Exact same story of my life.

Started talking not long after walking at all, "enhanced," "enriched," "gifted," programs at schools and they did horribly to assist in development of kids who show signs of increased ability or intellogence.

Public school systems (in the Toronto area, at least) are terrible, and are notorious for putting advanced kids in "upgraded" learning classes and programs, then measuring development against the general school population. ie. Take a group of kids who score 9.5/10 on testing while the average is 7, then two years later test again and find the "advanced" kids at 8/10 with the gen pop still at 7 and have the teachers pat themselves on the back for facilitating such strong development. Had the school system actually done a good job, they wouldn't be taking credit for the kids higher than average scores, when in actuality the development progress decreased when compared to previous.

I realize that may have not been too clear, but I hope you get my point. You'll need to facilitate the development of your child yourself, without negatively affecting her social skills. I went through years of fighting with my parents and not until after high school did something click and finally understood what they were pushing so hard for any why. It's not gonna be easy! Prepare for slamming doors

 

some people are just lucky to be gifted and talented, and then there are people like me who got nothing but B's in class and wasnt exactly one of the smartest one out of the bunch. but due to my perseverance to be succesfull lead me to a very cushy financial life at the age of 20(salary range from 65k to 70k a year).

you might also want to invest in not putting her in public school.

 

I was labelled as "gifted" back in elementary and high school. They had me doing extra work, special advanced classes, etc, etc, even discussed me skipping grades. Drove me nuts. At that point, I was really more concerned with playing hockey and having fun with friends at school, not standing out and being kept late at the end of the day to go over my advanced homework/classes.

I graduated top of my class, top of my school, top 1% of my province, multiple scholarships, etc, etc, but I found out that when I got to a college with 25K people, I wasn't quite as big a fish as I thought (or was told). There are a LOT of gifted people out there.

"Gifted" is relative to those around you. It's great to believe (even "know") that your kid is gifted and I would definitely encourage that growth. Still, let her be a kid. I hated having to do extra work because I was "smart" and much of it really didn't benefit me much. I had 1000 books in my personal library when I graduated and I learned WAY more from reading for enjoyment than I did in a lot of "special" classes.

In retrospect, a private school or tutor would have been better for me as it would have allowed some tailoring of my education to areas more to my interest (science and math especially). My sister is doing home school for two of her kids and she says that she can teach them in under two hours a day the same material that it takes seven or eight hours to teach in a public school. Public education, in my opinion, often stunts the growth and advancement of above-average students. I know I was bored silly in school prior to college and I'd imagine your daughter will be as well.

Challenge her and you'll really see how good she is. Standard public school education is good for socialization but it's not exactly high-quality education (in my opinion).

An engineer from Russia that I worked with a few years ago had his son doing electrical circuits and basic algebra at age seven. He tested one to three years ahead of his classmates in pretty much every subject. They were homeschooling him in addition to his standard school work and it really showed through.

 

Sounds like your kids just like television and icecream.

 

Teach her how to play chess. Maybe she can help find Bobby Fisher and then beat him.

 

Lightweights.

Mozart wrote his first compositions by age five.

Trivial.

If you want a prodigy, look at Carl Friedrich Gauss. There is evidence that at age three he corrected an error in his father's payroll.

 

Not to knock you down, but I have to agree that prodigy may be too strong a word. However, I'm a firm believer that anybody can become anything if they just work hard. It sounds like your daughter definitely has potential. So just keep nurturing that potential and watch her grow.

As a side note, I saw an episode of "Intevention" where there was a child prodigy who was TEACHING at MIT at the age of 18 or so. 10 years later he's got a wicked gambling problem, no social skills, and only survives on his parents paying his huge debts.

 

Make sure she doesn't slack off later when she knows she's quick to learn . As much as I believe some people are born really clever, I also believe in hard-working. Between an hardworking average person and a genius that doesn't work much, the average one wins. However, a genius that works hard.... , that's what you're aiming for ^^

 

Sometimes if the mind works too fast, you simply are not able to focus on anything. Sure, you can figure something out in 2 seconds instead of 2 minutes, but that doesn't mean you'll have the patience later on. That's what happened to me. I never studied a day in my life until I got to college (and I was in the honors biology program in high school), and I'm feeling the pain now; I simply have no patience/ability to focus on tasks, yet I've always been better at English (third language after French and Arabic), math, science, memorization, problem solving, logic, technology, directions, computers, etc. than 98% of the people I know. My problem is I'm too lazy, I just don't want to do it anymore. Sure, I can knock out a 10 page English paper on the due date, but I can't count how many times my attitude has come back to bite me in the ass.

If there's anything you can do to help your child keep her mind flowing and allow her to make use of her skills, it's letting her learn how to organize her thoughts.

 

Don't make it too complicated Kumainu. Your daughter may very well high a high IQ. Like others have mentioned, people peak at different times in there life. The best you can do as a parent is give her all the opportunities you can. if she is excelling in school, put her in a better educational program that works at her pace.