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

Sorry to be a devil's advocate but after watching my two friends' kids as well as other advanced kids in dd's class, I wonder how a teacher who must only encounter a hg+ child once in a long time (if at all), would be able to distinguish a bright well prepared kid from a gifted kid. Especially during primary years and especially when the gifted kid has no interest in showing off their skills. I suspect the writer of the original article on this post has similar experience. He must come across at least a couple of well prepared kids with pushy parents every year, every class so when the parent with the real deal comes along, it is but natural to believe that he has just one more of the same.

Agreed. In some respects, that makes it all the more unfathomable that HG+ children could ever go unremarked. Yet somehow cognitive dissonance is up to the task of ignoring the reality right in front of many educators and administrators.

Face it how many teachers can even comprehend the fact that a seven year old kid will be pleading to do algebra or enjoying and for the most part understanding the graphic novel Logicomix.

I actually agree with the author as far as what was actually stated. He did not have enough information to ascertain whether the child in question was gifted. He even acknowledged that the child might be gifted. He didn't state that you have to wait until 3rd grade to ascertain giftedness, only that two seemingly disparate academic levels at K may (not will) converge by 3rd grade. Two of my children were reading chapter books in K, but I never presumed they were gifted based on a few years above-level reading. However, there were many other non-academic indications of giftedness, which suggested that they were likely gifted. Perhaps because I don't usually approach my children's education through the lens of giftedness, I did not find the author's experience/opinion offensive. I don't think this author was doubting IQ test scores or other (more) reliable indicators of giftedness pior to 3rd grade.

My son is in a school district with a large number of gifted kids, and 'hot house' kids. He was in a pullout class for the gifted & highly motivated kids for 3 years in older elementary. While some of the kids kids are both gifted and highly motivated, the non-gifted but extremely motivated were obviously different from the 'gifted' kids. For example my son didn't get the best grades in class but every teacher told me that it was obvious to them he was gifted and needed the rigor & challenge the class provided. I still get comments (he is a freshman in H.S.) from other parents that the other kids are very impressed with his math & analytical skills.

The trait that my son's teachers notice & comment on that I feel illustrates being gifted is how quickly he picks up new complex ideas.

I would tend to agree with this idea. Even starting at an LOG around 1 in 500 (IQ in the low 140s, I think), many years will likely pass before a teacher with an annual class of 25-30 kids will meet a child at this ability level. Perhaps the meeting would happen sooner with bigger classes (35-40 kids), but at that point, the teacher won't be noticing a whole lot of detail about each student.

Plus, even if the teacher has taught one HG kid, that's only one kid, which isn't much of a sample size. In the absence of education about giftedness, I suspect that many teachers wouldn't start to get it until they've taught several gifties. Which, given the numbers, is unlikely to happen in most schools.

I think that conventional ideas about giftedness lump into two categories: truly gifted = kids who learn calculus when they're 3 (derives from sensationalized media stories about THE NEXT EINSTEIN!!!) and GATE-program-level gifted = high achiever who doesn't make waves. A quirky kid who won't sit still or go along with the program doesn't fit either of these definitions.

These two ideas, combined with "my many years in the classroom" can add up to "Sorry, your kid isn't gifted."

Yes!!

I find it bewildering, that dichotomy. Unfortunately, I seem to have one of those children who isn't happily working on her second Fields Medal-worthy dissertation at 14... but on the other, she is far beyond what most school guidance counselors have ever seen live and in person.

Once they talk to her and look at who and what she is, experienced administrators take a step back, do a double take, and admit that they've "heard that we had one of these a few years ago." Or they "know of a boy/girl like that," or something equivalent.

At least that has been our experience. I figure that means that the local guidance counselor, who has seen about 20,000 kids over his career, and 'heard about' as many as another 30K... has seen one other child like mine, and heard of one other. Most of DD's teachers haven't ever seen another PG child.

(Well, not true-- but effectively she attends a school that serves as something of a magnet for kids at high LOG because conventional B&M schooling here does SO bloody little for them-- so there are a handful of them in her school of 4K+ students. Two in a class of 370 something. Both graduating in the top four. They are NOTHING like one another, other than being academic hotshots.)

This article and the preceding posts sums up the exact thinking from my son's first grade teacher, except I actually backed it up with an IQ test and an achievement test. He's highly gifted in the >99.9% IQ with a 99% achievement test score and yet I get pushback with similar reasoning.

Things I hear from her "once kids learn to read they all even out"; "truly gifted kids don't fit in"; "he doesn't already know x " (and will proceed to tell me how he doesn't answer every question she asks him correctly). She's apparently taught really gifted kids before and they would truly cry when they were bored. My son just complains at home.

I don't doubt that she has taught other gifted kids, but my son doesn't apparently fit the bill. He isn't particularly precocious in academics, but he's happy, we'll-adjusted and very social. He's very creative which helps him entertain himself and his humor gains him friends. He learns new things very quickly and has a superb memory. His handwriting just doesn't match up to the rest of him.

It is just this mindset of teachers of 'gifted or not' that underestimates kids. Honestly, who cares if they are/aren't gifted. If they are advanced in a subject or two for their age, give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. Helping them continue on a higher trajectory is more helpful than questioning how long that higher trajectory will last. If they have been 'hothoused' by their parents, then that is just helping them achieve outside the normal education setting. There is nothing wrong with that. If a kid has an interest and the parents are involved, it's bound to happen. It's a beautiful thing. High-achiever kids just might help spur some ambition and healthy competitiveness in gifted kids who fail to find a challenge and lose interest. Parents can self-identify their gifted kids until testing gives them an definitive answer. We don't know for sure until then. It's just a shame it doesn't happen until 3rd grade.If the test shows it though, it's a travesty to doubt or ignore it.

(Caveat - my son is newly identified through private testing and he's only 6, so I can imagine this discussion will grow more tiresome over the next couple of years.)

I know our experience is unlike that of most parents here because we have the good fortune to have a gifted magnet available to us, but I just will put in that the teachers at the magnet are fully aware that gifted does not have to mean "highly motivated achiever who does not make waves." That isn't to say we don't have some of those--and I will mention again that all these kids are 130+ IQ (hard cutoff). It's all over the map. I have a quirky high achiever myself (she gets very good grades but also evinces many "Hello, I am gifted and creative and rather a pain" characteristics), but her classmates include kids with LDs who have areas of very high achievement, some kids who are all around very bright, some artistic kids who are unusual and interesting, some highly mathy kids, some kids who were obviously square pegs and "I'm bored" problems in previous placements--it really runs the spectrum. Note that the curriculum does not fully suit all these kids. However, the teachers are no fools and do not ever question whether these kids are gifted. They know they are.

I honestly do not know if any of her classmates are PG. I don't know them well enough to say. I suspect not, but I could be wrong. I would say that certainly, definitely, some are HG.