Is My Infant Gifted?

Gifted Behaviors in Infants Can Predict Giftedness as Children

Is my infant gifted? Many parents ask themselves this question when faced with a three month old who appears to speak ten different words. Or a five month old who pieces together two word sentences. What about a nine month old who can speak grammatically correct, two part sentences? Or a twelve month old who asks why the sky is blue?

Gifted infants are as uncommon as highly-advanced children. However, a gifted infant is often harder to find, because most children who are gifted do not show their giftedness in infancy; it normally emerges in toddlerhood. In general, infants do not have expressive language skills-the ability to speak, or let their needs me known through language-and so most parents do not notice giftedness in small babies as a result.

There is a literature in the field of psychology for studying giftedness in infants, however. It is a small literature; gifted infant studies are rare. In 1926 L.S. Hollingsworth studied the infancy of five adults with IQ scores exceeding 180, and found that there were clear signs of giftedness in these people, even as infants. Responding to verbal cues, meeting physical and developmental milestones early, and showing tremendous concern for ethical and moral issues in toddlerhood are markers for highly-advanced infants.

More recently, in 1985 and 1986, researchers administered the Stanford-Binet IQ test to children as young as thirty-six months of age and found that their scores were connected to their giftedness three years later. In other words, it is possible to connect infant behaviors to future behaviors that show the testing in infancy is correct: a gifted infant goes on to be a highly advanced child.