Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parents as Excellent Identifiers of Giftedness?

Many of us probably have read the article from Linda Silverman, the Director of Gifted Development Center.
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/learned.htm

I'm wondering how good are we really in recognizing our children's abilities?

A little background about our experience. We had our son tested last September. He subsequently took SCAT and WIAT, and got into DYS in late April. We always knew that he was very bright since he absorbs information like sponges and is able to retain and recall them quite accurately since he was little.

We've dragged our feet long enough, and finally had our 2nd child tested last week, too. Mainly because of "test one - test all". We're planning to test our youngest once she turns 6, so it's only fair to test our 2nd child as well. Her result was really surprising because we found out that her PRI was actually higher than her older brother! We're really glad that we had her tested, because obviously, in her case, we were not the excellent identifiers we're supposed to be!

The rest of the article, I have to say, is quite accurate.

What do you think?





http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/learned.htm

Very interesting article.

We had no idea our HG+ daughter was gifted. We knew something was up... we thought just ADHD. Her psych-ed assessment blew us away. How could we have parented her for 7 years and not know?? In hindsight, she was premature, talked very late (3.5) and was functionally blind in one eye and vision in the other was very poor. She didn't reach milestones early. Her memory was amazing and she could do fractions at 4. Those things were freaky, but she was our first and we had no yardstick to compare her to. Her little brother is 2.5 and I am of two minds about him: either a) we are paying attention to little things and noticing his abilities more than we did with his sister, or b) he is a smart cookie. I will be shocked if he is not at least as gifted as his sister. Her ADHD hides ALOT. Classic underachiever.

Here are the parts of the article that stuck out for me:

14. Perfectionism, sensitivity and intensity are three personality traits associated with giftedness.

I remind DH of this when DS 2.5 has full-blown anxiety attacks when bugs fly near him, he gets his hair cut, someone gets upset with him, the hair dryer is turned on, the dog looks at him while he is eating, we try to get him to sit on a ride-on toy, or another child looks at his trains. He wants to know why our children can't act normally. Who else has to wrap their child in a blanket with one parent laying on top while the other does a hack job on the hair with a pair of clippers, all because no salon in the city will let him in??

18. Many cases of underachievement are linked to chronic early ear infections (9 or more in the first three years), with residual effects of auditory sequential processing deficits and attentional problems. Spelling, arithmetic, handwriting, rote memorization, attention, and motivation to do written work are all typically affected.

Our pedicatrician often jokes that we keep her in business. Both kids had chronic, non-stop ear infections.

I remember - ah, and thanks to google, can even find! - a long thread on which I ranted. I won't repeat the rant, but the short version is: to decide whether parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness, you have to agree beforehand on definitions of "giftedness", "identifiers" and "excellent" :-) We do not, as far as I or anyone could find then, have evidence for any claim along the lines "of those parents who believe without testing that their children have FSIQs over 130, 90% are correct" (even though you might well think we did, from what various authors have written with impressive-looking cites). What we do have experience of is that both parents and teachers can be wrong, and both ways! It may be that teachers tend to under-identify and parents tend to over-identify. Beyond that I'd say the situation is very murky.

Not in my case, even when my DS started reading at 2.5, I just kind of thought, "oh look how cute, he reads!" I remember thinking that he was probably not that gifted because he couldn't write or draw!!! Obviously his mother is not gifted. Lol.

There's a few of those custom yardsticks going around though.

I only worry about the teenage years. DD's strategic ability is amazing at 6. I wonder how she will try and outmaneuver in those difficult years....

Ren

I find this a fascinating topic, and I admit I am confused about it. On the one hand, as parents I'm sure we can read and interpret and project abilities before any objective measure of them is possible. When our DS6 was 3, for example, he stunned me one day in the middle of a game of catch when, completely out of the blue, he stopped to remark (correctly) that since he was 3 I must have been X when he was born. (X remains a variable in this version of the story to protect the innocent.) This was clearly an indication to me that he knew things about the relations between numbers. And yet, it was such a relatively non-repeatable event, that it is extremely unlikely any objective tester would have caught it. He did correctly say how old his mother must have been when she was born, and his uncle, but he soon tired of the game. And if you asked him the equivalent subtraction problem he had no idea what you were talking about. That said, I had seen enough to be convinced he had some ability.

On the other hand, I don't have anything like the kind of experience one would have to have with other children his age to know how unusual these abilities are. Indeed, the main experience I have with other kids his age with respect to these kinds of abilities is from stories within our own family about how a variety of now-very-accomplished adult family members acted when they were children. This is obviously a skewed comparison class, but I have no idea how skewed, and it is difficult to know really how DS measures up to it anyway. So even though I feel that as parents we can see better what abilities he has, I don't know how those abilities measure up to the norm. As a result, I remain completely confused about the level at which to place him.

Moreover, as a parent, I tend to take much more seriously his apparent inability to do things I'd have thought he could do than his apparent ability to do (what I'm told are) relatively advanced things that others his age can't. So even when objective observers (like his math mentor) say they are "floored" at how quickly he can learn things, I tend to assume there is something a little over-eager or over-generous about the comment. To top it all off, I'm totally confused about how to understand this reaction of mine. I vacillate between thinking it is an appropriate kind of caution, which keeps me from too quickly categorizing DS, and thinking it is deeply unfair to him, since I am refusing to admit his abilities.

In general, then, it seems to me that there are so many issues in the area that I just have no idea how to answer the question.

But then again, that's the way I feel about most interesting questions. Thanks to the OP for asking it.

I'd love to know if this kind of confusion resonates with others.

This reminded me of when we gave my oldest dd swim goggles for her third birthday. She didn't seem that interested and instead told her dad, "Maybe I will wear goggles when I'm 10 ... in 7 years."

That one stopped us cold. Thanks for reminding me of that story.

As for this topic as a whole, I think I sensed early on that older dd was advanced because we did a lot of playgroups and had interactions with same age kids. And when your kiddo is reading things out loud at two, and other people comment on it, it's tough to ignore.

However, I will be very interested when we test our younger dd next school year. She, I would not identify as anything but maybe MG (she's nearly 5.5 and just now plowing through things like Frog and Toad, doing basic subtraction and addition, etc). If her numbers come back anywhere near older sister's (who is a DYS), you will all need to mop me off the floor.

Here's a passage from the GDC link posted: 1. Parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness in their children: 84% of 1,000 children whose parents felt that they exhibited 3/4 of the traits in our Characteristics of Giftedness Scale tested in the superior or gifted range. Over 95% demonstrated giftedness in at least one area, but were asynchronous in their development, and their weaknesses depressed their composite IQ scores.

To me that doesn't seem like it says very much. It says that of the 84% who had 3/4 of the traits, most had at least one area of giftedness but their development or IQ may not show it. Am I understanding it that this of families who made the considerable commitment to travel and pay for testing at the GDC? Right there I'm thinking that would be a big screening device.

My anecdotal experience is in real life parents are often wrong. I've had parents tell me their kids are gifted based on stuff like reading Magic Tree House books as a seven year old, learning the ABC song as a three year old, etc. These are wonderful bits of development of course and should be celebrated. However, parents vary a lot in their knowledge of child development and some parents don't spend a lot of time around other kids. Typically developing babies, toddlers, and preschoolers can develop at a stunningly fast pace. One day they don't know something that the next day they do.

I don't think parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness. I often see numbers quoted to support the notion, but don't recall seeing any credible numbers about how many parents misidentify their kids as gifted. I think the internet has hugely intensified pushy-parent syndrome, so that if a child is not obviously delayed there's a bigger chance than ever that her parents will think she's possibly gifted.

I think this happens for lots of reasons. Talking about giftedness is trendier than ever, prompting many over-competitive types to focus their unholy energies in that direction instead of botoxing their children for the latest pageant, forcing their kiddos to run marathons, etc. Over-focusing on over-simplified milestone lists, especially with confusion over just how much early development truly correlates to giftedness, can only magnify this trend. At least in the US, concentration of needed resources in magnet schools, where there is typically some sort of bar to entry, adds incentive and angst. Etc. etc. etc.

ETA: I think ordinary parents are too-optimistic identifiers, and highly gifted parents too-pessimistic if anything.

We went to a new parent meeting/mixer a few weeks ago at my daughter's new school (for the fall). It was really, really odd how many parents mentioned how "bright" their child was. It is a private school & I have been trying to sort out if the majority of these kids are g/t or what. What are the odds that all these kids are gifted? I guess kids at 1sd from average are plenty bright? Who knows....


I completely agree with this..

Any speculation about why this is true, if it is?

A teacher from one of the better public schools told me 40% of the kids are gifted. so it's very possible. I wonder if you can ask the percentages of different levels of gifted at a school.
We are in a gifted school, which requires 95% to be admitted and average IQ is 130.

I think that the statement is misleading and that you are being too hard on yourself. Most people that I've met, who have more than one child have at least one child who they have underestimated. This isn't to say that if you had Silverman's checklist in front of you that you wouldn't have checked off 'needs to have tags cut out of shirts' or whatever might be on the list. I think my interpretation of the data is that parents of gifted kids (who themselves are likely to be gifted) are good at filling out Silverman's checklist. No always so good at adding up the details and coming up with a judgement of 'gifted.'

To me, if you want to make the statement that parents are excellent at ID ing giftedness, you have to take away the checklist and just ask "Do you think little Jeanie is gifted?" Then get a yes or no, then test. Personally I think parents are good - 84%. Excellent would have to be over 95% but maybe I'm being perfectionistic.

Also - this study has nothing to do with LOG. It just says 'Is child above or below the 97% cut off?' Given that Silverman attracts families with PG kids, it's no shock to me that at least 95% percent of the kids are over 97% in at least one aspect, if you take into account the various miseries, etc.

If you took a random Educational Psychologist that isn't Nationally know for being a terrific advocate of gifted and highly gifted kids, and had them ask 'Is Jeanie Gifted?' I think that the numbers would be very different. I think that very few of the parents would admit to more than bright, and few would be gifted overall. It would take a long time to complete the study.

Now - if you leave the G word out and said, "Do you think Jeanie is in the top 3% of intelligence compared to other kids her age?" More might say yes.

The bottom line is that I accuse you of the greatness of followthrough, Cocopandan, and I'm so glad that you went for it and had DD tested. Good for you!

Love and more love,
Grinity

I often see child characteristics of obedience and eager to please given as reasons a child is gifted. Also those with good immitation ability (such as mimicking dance steps or making a silly face, imitating a voice or repeating big words) can seem to parents to be gifted.

Polly

I, too, see a lot of high achieving good students being considered gifted by both their schools and their parents and would be hesistant to agree that parents (or schools) are good, let alone excellent, at recognizing giftedness. I'm also not sure on some of the characteristics on the GDC checklist, honestly.

Yes, it is probably accurate to say that many, or even most, gifted kids are intense and sensitive, for instance. Does the reverse hold true? Are many, or most, intense or sensitive kids gifted? It's like a rectangle/square thing -- all squares are rectangles, but all rectangles aren't squares. I'm not comfortable with having parents fill out checklists stating that their kids are sensitive and using that to assume that the child is also gifted. I know plenty of highly sensitive children and children who meet other objective measures of personality who are not gifted.

I wonder if you are refering to younger kids/ toddlers? I'd considered DS to be non-highly-gifted precisely because he is obedient (to a certain degree), compliant (to a certain degree) and generally very good natured and not given to exerting his will unless he absolutely sees a necessity to. Compared to kids we were told by their parents to be HG+, he seemed mild and too even-tempered. This was when he was 6-7 yo (he is still very mild mannered at 8). So I told myself he couldn't be gifted. Just couldn't. Look at kid X and kid Y. Their moms told me they are HG+. They are SO strong willed and argumentative. How can my happy-go-lucky guy be highly gifted right? LOL.

I think it is because people tend to take themselves and their experiences as being the measure of normal. Add to that that people tend to marry and associate with others who are at their approximate intellectual level,and you have a situation where a solidly average parent will see a child who is 1 SD above the mean as truly exceptional, and an HG/PG parent will see a child 2 or 3 SD above the mean as fairly typical in development (well, right up until the child goes to school or is otherwise placed among truly typically developing age peers).

I like aculady's idea too: if the natural comparison class is highly talented, but the child is only average w.r.t. that class, then the parent might be more hesitant to accept the "gifted" label. Likewise, if the natural comparison class is closer to the mean, but the child clearly exceeds it, then the parent might be inclined to jump the gun. If "optimistic" and "pessimistic" are statistical labels then this explanation seems a good one.

But there's a more psychological interpretation of these terms that I thought was in play as well. I thought the idea was that, for example, the highly gifted parents are more likely to look for defeaters to the putative evidence under consideration. This is more like what people sometimes call "denial" around here. You see patterns of reasoning like, "I know the objective measures indicate a certain very high level, but is it really possible that the kid I know so well is like that?" Or "It's true that I've never actually met another kid as talented as this one, but I have read about them. And surely DS doesn't match up with those." I myself feel inclined to these kinds of rationalizations, and they seem distinct from the statistical pessimism that aculady's interpretation seems to explain. Do others see a pattern here as well?


What kinds of questions, Dottie?

To the parent of a profoundly gifted child, a moderately gifted child may not seem gifted and their parents may seem to be over optimistic about identifying them as such. But I wonder if that's a fair statement? It's one thing if a parent of a moderately gifted child is claiming that their child is profoundly gifted, but the term "gifted" currently refers to a dramatic range of abilities, doesn't it? What other word are these parents to use when their child learns and understands differently than bright, hard working children but is not profoundly gifted? I worry about the children who neither fit the stereotypes teachers/schools have about how gifted children learn and behave (stereotypes which more appropriately match bright, hard working, competitive or "pleasing" children); nor are at a high enough level of giftedness to be easily identified without those behaviors. Let's not assume bad or selfish intentions when parents try to figure out how typical or atypical their children are. In lieu of very expensive formal testing, it is often not clear at all, and I think many parents are sharing information about their children as a way of testing the waters and trying to figure that out.

I don't think I would have come to the conclusion that my DS was gifted if it weren't for an article in the local paper listing signs of giftedness, which several friends and family members cut out and gave to us. I was in gifted pullouts as a kid, but being gifted was never something talked about in my family. I always just thought I was good at tests. It was only after reading books about giftedness when trying to figure out my kiddo that I realized that I was gifted and what that meant.

I'm not saying that I didn't think my DS was advanced, just the term "gifted" never entered the picture. He talked pretty early to the astonishment of others ("the baby just said that!"). We certainly underestimated the LOG as well, once DS was tested.

Interesting. I usually think of it the other way. I did a lot of graduate work in math, but eventually switched fields. DW has a strong math background as well. But that makes me think, "Of course DS knows a lot of math; we like it, talk about it a lot, and he therefore gets the exposure. If other kids had that kind of environment, they would know a lot as well." This is the kind of rationalization I am prone to, and I don't know whether it is healthy or a disaster.

I will say, the one time I go in the other direction is when the teachers or administrators at school suggest, as they sometimes do, that really there's nothing special going on at all. But I think this bothers me mostly because it is an opinion based on ignorance. These are teachers who seem intimidated by math - even at the elementary or middle school level! - and will do anything to avoid talking about it or accommodations related to it.

Why, thank you, Grinity. I'm just following your advice to avoid having to pay for therapy later

All the time!

I am struggling with exactly what Aculady describes, and also what BaseballDad describes... My kids seem "normal" to me, and compared to my friend's kids. They also aren't early readers so I keep looking at scores (DD2 in particular) and thinking "Nope, I read about kids scores like this and that doesn't seem like her?"... Makes it very hard to know what to do for her school wise etc.

Here's a post from the 'forgot how old they are' thread that really belongs over here:

This is a very interesting thread for me. DS 'got' all that sort of stuff around age 3 and was delighted with it. He would get all self-rightous and angry about 'parents lying to their kids' when it came to certain pretend characters who brought presents. Now that I'm reading this thread, I'm quite sure that this is where DS's PGness lies.

He's always been terrific at sorting out complicated situations and black/whiting them into truth/fiction categories quite accurately. Regarding the 'denial' thread, DS didn't ready early and he wasn't even ready for pre-Algebra when he tried it at 10 years old, so it has been easy for me to get that he's gifted, but harder for me to 'grock' that he is so 'unusually gifted' I think because it isn't a 'school subject.' As Baseball Dad who pointed out, part of me said 'well, I'm good at that so it's not such a big deal.' 'Sense-making' isn't a subject in k-12 school, and perhaps not even in college. Glad I get to take it out to play here.

Funny memory - When DS used to watch 'Blue's Clues' while I walked on the Treadmill, (I would guess around age 3 or 4) I happened to mention the theatre idea of 'breaking the 4th wall' from my college days. Boy, was DS pissed when he got marked 'wrong' on a worksheet in 2nd grade when he wrote the phrase 'broke the 4th wall' as part of his answer.

Sigh,
Grinity

TERRIFIC way of stating this.

DD really has no idea just how unusual she is-- but mostly because she hasn't ever been in an 'average' setting, I think.

On the other hand, because her exceptionalities are both genetically driven, we took some time to recognize how remarkable she was, too. We missed a lot of very clear indicators in her first two years of life, and she didn't seem so unusual to our families, either-- just like my DH and I... but... you know, a little moreso. Of course when you are talking about a pair of people who are both HG themselves, "a little moreso" gets you into PG territory in a hurry.

ETA: It wasn't until I started taking my then-3yo to work with me that I realized just HOW unusual she was. The other people I worked with would chat with DD-- and remark in awe to me later, privately, that they were forgetting how old she was in those conversations, because it was like talking to another adult... These were largely graduate students and scientists, incidentally, so pretty high standards for those kinds of statements. It was only then that we started looking at just what "normal" development actually looks like and realized that most kids don't know the entire alphabet by 18 months old, etc.

LOL about the teen years. Omigosh-- we. are. there. DD is just turning 12. And yes, this is an e-ticket ride with a socially prodigious and HG+ child. Yikes. Her stubborn streak is a thing of awe-inspiring magnitude.


My hair is greying at a rate that I would never have believed possible three years ago.

Thanks to all for their thoughts. This is a great thread.

Taminy - I especially appreciate your post. I live in the MG space you describe. Just by observation I know my kid is very bright and proably beyond bright. I know that he is not PG, and probably not HG. No $ for testing and no compelling reason to test.

To paraphrase MON, "if school offered enough challenge and believed in ALL the kids, encouraging them to achieve..." it wouldn't matter so much what his LOG is. If his needs were being met I'd have less reason to seek out a GT label. But as it's been the last two years of regular PS, I know that the work he's been getting is not engaging and that he is not working in his "zone of readiness".

Hopefully next year at a new charter school will be more fun/callenging and a better fit.

- EW

I have to agree with many of the posts. Surrounded by many other gifties, our children did not seem extraordinary, especially when we have close friends with 4 PGlets in their families! In our DD's class, there are at least 5 really bright kids. Not a typical classroom, I should add, when we compare to the other 4 K/1 classes in the school. Also, our DD is the calmest and least verbal among the three children. Lately, though, she's finding her voice. Really loud voice, too, sometimes

I also disagree with this. I think if you said, "Would you say your child is very bright? Could he or she be gifted?", you would get a lot of people--10-15%--saying yes. If you said, "Is your child in the top 1 or 2% of all children this age?" I think fewer parents would say yes. If asked that way, I think parents would be much more likely to guess correctly.

I have long been aware that my DD is smart, but wasn't sure myself if DD was a top 5-10% or a top 1-2% kind of kid until she was tested. It's easy to see "smart," but harder to see what level of smart. There is also the confounding factor of environment. Thought DD did test in the 99th percentile, I don't think she's nearly that statistically rare in our peer group.

Yes!! Part of my denial when he was younger was because we lived in the Bay Area. What he did intellectually just didn't seem so unusual when there were younger kids doing much more physically and quite a few of them intellectually also. And then I had my first brush with the word 'asynchrony' and almost literally felt the huge light bulb turn on!

We're beginning to see this in our usually not-so-stubborn DS8. I'm seriously dreading the tween/teen years and am hanging around here hoping for more threads on tween/teen behavior so I can be prepared.

In addition to what's already been said on this topic, I would add that everyone wants their child to be great, but everyone also wants their child to fit in. It's slightly illogical, when you say it that way, but I think you see it in all sorts of areas. Being smart is good, but being profoundly gifted is odd. Being great at baseball is acceptable, but being great at fluid reasoning is not. So, instead of bragging about it, (also not acceptable) we try to explain to ourselves ways that make it not so.

And, jumping to the original topic: I think the title is a bit misleading. The parents are agreeing to statements which in turn identify the child as gifted. They are not themselves identifying their child as "gifted" and snatching that word out of the air. Most of us only realized that our child(ren) were "different", and it took us a while to get to the reason. I also think that if you were just asking people if their child is "gifted" you'd get a higher than appropriate response. After all, "everyone's child is gifted." (sorry, I loathe the term gifted; I have a fondness for precision in language) If you asked if they thought their child was in the top 3% you'd get a lower than appropriate response, because 3% seems far above the acceptable normal range of smart.

Speaking to the normal-for-us idea -- that was totally us -- it sounds a bit bad to say it, but we expected DS to be smart, even really smart, because, well, he's our kid. But, wow. After a while even DH couldn't deny it, and he's the best at spinning things. On the flip side of that, I find myself pointing out to my friends that their kids are really smart, and even likely quite gifted, and that they shouldn't use DS as the benchmark of what gifted looks like because normal for our group isn't average.

I agree completely. Some things I've often noticed here:

1. When someone posts scores, they often give extra information designed to give the impression that the test scores are low. This seems to happen even with DYS-level scores, as if they're something to apologize for; it appears to happen over the entire spectrum of scores.

2. There is somewhat of a tendency to engage in one-upmanship. This happens with testing info sometimes, but has also happened in discussions of milestones and school advancement.

3. There is sometimes a tendency to false modesty: for example, acting like a smart child's skills actually scare the parents by virtue of being so advanced.

4. There is a bit of cliquishness, or so it seems to me. Talking about "these sorts of kids", you know 'em once you've had 'em, that sort of thing. I think that this is may be a form of response to the fact that people come here with information or questions on children who are pretty obviously not DYS level or above in current ability.

5. There is a borderline obsession over categorization, e.g. the Ruf levels or the labels of HG, EG, PG, with or without pluses. Once one's kid reaches the gold standard of DYS admission, one's kid is able to be labeled PG here. I think this may be a sort of safe haven for a parent's ego.

I don't want to offend anyone, and I should mention that I myself may have done some of these things too. I consider these sorts of behaviors to be natural and unavoidable in a group, due in part to the way intelligence scores are viewed. You reduce a person to a number, where a higher number is better, and it's going to create stress. And many of these behaviors have a rational basis. There certainly are bad testers, perfectionism, etc. I view the comments by parents going along/commiserating as confirming those parents' views of their own children, but also as driven by honest emotion for fellow sufferers.

I've noticed this. I think it's very natural; we see our own [children's] capabilities as being what we [they] can do in ideal circumstances (which is fair enough) but extended on-demand reality never comes up to that imaginary standard. (Cf the Fundamental Attribution Error, and more prosaically, people estimating how long it's going to take them do to something by thinking about how much they could do in so many Ideal Engineering Days - it's a psychological basic.)

This I don't recognise as having happened here so much; I hope this isn't a sign that I do it myself a lot! It may be a question of how one assigns motives; I don't think that if one person posts that their child got to a milestone at age X and another posts that theirs got there at age Y < X, I'd see that as entering into competition, so much as joining in. Perhaps people are less likely to contribute a Y > X, though?

Yes, this is a comfortable position to take, socially. It can also, I swear, be the absolute truth. I am very scared for my DS and by the responsibility of making choices for him.

This is an interesting one. Clique is just a negative word for community, after all. I certainly experience a tension between wanting to be welcoming and wanting to preserve the distinctive feature of this place, viz. that here I can feel my child is relatively normal.

I agree that there's a lot of focus on labels and numbers that doesn't sit well with me, but I'm not sure ego is the reason. I think most people generally feel happier with phenomena once they've been labelled and numbered. I strongly mistrust the labels and numbers (I don't feel that any of the ones generally used here have particularly well-defined or useful semantics) but I nevertheless feel the attraction. Names are power, and numbers even more so :-)

Yup.

No, no. Nothing of that was aimed at you, and I didn't think of you when I wrote it. You just share your experiences. My statements weren't aimed at anyone. There are trends here, like in any community, so something I once noticed might not happen any more; people here don't talk about milestones so much any more, for instance, though it was all the rage for a while. I might also simply be wrong on a number of points. In any event, the main idea I wanted to convey was that the same forces can affect us all.

I can understand a desire not to let this become like other websites. Without naming obvious ones, I've seen how they can get to be like the local playground, opinionated confrontational types and all. It's a shame that your son can't be admitted to DYS.

I love this! I would still answer no even though the tests say otherwise LOL There are a lot of gifties and smarties at DD's school, 25% test in to gifted (IQ 130+), many more I assume are very close, and there are about 5-6 I would guess to be 145+ or at least extremely motivated. DD merely looks to be in the top 10% of her peers, not 3%, a fact which keeps our pride to humble ratio in balance. I still secretly think that her IQ score was somehow inflated.

Now DS on the other hand...well...sigh....I'm not sure anything can balance his pride

I feel like my DD is probably more like top 10% in her general peer group (as in, the people we hang around with), all around...BUT I really feel she is in the top 1% or beyond in terms of her motivation, curiosity, and drive. This is a big part of what makes her look different. I was explaining the concept of state standardized tests as a general metric for academic performance last night (she's never taken one) and her eyes lit up. "Can *I* take one? Do *I* get to take one of those tests?"

I wonder at times if this is what makes my dd12 look so different as well. If I had to guess, I'd say that the two communities we straddle school wise, both of which dd has attended school in, are 1) a very average make up where 98th nation-wide is probably 98th in this community, and 2) a somewhat more educated and intelligent community where a 98th nation-wide score might be 90th or 95th for this community. Dd has chosen to choice back to the higher ability and achieving community for high school b/c she feels like it is a better fit for her.

That said, she still looks like a kid who is rarer than the top 1-2% in both communities. She is probably a top 1-2% kid here when compared to kids 1-2 yrs older than she (the grade she's in). I'm not sure if it is b/c her IQ is actually much higher than measured so much as that her unusual drive and direction make her a force to be reckoned with. She's also just an "old soul" who seems somewhat older than her chronological age.

Yes, that really resonates with us, as well.

That sense that someone like me or my DH could totally fly under the radar around here given the local distribution (about 30% of the school district identifies as GT, and that is top 5% here). DD is easily still top 1-5% (depending upon the day and the context) even among peers several years older than she is.

She feels out of place a lot even in the best fitting environment we've been able to concoct for her... and for most gifties, it'd be an exceptionally good fit, I think. It certainly would have been for everyone I knew in my own peer group growing up.

I also have the sense of wanting to tell my friends (many of whom do have GT kids, identified by the school district) that they really should not be comparing their kids to DD. But I have yet to figure out a way of having that come out sounding anything but insufferable. So I just offer genuine enthusiasm for their kids' very real accomplishments, try to encourage them to talk about their kids, and keep quiet about DD.

I have nobody IRL to talk with about the kinds of asynchrony issues that dog our every parenting decision, however. I think maybe that is truly a problem related to LOG.

A lot of advice from other parents (even educators or other child-development experts) is inappropriate to our situation. It's a bit isolating, and it definitely requires good social skills on our part to smile and say "Thank you" for the (otherwise thoughtful and well-intended) advice... after all, "Use your words" wasn't useful with a toddler who already had a pretty significant vocabulary and no 'off' switch. LOL. Just like "oh, there's parental control software for that" isn't now that my 12yo knows how to hack most of it. When I mention things like this to counselors and school administrators, they just kind of go "blank" a lot of the time. Occasionally, I'll describe something that DD habitually does and they'll become very excited to finally know a child that really "does that" since they heard/read about kids like her. So yes, I think she must really be that unusual.

We didn't exactly live in denial-- more that we didn't want to be "those" parents. The insufferable braggarts whose kid isn't that special. So we tend to downplay what DD does rather than over-estimating it. We're both physical scientists, too, which makes us hypercritical and skeptical of subjective data, but also of numerical data, for that matter. We don't tend to put a lot of stock in labels and testing, believe it or not.

Yes, we expected that our child(ren) would be bright-- probably gifted, even. We both are, after all. I didn't really understand some of the things that my extended family had shared about raising the PG member of my family until the light dawned re: DD when she was a few years old, though. Then I finally understood the odd mixture of terror, exasperation, exhaustion, and pride evident in those recounted anecdotes.

This may be because I already know that my DCs are not DYS level, but I haven't looked at the details people post in quite that way. We opted not to test our kids because our district doesn't (as far as we can tell) take cognitive test scores into account. This has left us caught between what I've read on-line and off, and the vague assurances of people in our district who talk a good game, but whose practices seem more aligned with the mythology of giftedness (hard working/high acheiving/dot the i's cross the t's kinds of kids) than with the complexities. I have...well, based on what I've read here, probably not a cheetah, but certainly a very fast gazelle who only runs when there is real risk (she doesn't like to fail) or something really enticing to run after. It has been extremely difficult for me, as a parent, to figure out how typical or atypical she is. The details that people have been willing to share here have been ENORMOUSLY helpful to me. The sorting of kids into HG/PG etc. is part of the picture I needed to get a more realistic picture. As has been mentioned in other threads, it is very uncomfortable to test the waters IRL without feeling like I have to mince words or downplay what we have seen, especially where it is inconsistent with she does at school. Getting a better picture has given me the courage to advocate for her and to--finally--get her moved from a "cage" to a "fenced grassland" in her strength subject. As it turns out, she is a much happier and much faster gazelle out in the grassland than she ever was in the cage of her very modestly differentiated classroom, and it has given her the motivation and courage to request more in math (a secondary strength), which is a strength that has always been muted by her global rather than linear approach to thinking and learning. Now if I can just get a handle on my "all or nothing" DS....

That is such a lovely descriptive quote.
As far as the definitions of HG, EG, PG, OG not having proper national standardized definitions, well, they don't have to. Grinnity has repeatedly said "gifted is as gifted does. If the child is outside of the norm enough to need accommodations then that's what they are." Where if matters nationally is in the case of talent searches and DYS who set their own criterias.
IMHO this thread is correct that parents considering their family history, their child, and their community could better answer a more specific question than the generic "are they gifted?". Beyond not knowing they weigh the question for how the asker has it loaded.