Gifted Children and Language Development

In most of the cases language and speech development in gifted children takes place early as compared to normal children. Read about language development and common characteristics of advanced language abilities in gifted children. Nurturing and raising a gifted child can be quite a challenge. There is no set of rules to guide parents on how to handle a gifted child. The most important thing that parents of a gifted child can do is to spend a lot of time with the child and get to know of her special interests. Parents must be aware of the child’s subject of interest and encourage her by providing the right kind of support. Children gifted in specific subjects such as art, nature, music, and sports need opportunities to explore the particular subject in depth. Stimulation from parents and their support is absolutely essential for the child to develop her talent. Children learn from their parents first. Therefore in the initial years parents can help a child identify her personal interest by reading and talking about varied subjects. In this articleAdvanced Language Ability in Gifted ChildrenTalking Early Advanced VocabularySentence StructuresAdvanced Language Ability in Gifted Children Advanced language ability which is one of the characteristics that many gifted children possess. Such children achieve milestones pertaining to language much faster than normal children of their age. Children gifted with advanced language ability tend to talk earlier, have larger vocabularies, and use longer sentences as compared to their peers. Characteristics of Language Abilities in Gifted Children Have a quick look at characteristics of language abilities in gifted children. 1. Talking Early Majority of children utter the first words of their life at around one year of age. Gifted children often start speaking as soon as they turn nine months old. However, not all gifted children start talking early. Some are in fact late talkers and start talking only after they are two years old or even much later. Such later talkers sometimes skip over the standard stages of language development. For example they may directly start speaking in full sentences instead of uttering words initially. It is important to understand that irrespective of whether a child is a late talker or an early one she may be gifted. 2. Advanced Vocabulary Gifted children have an advanced vocabulary. Such children will be ahead of their peers in two aspects- the number and types of words that the child uses. A normal two year old child may have a vocabulary of 150-300. Gifted children on the other hand have knowledge of over 100 words by the time they are eighteen months old. The types of words a gifted child has in her vocabulary will also be different from that of her peers. The first words which any child learns will be nouns like mama, daddy, dog, ball, bird, etc. Thereafter, the child will pick up simple verbs like want, go, see, give. Gifted children in this second stage have the ability to use connecting words like such as and or even, because etc. By the age of three the vocabulary of gifted children far exceeds that of their peers. 3. Sentence Structures A child with gifted language ability will be able to speak full sentences by the time she is two years old. By the time they turn three years of age the language of such children may resemble that of an adult. Normally, the child will be in a position to converse well and carry on full conversations with adults. Majority of gifted children have extraordinary language abilities. The range of language development however need not necessarily be the same for all gifted children. In fact it may vary from one gifted child to another. It is important to remember that there are also some gifted children who may not possess special language ability. This does not imply that the child is not gifted. What are the remarkable language abilities in gifted children? How to enhance the language abilities in gifted children? What is the difference between language development in normal and gifted children? Discuss here.