Gifted Children

Some cognitive (learning) characteristics of young intellectually gifted students.

Sometimes, when the child enters school and the parents try to describe his early development to the Kindergarten or Reception class teacher, the teacher is reluctant to believe what they say.

Not all  the following characteristics appear in all gifted young children but when a child displays a cluster of these characteristics, this is strong indication that the child may be intellectually gifted.

• Ability to understand and use abstract symbol systems at much younger ages than usual. 
• Early language development. Many gifted children are speaking in short sentences at ages where are the average child is just beginning to link words into pairs. 
• Early motor development. Many intellectually gifted children learn to walk and run rather earlier than usual.
• Early development of a rich vocabulary; love of words; capacity to create complex sentences. 
• Unusual facility with number; capacity to grasp abstract mathematical concepts at unusually early ages.
• Exceptional memory. Some gifted children can repeat songs and TV commercials by heart before age 2.
• Rapid pace of learning. Gifted young children may seem to acquire knowledge effortlessly. Often they can generalise the knowledge to new situations in unexpected ways.
• The ability to ask reflective and probing questions.
• Early development of classifying and investigating skills. A fascination with categories - categories of dinosaurs, insects or plants or patterns in shapes or number.