Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Ruf's book question

I also think the motivation changes for different things. My DS6 was a level 5 when it came to knowing about Transformers, cars, construction equipment, letters and numbers, etc. (depending upon when in his life you were looking). He was a level 4 at other things that were not his then-current obsession. He didn't have the drive to learn everything about everything, but he would have moved heaven and earth to know more about his pet subject.

I believe there's a very fluid line between level 4 and 5, and maybe between 3 and 4 as well.

Thank you for all these posts. I found these more informative than anything else I have read here. Probably because this is what confused me the most. CFK's and delbows comments seem to mirror my own thoughts and it also makes me look back at my own history where I skipped two grades and had subject matter acceleration in addition. But I lost my motivation as friendships and having a society was important to me.

I am hoping that having the specific elementary school geared to the gifted and having enough kids that motivate her will not create the temptation of keeping herself back.

That is the other thing. If Ruf's right about the number of Level 5s out there, there should be a lot of them in NYC, based on population, demographics of HG parents. The gifted elementary school head of admissions didn't seem to think there was that many.

Ren

That's a good point too, Kriston.

DS could write a book on the Spiderwick Chronicles series right now. Or whales. He does have his "topic du jour" which he completely immerses himself in and is highly motivated to learn about. I'm not seeing that kind of motivation in anything "academic". I guess that doesn't mean something won't click someday when they find a true passion.

�The one thing I do agree with completely is that internal motivation eventually determines much about what happens in the upper LOG. I have two kids not far apart on AT, IQ, or school ability. One wants to learn physics at 7 and the other wants to play basketball all day. I suspect they will look very different at 17 and that won't be about anything other than desire and rage to learn.�

J

My son also demonstrates a rage to learn. He really wants to fit in also, but not at the expense of his next science project! We're still working on finding a more accomodating educational environment.

I'm bumping this thread, since it seems timely. Obviously, there is plenty of debate among members of the forum about Ruf's usefulness.

And we're all perfectly okay with that.

Books, websites, even forums like this one, are all tools. Take what works for you and ignore what doesn't. Everything won't work for every person, and that's okay. It's just that simple.

Happy Friday, all!

Well, I stumbled into all this much later, when DS was 10 or so, so I might have felt different if I had a toddler. At the time I read Ruf's book, I found it very helpful. I had become somewhat disillusioned with the IQ numbers which did not seem to capture the whole story for DS. I found reading about individual children, their abilities, passions, and day-to-day activities to be more useful than seeing numbers. When I got to the level 4 kids, I suddenly felt like I'd found my own family--my brothers and my son. Everything I had read so far had been either clinical (IQ numbers) or institutional (how to advocated for your kid), but this was the first book that gave enough real anecdotes about real kids that I could feel a human connection. Imagine fire works and violins playing as I finally found GT chemistry!

I think of the book as a way of describing Ruf's own clinical experience. I guess as a counselor, myself, I appreciate how hard it can be to try to quantify the gut feeling that an experienced clinician gets when we are working with a client. But I have also learned to recognize that the gut is often more right than the so-called objective measures.

I like how you express that acs. That's a lot like how I feel about it, but, I am not so eloquent!

I

Thank you Kriston. And I find acs's comments very useful and I understand the emotional satisfaction achieved by Ruf's book. I too experienced that.

Ruf's book was helpful in understanding that there are differences between gifted children -- particularly how gifted. The reinforced point that a moderately gifted child will behave and respond to traditional education much differently than an exceptionally gifted child.

In my case, after the emotional high of saying "I am not crazy" this is real, there was this feeling of "now what" and I did not get clear direction on where to go, or how to do it. Especially when I read that level 4 & 5 should be able to complete the elementary education curriculum in a year. I did not know what to do with that. And when I put that in the forum, the responses I got back were: "you kind of ignore that" I paraphrase. But did anyone here experience their PG kid doing the elementary curriculum in a year and have them start college at 10 or 12?

I did not get one response that said yes. In my own research, particularly looking at the Giga Society that does have level 5 people their view is that there are only 7 people in the world at that level at any one time. Or are they level 6?

Ruf's book was a very intersting starting point, but just that, as starting point for me.

Ren

Yes, me too, acs. I love quantifiable data, but these are PEOPLE! We're not always quantifiable.

I think that just as a mother's intuition has merit that shouldn't be ignored because "she's not an expert" (BAH!), so also should we pay attention to the observations of a person trained in gifted psychology. Moms aren't always 100% right, but they're usually more right than wrong. Ruf is certainly not 100% right for every child, but there's something there that might be useful for some people.

That's worth having around, even if it isn't perfect, provided we interpret the book as case studies and extrapolations therefrom instead of exclusionary definitions of GTness, and provided there are other tools available for those who need them.

Hi Ren,
I have no doubt about my son's ability to start college, at least, part time now. He's 12 and his ACT scores are higher than the average entering freshman at the nearby college. He has good study skills and is interested in a lot of things. For all practical purposes he had mastered the academic portion of elementary school by 3rd grade or so and any gaps could have been filled in quite easily. so I think Ruf is absolutely right, that kids can finish elementary early and just go right on to HS and college.

But my DS doesn't want to. So it simply isn't a goal for our family. He loves a lot of things about school. He has friends he doesn't want to separated from; he loves orchestra; he participates in extra-curricular sports; and the boy is crazy about dodge ball. He runs for student council every year and is an officer in the schools philanthropic organization. These are all valuable non-academic learning experiences and he is not suffering at all--in fact he loves his life. So we are happy not pushing him to his full potential.

The same IQ/abilities and a different personality and he'd be in college.

So, Ren, I think the issue is that even as you know that your daugher is capable of finishing formal education early, you need to also realize that there is still so much more about her that you don't know yet. I didn't know what kind of school experience my DS would have when he was a pre-schooler. You may find that she is driven to learn at an astonishing pace and blows through elementary school. But her passion may be something different, music or sports or fashion design or playing with friends, and that those take all her time and she is happy to take her time with spelling and math and social studies. You just don't know yet.

I hope this helps!