precocious skills | Autism PDD

Jasper could spell his name at 18 mo. Was speaking in full sentences by 2
and was reading quite well by 3.5. Though he can count well,he doesn't
seem to have much interest in numbers, just language and symbols.

MK - have you ever considered that Jasper might actually be a genious? When you think about it, what would a kid who could read well at 3.5 have in common with a typical 3.5 year old? I'd imagine that kids who are truly, profoundly gifted with intellect would find typical kids to be as foreign and confusing as typical kids find autistic kids - hence, social problems would ensue. You must be very optimistic about his future - he sounds like a real gem, truly. What a smart boy.

Not much.

Her REASONING and concrete thinking seem more advanced, in comparison with her other abilities. Not sure if it is really savant-quality stuff, however.

It seem like a fair number of asd kids have precocious skills early on, like
early talkers. early reading and meeting developmental milestones early.
Some kids stay highly competent in those areas and others are surpassed
by NT peers at some point. All the asd kids I know seemed like gifted kids
in their toddler years (some did end up with high IQ and others did not).
The talked and read very early.
My ds in comparison was always at the tailend of meeting milestones. He
walked late, talked late and is still struggling to learn reading. He seemed
bright enough but precocious he was not.
However last night I was trying o teach my NT daughter (almost 4) to
play chutes and ladders and she could not figure out how to read a dice
and needed lots of help playing. And it occured to me that I have no
memory of ever having to teach my ds to read a dice (or number or letter)
or explain any game more than once. He was not speaking yet but at age
two he would beat me in uno. He just knew how to read any symbol. I
taught him chess last week and after playing twice he is good and beat a
9 year old neighbor who is in a chess club.
So I guess my ds has some precocious splinter skills even though overall
he always seemed pretty immature.
How about your kids - any early skills? Is your kid still advanced in those
areas?

Well, my ds could identify numbers 0-9 when he was 20 months old and could identify all uppercase letters at age 2. However, this has not translated into reading early as we have gotten a diagnosis of strabismus and his eyes have a difficult time tracking. But, he is working on it and we shall see in kindergarten!

BTW though - my dd started sounding out words at just past 2 1/2 and we're pretty sure she's NT (with a few quirks like that!). I read at age 3, so it may just be genetic!

My ds also tests high on math skills and people still tell me he's VERY smart (those who evaluate him) - but that he has such a fear of failure that he has a hard time with tests for fear he'll get it wrong. So, he doesn't want to try!

Mason's was counting and numbers.

From a very early age he would line things up and then touch them...he wasn't talking so I didn't know what he was doing...just after the age of 3 he started talking and then when he started to line things up I would hear him counting...usually his matchbox cars.

By the time he started kindergarten he could count forward beyond what we would listen to, lol...and from 100 backward. he could identify and write any number well into the thousands!

But unfortunately when he started kindergarten things seemed to slow down with his numbers. He didn't lose any of the above...but we saw him begin to struggle in areas like, counting by 2, 5 & 10...the early intro of adding that they start in kindergarten was a big struggle for him and any sort of word problem and he is completely lost.

emerald_52139280.3293981481

My son met his babymilestones at the textbook average age, it was almost uncanny.

We've had to long and hard with him on gaming skills, reading, and many other things. The only feedback I've gotten about him being precocious, is his ability to have religious/philosophical/values conversations with the adults at school. He seems to be a natural in that area, a deep thinker.

There're a few for the girls. The most obvious is their drawing/art skills. I post their art often in the Hangout section (probably too much) and their art skills are advanced for their age. I actually think that this has more to do with practice and repetition than actual talent, though. I think if NT kids spent as much time drawing as the girls, they'd do just as well, and in fact, many do.

Reading is their other skill that seems advanced, though I'm not sure if they're precocious or not. They're not very early readers like some of the kids here, but they are able to read simple stories with phonetic words, and they learned this skill on their own. They're not yet five, so even in this day and age of parents who push early academics with their kids, I still think that a four-something that is reading at any level (without the parent really pushed them along) is at least a little ahead of the curve, though perhaps I'm mistaken.

At 3 years old Sarah could read over 200 words and count over 150, knew all shapes, animals, colors, ect.. and could play out 10 songs on the piano...but she said less than 5 words a day. No self help skills~didnt get potty trained till 5~

She will be 7 in 2 weeks and reads chapter books now, can do simple addition/subtraction math, tells time, navagate computer better than me, has beautiful handwriting both manual and cursive...and draws very nice....she's a little smarty pants~she is going into 1rst grade:)