor skills were also always ahead.

I should say that every kid is different and DH didn't even speak until he was 2 (and then he started in paragraphs according to MIL). Although MIL does say that despite him not speaking he was advanced in other areas early on.

[Stephenie]

DS is three and probably gifted, untested, but academically ahead of most 6 year olds. At 18 months he spoke very well in long, grammatically correct sentences and knew most of his letters. He'd figured out how to disassemble every child safety lock known to man and knew a few sight words. The first "reading" I remember was Costco. lol. He found a receipt from Costco about that age and said "Look, Mama it says Costco." He started counting at 16 months on his own accord and understood quantity.

My dd is 18 months now and is looking like she may be on a similar path. She counted to 10 without prompting about a month ago (I had no clue she was capable..) and she speaks in full. clear sentences. She started back talking at 16 months lol. I told her, "I said no," and she responded "I say yes!" She knows her numbers and a few letters and sight words. (Trying to be like big brother, I am sure )

[Cavy]

Nothing special whatsoever at age 18 months, probably speech delayed.

I didn't suspect they were well above average academically until age 6 and almost 8.

[CherryBomb]

To give the flipside, my dd1 was pretty advanced in all areas at that age, but at 9 is average :)  My dd3 will be 3 in a few months and she's been very advanced verbally since around 18 months, but I don't really suspect that she's gifted (she might be, she's pretty bright, but I don't suspect strongly enough to have her tested right now).  She only said a few words until 18 months and then went right into full sentences with a huge vocabulary.