Early use of advanced vocabulary. 
Most children at age two make sentences like: "There's a doggie."  A two year old who is gifted might say, "There's a brown doggie in the backyard and he's sniffing our flower."

Keen observation and curiosity. 
A gifted child might pursue lines of questioning such as, "What makes Scotch tape sticky on one side and smooth on the other? How can they make a machine that puts on the sticky part without getting the machine all gummed up? Why doesn't the sticky side stay stuck to the other, side when you unroll the tape?"
A gifted child will also observe details.  At a very young age the child might remember where all the toys go on the shelf and replace everything correctly.

Retention of a variety of information.
Gifted children amaze parents and teachers by recalling details of past experiences.  For example, one six year old returned from a trip to the space museum and reproduced an accurate drawing of a space rocket he had seen.

Periods of intense concentration.
A one year old gifted child might sit for five minutes or more listening attentively to a story being read to an older brother or sister.  Older gifted children can become engrossed in a book or project, totally oblivious to the events happening around them.

Ability to understand complex concepts, perceive relationships, and think abstractly. Although an average four year old looks through a picture book of baby and mother animals with interest, a gifted four year old is more likely to observe concepts such as how much animal mothers and babies look alike except that the baby is smaller.  If a fifth grade class were told to write a paper on what it's like to be poor, most of the children would write, "I would be hungry" or "I wouldn't have enough money."  A gifted fifth grader would tend to view the problem more abstractly and might write something like, "Being poor would only be a problem if others were not poor.  If everyone else also had very little money, then we would all have less to spend and things would be cheaper."

Strong critical thinking skills and self-criticism.
Gifted children evaluate themselves and others.  They notice discrepancies between what people say and what they do.  But they are usually most critical of themselves.  For example, a gifted child who has just won a swimming race might complain, "I should have beat my time by at least one second."

Parental descriptions of their gifted child's early behaviour also supply the kinds of detail useful in determining a child's giftedness.  For example, a dozen parents interviewed by Frinier (1978) were asked, "now that your child has been identified as gifted, can you look back at his or her early childhood and tell about something you think might have been an indication of exceptional ability?"  Their responses, stimulated by items drawn from a list of gifted children's characteristics, included:

• Has displayed unusual talent in music, drawing, rhythms, or other art forms.
• At three he sang songs in tune and clapped to the beat of the music on his own, 
• As a baby, he liked to hear recordings and have lullabies sung to him...He would hum many songs back in perfect tune by age one... ..at four we learned he had perfect pitch. 
• At three, she drew a picture of her baby sister in a buggy from side :perspective ...at five drew a picture of tigers camouflaged in a jungle scene.
• Asks many "intelligent questions" about topics in which young children do not ordinarily have an interest.
• At three while on a jet ride and the pilot came back to talk to passengers, J. became very worried and asked, "Who's flying the plane?"  He often asked how things worked, such as the vaporizer, vacuum, etc. and how planes stayed in the sky.
• Keen observation and retention of information about things he or she has observed.
• When H was two or three she would notice if the smallest item in a room had been moved.
• His photographic memory showed up the Christmas he was three and a half.  He asked us who had sent each of the seventy-five to one hundred Christmas cards and would tell the exact signature after seeing the picture on the card.
• At two and a half when being instructed why streets were dangerous, he recalled the parade he had watched six: months previously and said those people shouldn't have been walking in the street.  At three, he would recall incidents of eighteen months previously that had not been mentioned since, such as "Remember when I fell out of the wagon and got scratched right here?" or "Remember at Christmas, not this time, but the other time, when I..."

An early interest in clocks and calendars, and an ability to understand their function.
At three and a half he would tell me which numbers the hands were pointing to and what time he thought it was and what we should be doing (especially at seven in the morning).  At four he told me he liked a digital clock better because it was easier to tell time.

The early accurate use of a large vocabulary.
D. always used the correct word for things from the time he started talking, even four syllable words.

Spoke in entire sentences at an unusually early age.
At age one, S. greeted all the guests at her birthday party and asked them in.  Although three other children who were born on the same day attended, none of them talked in sentences as S. did.
At two he was averaging seven and eight word sentences with correct use of all parts of speech.

The ability to tell or reproduce stories and events with great detail at an early age.
At two and a half he would tell the story of the Three Bears and imitate the voices of the bears.

Carries on intelligent conversations with older children and adults.
He was quite tall for his age and at three and a half his playmates ranged from three and a half (whom he considered a baby) to six years of age.  The five and six year old boys assumed he was in kindergarten.
At four, E. described to me how a plane shudders if it is too steep a dive. At three, he explained to me why there must be traffic lights at intersections.

Learned to read early, with little or no formal teaching.
We didn't realize that M. was reading at age two and a half.  We thought he had memorized the stories.  But at age three, he picked up my golf score card and began reading the rules on the back to us.
I realized that D. was reading at age four and a half, and when I mentioned this to her kindergarten teacher, she brushed it aside ...Four months later, she had discovered that D. was reading at second grade level.

Can write short stories, poems, or letters.
He would dictate letters to me at age three

• She had a sense of humour at two and was not fooled when teased •  She would turn the situation around to benefit her.
• He understood cause effect relationships at three and would theorize about what would happen.
• She was extremely sensitive to the feelings and needs of others at three, had a fear of death  four.
• At two she realized situations. that were potentially dangerous and would tell others to be careful
• She kept eye contact with me from the minute she was brought to me in the hospital and always looked at who was holding, her and talking to her. He looked straight at the doctor in the delivery room.  The doctor even commented on it. 

Many parents reported that when their children were in the primary grades, they were bored, becoming behaviour problems, or becoming quiet and unhappy in regular classroom settings., A definite personality change was noticed by one mother,  who said her son, now a surgeon, never returned to his outgoing, happy personality after entering school.  His giftedness was not discovered until sixth grade, and he later was allowed to proceed more rapidly, completing pre med and medical school in six years.

At School Age

Parents must also help identify school age gifted children.  There is a tendency for teachers to nominate achievers - compliant, neat, behaving children who may or may not be gifted, while other areas of giftedness are overlooked.  Identification is left to the parents, too, when gifted children hide their, abilities at school, as many of them do, in order to appear more similar and more acceptable to their age peers.

Dorothy Sisk (1977) for example, has described characteristics of children who are gifted in other than academic areas - in the creative, visual and performing arts and in physical psychomotor skills.  Such creatively or physically gifted children demonstrate their talents early.  A visually gifted child might draw a man riding a motorcycle, while classmates are still struggling to put nose, eyes, and mouth in the right places in drawing a face.  Overall children who have special creative abilities will display many of the characteristics just cited as common to intellectually gifted children, but they also differ from intellectually gifted children in many ways.  They are likely to have one or more of these characteristics: a reputation for having wild and silly Ideas or ideas that are off the beaten track, a sense of playfulness and relaxation, a strong tendency to be nonconformist and to think independently, and considerable sensitivity to both emotions and problems.

 Elizabeth Drews (1963) has described four types of gifted school age youth, all of whom should be identified and guided along the avenues toward their potential. 

• The high achieving and studious are hardworking, striving A students who value parent and teacher expectations.
• The social leaders value peer attitudes.  Social interests come before other interests.  They sometimes do well academically, but this depends on the peer group of which they are a part 
• The creative intellectuals are divergent thinkers; that is, they look for a number of alternatives and creative answers to questions.  More of the highly gifted are in this group, although they may receive lower school grades than the social leaders or high achievers.  They conform neither to teachers ' standards nor their age peers ' expectations,  They aren't the leaders, and they don't want to be.  They often ask searching questions.
• The last are the rebels.  Rebels dislike rules and rebel against them. David Smith (1957) has suggested that students also rebel when neither the school nor the home environment is challenging them.  They do not achieve well and may receive poor grades despite their high potential.