Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Sorry, but your child may not really be gifted

I prefer the term "high cognitive needs" or "asynchronous" myself-- but yeah, sometimes you have to use terms that are clearly loaded in the vernacular, like "advanced," "high cognitive capacity," or yes, "academically gifted."

I also tend to talk about the RATE of learning being different and resulting in different needs as a student.

Because that seems to be the clearest consequence and the largest problem. It's not that she needs "advanced" material all the time-- just that she needs for the rate of instruction to be about 2.5 to 10 times what most of her classmates do. And truthfully, that includes some of the "identified" bright/GT ones.

No way can you hothouse that kind of rate. Luckily, that seems to be the "tell" for the real thing with most educators. I've yet to run into anyone that honestly believes that a 9year old can be "coached" into learning an entire year's worth of high school math, science, or social studies in a couple of weeks. They may think that I'm lying, but they don't think that it doesn't mean what I think it means.

I remember going on vacation while I was pregnant with my daughter. DS13 (then 4) had so many questions about what was going on, I just bought a basic book about pregnancy (lots of pictures) and took it with us on the plane. We spent considerable time looking at pictures of babies growing inside of mommies.


Agreed. It drives me to distraction. I think that an important thing that drives it is that schools generally do NOT grok gifted kids, and they especially do not grok kids who are highly gifted or more/HG+. I suspect that there is an idea of what "gifted" looks like (high achievers who don't complain, in part). Kids who don't fit it are therefore not gifted.

Outside of anonymous message boards, a few close friends and close family we don't tend to discuss our kids in detail. It didn't take long to learn that our normal wasn't exactly normal

Most people who spend any amount of time with them (DS in particular) eventually come to their own conclusions. They might think he is hothoused to know all he does about the odd topics he obsesses over. Once you are lucky enough to be interrogated by him (or witness him interrogating us) then they usually understand that he is the one driving this bus. I use the word interrogated because honestly, it seems too relaxed to say that he asks questions. It is intense.

Sometimes it cracks me up watching him interact with kids his age in front of other parents. I love watching the reactions he sometimes can get out of people and they usually look at me and I just smile and shrug my shoulders. He's only 7 so there aren't any filters at this point so it can be quite entertaining.

eyreapparent - I had basically the same conversation with DS a few years ago. Buckle up, in my experience the questions keep getting crazier

And I'll add that there is also the fact that if the instruction is even halfway decent, the child will often hold up a hand when you've only explained part of something and say, "Stop! I think I get it!" At which the child will then prove that s/he gets it.

I didn't have any major problems with the article. It seemed to me to say, "This woman appears to be rushing to judgement on her child's abilities based on limited information," and I didn't see any reason why he would be wrong. In this woman's case, her child may even out by third grade, because she may be wrong about her child's abilities, and time will tell. The author also does not discount the idea that she may be dead right about her child's abilities, and she's just not articulating her case very well.

But then, a literal reading of his message is one thing, and the way others may choose to interpret it is something else. He does address but does not do a good job of poking holes in many of the bad stereotypes we find ourselves dealing with (false binary of nature/nurture, precocious = hothoused, all are gifted in some way, etc.), so the article does more harm than good.

Didn't read the article, but IQ is measured on a continuum. Giftedness is not a thing that you either have or don't have. There's nothing magical that happens at IQ=130. If you use that criterion, and the IQ test typically has an error of just a few points, then the false positives and false negatives will each outnumber the true positives.

Howler - that's exactly what we've seen. And DS's behavior follows a very clear pattern... when a new subject is introduced, he's easily agitated and anxious for like, 2-3 days. Then he goes back to being calm, then about a week later he's bored and spends a lot of time reading, refusing to do work, hanging out in the resource room. Then they start a new subject and it repeats. This year I'm just thankful that he is actually learning new things! Even if the progress is too slow.

I get that some kids are hothoused, I get it. Yet, what about those of us who have dc that are different. They learn rapidly, with great intensity and thirst for more? I am sick of educator's or really anyone else who thinks I hothoused my son. This is a VERY sore topic for me. As ds was my first, I just enjoyed him and fun; never was trying to teach him. I honestly, wasn't even sure what to teach.

With ds3, he refuses to respond with any traditional, boring methods. Yet, he will spell words with alphabet fries, loves playing Cars math games, and playing with gear toys.

I am grateful to have met a wonderful neuropsych who sees ds6 for who he is.

Last gripe, I'm sick of school wanting kids to fit in a box! Linguistically, I get it. Yet, I had no idea how badly served my ds would be at school.

I was very happy my child did NOT get the 1st grade teacher that used the "I think all children are gifted" as her favorite quote.

Ds6 is getting the GT co-ordinator for his class teacher next year. Her intro letter mentioned she has an affinity with ESL students but had nothing on her position as GT co-ordinator??