She is physically extremely well coordinated. The child described was 16 months old at the time. (But she also calls all colors besides blue, yellow…so she’s not a complete smarty pants!) She makes counting intonations and points at each thing, but doesn’t double tap items like most kids I’ve seen. She’s trying to figure out numbers…spends 20-30 min looking at a number book we have. Yesterday she matched lower case and upper case puzzle letters without help. She recognized most letters in her puzzle at 14 months, and at 16 months knows all of her letters and most of their sounds (all hard sounds, not really vowel sounds). Judge for yourself, if you think these descriptions are remotely “normal” or that “all” children are something like these kids. Rather than me explaining to you what is so different about these kids, I will share some descriptions with you. In my research on assessing early signs of giftedness, parents have written to me some descriptions of their children. The more gifted a person is, the more exceptional they are, the less likely they will find true peers, or fit into regular classrooms. In any society, it is hard to be exceptional. But my definition of gifted is not above average but rather, exceptional. Children with intelligence above average, may fall into that category. Unfortunately that is often not at all the case. It seems to me, that when most people think of “a gifted child” they imagine a kid who is easy to raise, does well in school, and gets along well with peers. It means that just as people who are exceptionally tall, have to work to fit into a world built for average height folks, gifted people have to work to fit into a world built for the majority. This is not to say that being gifted is “better” than not being gifted. But there are characteristics of being gifted that simply do not show up in the rest of the population. ![]() And people who are not gifted often have some pretty impressive abilities, that certainly not all gifted people possess. It is true that gifted people have abilities that other people don’t. Worrying about death when you are three, or being concerned about the government when you are five, is troubling for both child and parent. It is hard to be a gifted person, and the more gifted a child is, the harder some aspects of childhood are. In my article, “ The Funnel Analogy of Giftedness” I talk about the sensitivities and processing issues that gifted children contend with internally. Oh, and no, it isn’t only children who are gifted. But decades of trying to find a better word, has not revealed that perfect term to explain what it means to be a gifted person. Maybe it is the word, “gifted” that gets people tied up in knots.
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