I often say that Leo is a 0-60 type of kid, and he always has been this way. He’s 0-60 with his emotions, his movements, his ideas, and his development. Many gifted learners reach developmental milestones extremely early. You read about children who sing entire songs at six months, children who walk at eight months, and who read fluently with comprehension at two years. Not our Leo. His development was often within normal limits, but at a quick-fire pace toward mastery. Leo can go from not doing something to mastery in minutes, or overnight. When he was younger, this used to floor me; I couldn’t wrap my brain around how it happened and I was often left feeling guilty. How can a mother not see signs of what is to come in her child? How could I not know that this child, with whom I spent all my days and many of my nights, was about to walk, to talk, to read? What was I missing?
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| Schizz & Leo at THAT BBQ. He’s not walking. |
Early the next morning, while Leo was busy dumping books out of various book baskets, I sat on the couch with my much-needed cup of coffee and turned on the television to get the weather report. While sipping from my big mug, I vividly remember being aware of something moving under my line of vision. This something was short, and moving pretty quickly. There, before my bleary eyes, was Leo… and he was walking. Sure it looked a bit awkward, but he was walking. Mouth agape, I watched him walk across our entire family room before losing his balance and tumbling in a little heap. In amazement, I watched him quickly get himself back to standing and walk again. A friend showed up for a playdate a couple of hours later and exclaimed, “When did Leo start walking?!” to which I replied, somewhat sheepishly, “Um, right now?” He walked 80% of that entire day. This was the Tuesday after Memorial Day… less than 24 hours after I had said he wasn’t even on the map yet. He was running, and running well, by the weekend. We didn’t even have shoes for him to wear outside yet. Zero to sixty.
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| Less than 24 hours later… he walks. |
It was around this time that Leo said his first words (aside from Mama and Dada), and this was within normal limits. Within a matter of weeks, however, his vocabulary exploded and he began linking two words together. And then three words. Leo was diagnosed with reflux and was failure to thrive for his first 2.5 years of life, so he was very small. When he was a tiny little toddler, we’d be out together in Target or the supermarket and he’d be blabbering on a blue streak about this and that, peppering me with questions as he did all day long (and continues to do now, years later). I often felt somewhat self-conscious in public, as his running commentary never failed to elicit remarks from complete strangers who were amazed by the questions and vocabulary pouring forth from this tiny human. I have pages and pages of quotes from before he turned two: Mumma, do scarecrows scare away peacocks also?; Do werewolves poop like us, Mumma?; Mumma, I’m standin’ under the tick tack toe (read: mistletoe) so you need to come smooch me; Mumma, I have an important question for you: What do frogs do when they get mad at you?; Why is T droolin’ like a komodo dragon?; Mumma do you know that it sometimes feels good to whine?; Mumma, could you wipe T’s boogie holes?… Zero to sixty.
A week after Leo turned three, I was on the couch with the stomach virus. Suddenly, his little face appeared in mine and he said matter-of-factly, “Mumma, I am not going to wear diapers anymore.” In all honesty, these words made me grimace. This was not a good day. Still, I knew I was supposed to follow his lead. And so I did. He trained for day and night that very day. We didn’t have underwear for him yet, or a potty. Discounting times when he peed a drop or two in his undies as he frantically pulled them down in front of the toilet (he continues, to this day, to be too busy to pee until the very last second), he has never had a true accident. Zero to sixty.
Wondering if your child is gifted/2e?
Oh, but you didn’t actually miss anything. Maybe you weren’t the leader. I can see that getting ahead of this child would be pure luck. What I glean from your story is that darling Leo burst the “parental illusion of control” (my term for it)very early. I am glad for both of you that you have been witness to his lightening development, if not the impetus
Thank you for your comment, nNuts. Children are often our best teachers, aren’t they?
Love this. This is my second son to a T. (Although he is younger.)
Thanks, Sarah! 🙂
[…] learn that Leo tested on an almost 6th grade level for both reading and reading comprehension. Did I mention he taught himself how to read, seemingly overnight, and had rapid fire development after that point? And, while his reading scores were high, the […]
[…] Zero to Sixty: Child Development and Profoundly Gifted Guilt ~ My Little Poppies (Caitlin Curley) […]
Love this Caitie. Reminds me somewhat of my daughter. Bewilderment and guilt. I’m glad you are over the guilt. I also had it for a while. Especially when it came to her learning things. I felt guilt that she learned and knew things I didn’t teach her or that I didn’t know she knew. That she was independent and didn’t want my help. That like you, she took me by surprise and surprised us with many things. But that guilt eventually faded and turned into awe and embracing it. My second is much like his sister and he also went from lying to crawling overnight to climbing to walking overnight. No signs just bam!
I agree with nnuts. Even though it defy the books and the norm were blessed to witness such interesting “defying the odds” type of 0-60 development
Thanks for reading, Nicole! I’m happy to hear you could relate to it. Wish we all knew each other back then. How much easier it would have been 🙂
What a wonderful read! I have to say that while you experienced guilt over those things, I had guilt for almost the opposite reasons. My son has a very high IQ but he also has Aspergers and learning disorders. I didn’t see it early on (only noticing the ADHD issues) and after diagnosis looking back I think OMG how could I NOT have seen that or picked up on it. I think most of us with either gifted children or children with issues, tend to suffer guilt but end of the day I think it’s because we were not prepared for a different journey of parenting. Loving reading your blog xoxo
Kelly
Hi Kelly,
Okay, first- Bon Jovi? I loved that post! 🙂 What you said about not being prepared for it is so true. We had something else, more traditional, in our mind from when we were quite young. These kids change the game. Especially the ADHD ones- it’s a wild ride but at least it’s never boring. Thank you for reading!
Wow – this gives me flashbacks to my own DS1 and his development. My cousin, a Montessori educator, kept asking me how long it took my son to learn certain things, and it felt like overnight. He would decide he wanted to do something, and then he did it. Simple as that, LOL. It took me a *long* time (several years) to recognize what my dear cousin was trying to tell me> this wasn’t the usual parenting/child development path.
Love it, Elaine! It took us a while to admit it, too 🙂
I can SO relate! But, I’ve never felt guilt, more like a sense of my child being very low maintenance for learning LOL. Walking? One day, no interest shown. Next day, walking across the room like it was nothing. Toilet training? Mommy (having set aside a long weekend to get the process started without interruptions): “Kid, it’s time you went on the potty.” Kid: “ok” and that was that. etc etc
Low maintenance for learning- I LOVE it, Margaret!
Yup, I get it. No guilt here, mostly when these kind of things kept happening, trying to figure out if that was normal for a little kid? Doesn’t every kid do that ? Early on, I didn’t think much beyond, “yeah, he seems kind of sharp” to one day when the proverbial ‘other shoe dropped’ and I went “holy crap, uhhhhh, honey ……… we need to start asking some questions of people who know a lot more than we do’ .
Oh yes! That was the reading for us. I never expected my child to read an entire book to me the first day of reading. That was the moment that all the thoughts I’d had came rushing to the forefront and I knew we had to explore further.
Cait, One of my kids was like this. Seemingly delayed, and then would learn things completely the first time he tried. He would not have any interest in certain things until he was ready – and then grasp them without effort. We were always amazed at this trajectory. Hard to understand, but we got used to it.
I am cracking up over Leo. I love the potty training. I never associated how easy potty training was for us as a sign of their giftedness. My oldest was a little over 2 and we were putting up the toddler bed (so his brother to come could have the crib in 4-5 months’ time) and told him that he needed to be changed. He put his little hands on his hips and said, “I don’t want to wear diapers. I want to wear big boy underwear.” (And yes, those were his exact words.) I replied, “What do you do when you wear big boy underwear?” Him, chin up and hands on hips, “You pee in the potty!” And that was potty training. My littlest was almost 3, not because he was not able to earlier, but because he was speech delayed and then I was working the year he was 2. It’s the risk with contract work.
Speech was the same for my oldest. People just did not believe me when I told them his first words were at 9 months. Purposeful words. I was also signing to him, and he blatantly ignored that until at 14 months he was using it to make jokes. At 18 months I stopped keeping a running list of his words, as there were well over 250 of them and I went to pick him up at daycare to a, “Hi Mommy where Daddy?!” That same day he bonked his head and supplied, “I did uh oh!” It seemed pointless to keep track of words when sentences were now pouring out. Our saving grace was that he was also tall, so people thought he was a year older. When told he was 18 months or so, they would get very big, wide eyes. The general consensus was, “He talks like an adult.” We brushed it off at the time, because I had talked like that and it was who he was.
Littlest talked very late and was in speech therapy a long time. Still is, in fact, in school. However, I will never forgot that last year in the preschool program. He would be ask for the opposite word. She would say big and expect small in reply. He’d say “minuscule”. And we’d laugh. She would ask him about the animal on the page. One time he told her it was a “sperm whale”. We laughed until we were practically crying. He was 3 and hadn’t been talking a full year at that point.
Gosh, this brings the nicest memories. There’s just something amazing about these kids. Quirks and all!
This grows my heart, honestly. I love these kids and their stories!!! I’m still laughing over “miniscule”- 🙂
My oldest was relatively late walking. She cruised like mad, but at fifteen months asking her to walk made her giggle. She was tiny, so no one commented. Then we had another family over for an evening. Their baby was eighteen months and walking well. Danette watched for an hour and got up and walked. She walked well from the beginning. Two days later she was running.
[…] to me by many parents- from parents of kids who loathe the written word, to fellow parents of profoundly gifted children who were searching for a writing program that incorporated individuality and creativity […]
This is my oldest son exactly. I dropped him off at daycare one day a few days after he turned 4 and on the way home he asked me “why does that sign say Red Robin?”‘ thought surely he wasn’t actually reading came home grabbed books from his room and just started reading them to me. Skipped the whole trying to sound things out stage and was reading. He amazes me daily.
It’s an incredible journey, that’s for sure! Are you in our Raising Poppies group on FB? I think you’ll find many kindred spirits there!
it’s intriguing to me how this stuff triggers guilt in some mamas. i have plenty of mama guilt, don’t get me wrong, but that”should have seen it coming” just is not the form it takes.
BUT i can SOOOO relate to the developmental milestones in the way they manifested in my son:
walking
http://marybethrew.earthhuggy.com/2008/06/quinns-sixteenth-month/
potty learning
http://marybethrew.earthhuggy.com/2011/03/radical-potty-unschooling/
reading
http://marybethrew.earthhuggy.com/2014/09/oklahoma-was-ok-a-rambling-update/
and many more i can think of (skipping, and ones yet to come like biking and swimming i anticipate the same)
he also went from zero to sixty, seemingly overnight in all cases. not necessarily “early” and in more cases than not either close to on time or even a little “behind schedule” (he’s nine and not biking/swimming yet, walking was 15 months, potty at 4 and a couple months, reading at 6) but then BAM he did them like he’d been studying and observing how all along, saving up for a grand entrance when he felt like he could execute them perfectly….. which is part of it, in my mind. i think it relates to the self-critical perfectionism of poppies. i think they wait until they have it up to their standards of perfection before even attempting.
I don’t have guilt about this anymore (although, like most moms, I still have guilt!), but I did early on! Such a journey!
Wow. Having grown up learning this way, it never actually occurred to me that it must have been a bit odd for my parents. I knew my teachers were confused (I was the last in my grade to start reading on my own, mainly because my mom was always willing to read things for me when I asked and so I didn’t want to bother, but one morning I woke up and my reading had gone from a preschool to a third grade level and proceeded to go in leaps and bounds from there) but I hadn’t stopped to thing that there must have been times when my parents were as well. Looking back… Hm. I have a lot to think about. (Not that that’s ever a bad thing.)
I am starting to wounder if my daughter might be gifted. Not sure. she usually develops skills a little after what would be consider gifted i.e walking 8.8 months (she walked at about 9.8 months) first world 5 months (hers was at 6 months) counting to 10 (18 months ) ABCs (18 months) but she is clearly ahead of typical 18 month development. She can say two and three word sentences but doesn’t do it a lot defaults to crying some times. She does seem to learn things quickly. At the starts of 18 months she was not identifying letters separately but rather grouping now at 18.8 months she can identify letters and some of the sounds they make. I don’t put something on her that’s not there and at first I figured since she wasn’t reading yet and was a little behind what would be considered gifted I figured she was just a little ahead but now I am rethinking that and want to make sure she gets what she needs. She loves shapes, letters and numbers.