Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Wow, great argument, not all children are gifted

I just found this blog and didn't find any other posts on it. This post in particular, No! For the last time, every child is NOT gifted!, articulates so clearly the argument so many of us have to make on a regular basis when we advocate for our children. I found it helpful and reassuring.

Most of the article I agree with, except for the 100% nature instead of nurture. There certainly is both a nature and nurture element to giftedness. As annoying as it is to hear someone claim that giftedness is all nurture, it is equally annoying to hear that nurture has nothing to do with the phenomenon. Now, certainly if you took an absolute perfect identical twin(as identical as possible at the moment of birth) and put them into two different houses that were not grossly negligent, and had no major medical catastrophies you would not get have a case of one with a 100 IQ and one with 150 IQ. However I think it would be entirely possible within 2 loving homes with different food, and enrichment have one with a 125 IQ and one with a 135 IQ. Therefore one twin would be identified as gifted while the other would not.

That said I agree with the fact that it is a shame that people scoff at advanced children, and assume that they must have been the result of a hothouse environment. I know that I personally push physical play more than academics, but my dd 2 1/2 excels at both academics and physical activities. She pushes herself at academics while I encourage physical play. Yet, I have suffered the comments that assume that I must have a hothouse child.

All things said I think it is a very good article. It does point some very real injustices.

Great blog. She makes a lot of good points in her posts.

I love that post.

Celi's blog is a wonderful blog with lots of great posts. This topic is a particularly important one, though. So many people assume that giftedness is something that anyone can achieve, and confuse being gifted with the fact that every child is a "gift" to his or her parents.
Gail www.giftedchallenges.com

You nailed it! This is exactly where the confusion lies. Which is why many people believe that every child is gifted in some way.

Thanks, Ashley. The term "gifted" is so controversial because it fuels so much envy and suspicion among those who don't have an identified child. Unfortunately, books like Gladwell's and others incite further controversy by creating an impression that anyone can be gifted if they just work hard enough. Families without a gifted child also don't understand the many struggles gifted children face and think it's all so easy!
Gail www.giftedchallenges.com

I must admit while I totally agree not all children are gifted I am not a big fan of this site. Among other things I find the author tends to repeat the same points over and over again, never really advancing. What she does say tends to be dogmatic and often self-pitying in the other direction. Gifted kids must be X,Y, and Z (based on her mostly anecdotal experiences with her son) Blanket statements like the "They are emotionally very sensitive.", "They have a strong sense of right and wrong." etc. There's no real exploration of the diversity of "giftedness".

What I find most troubling is that she casually violates her teenage son's privacy. Perhaps she cleared eveything with him, but the site is just full of sensitive details and photos and it makes me very uncomfortable thinking about what happens when his peers can click through and read the same material.

All people have gifts. Not all gifts are rare intellectual profiles in the top 2% of the population, the general working definition of intellectually gifted. Giftedness may exist separate from achievement.

Some children are kinesthetically gifted, musically gifted, or creatively/artistically gifted, as evidenced by achievement. Schools may invite them to try-out for possible participation in highly selective programs including varsity sports, travelling choir, 1st chair orchestra/band, lead roles in school plays, and opportunities to compete for top awards in art, Destination Imagination, Lego/Robotics, and Rube Goldberg, to name a few.

Some children are academically gifted, high achievers of average IQ, learning well those things which others tend to place before them, at the pace determined by others. The approaches which may be most effective in supporting these students to develop their potential may be quite different than the approaches most helpful in supporting the development of intellectually gifted pupils (cheetahs) in reaching their potential (as mentioned in the study in this thread).

Some may say that the encouragement to practice was an achievement-based idea of reaching one's potential or level of mastery, rather than developing a gifted intellectual profile. Others may say the ideas conflate giftedness with achievement creating a chicken-or-egg dilemma.

Similar things have been said about mindset, however one aspect or application of mindset is that gifted kids may stop taking appropriate risks in order to always be seen as "right" or "smart" or "making things look easy" and never be seen as "wrong" or "struggling" or "experiencing difficulty" or "expending effort" (as though effort was the antonym of gifted), and this may work against gifted kiddos as a fixed mindset and lack of resilience.

The article at this recent thread addresses a few highlights of differences between intellectually gifted children and high-achieving children of average IQ, who may often be combined together in classrooms for efficiency or economy of scale.

Thanks, Ben, I agree.

In particular, I found the post describing details about her son's underachievement to be in bad taste. Way too much information about someone other than the author who has to live with the consequences of what she wrote. He looked pretty young in those photos, and to me, it was too much.


TBH, I also fatigue of the line about how hard it is to be really smart. Yeah, I don't always connect with everyone, and there are other frustrations, but honestly...emphasizing this idea as though being really smart makes life so incredibly tough is a bit like a multimillionaire complaining about hard it is to keep track of all his money.

I can see that other people could see this phrase as example of a clueless person whinging about something that's basically a nice problem to have. You think it's hard being wealthy? Try poverty. You think it's hard being smart? Try being dumb.