Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Levels of giftedness

True, acs. We all do that. I think I was falling into the "all kids are like mine, right?" trap when I misread DS6's level of GT. When you only have one data point, it's not hard to misread the data. He's all I knew, so I figured he was significantly closer to average than he is. I knew he was GT. That was never in doubt. But I significantly underestimated how GT. And that makes as much difference as the difference between ND and "vanilla" GT. It's a drastic change in the needs of the child.

I did follow DS6 where he led, Bianca--I read the "Consumer Report" car edition to him while he potty trained, for goodness sake! I followed! It's not like I plopped him in front of the TV and ignored him. But the fact remains that he can only lead as far as his environment allows.

DS6 was always curious and active and incredibly verbal, but he was the sort of kid who was writing grand stories in his head or building things or staging auto races with his toys, not nagging for constant attention. He's an introvert, as am I, so I was happy to let him do his own thing a lot.

He has always asked a lot of questions, but they were the sort I expected from your garden-variety GT kid...because I didn't know any better. Don't all MG kids obsess over alphabet puzzles at 13 months and know their letters and numbers to 0-9 by 15 months? I simply didn't know better. Once I read Dr. Ruf's book with baby book in hand, I realized how wrong I was. (But I just did that this past fall, a few short months ago.)

So I maintain that earlier ID would have helped us. Maybe it was just us. Maybe no one else made the mistakes we made. But we made them, and that should be taken into account. I guess I'm saying please don't dismiss early ID just because you think it wouldn't have helped you. As acs says, we all think that our own experience is what others experience, that our kids are the norm for everyone else's kids. I'm telling you that in this case, that's not true. Maybe we're the exception, but we exist.

Was our son in agony his whole young life? No. But he was bored. Did he find ways to entertain himself? Yes, absolutely. It's one of his strengths. But to me, prolonged boredom is a problem even if a kid can find ways to cope. And he was bored not just at school, but at home, too. I'm not sure he even knew he was bored--it was just his life. Just how thing were.

That makes me sadder than anything else.

When you think about levels of giftedness, what about varying levels among your own children? My oldest is moderately gifted and my youngest (I have only 2) is highly gifted. So when he started mastering things that she was only just beginning to get, even though she was 2 grades ahead of her age, since he was 2 years younger than she is, she felt "stupid."

It wasn't until she spent 6th grade in a school (she had homeschooled until then that she finally believed she wasn't really stupid.

How do you deal with several gifted siblings at various levels of giftedness?

You concentrate on different things.

Hi Kathi.
I also have two. Boy 12, girl 10.
Opposite situation as the first one is more academically gifted the the second. But my D is EXTREMELY gifted socially. Everybody loves her and she knows how to take advantage of that.
She is pursuing her older brother and maybe it is more natural in my house because the more gifted one is the older one? I don't know. But I know that it is very important, VERY imortant, to find some above average feature in your "normal child"
She is a model, straight A student loved by all. He, while popular, is an adjective :-)

Hi Ladies,

I'd like to skip back and address the conversation between Kriston and Gratified. Yes, we probably have some parenting ideas that are different and some that are the same.
We had both of our daughters tested before 5 and DD7 was tested twice.
DH and I have valid reasons for doing so. Some will agree, some will disagree, it doesn't really matter to us, we did what we felt we needed to do.
Yes, I'm sure some PG babies are just drooling at 6 months. DD7 did some unusual things from 6-12 months. They weren't subtle. They were somewhat disconcerting. It was a good thing to be able to put this information in some sort of context.
Coming from a minimizing, gifted denial family, those scores helped me. It gave me permission to give my DD's way above level appropriate material. If I hadn't known their potential abilities I would have dismissed some of their requests when they were younger, thinking, Oh you can't do that.
Everyone has a different story and a different set of circumstances.........Let's respect that.
Kriston, you can't go back and do anything different, cut yourself some slack.
You are an awesome mom and DS is lucky to have you. Can't remember if you have other children?? Sorry The caffeine hasn't jump started my brain yet.
I love this forum, it exposes me to different opinions. Often, I get the most out of reading posts that are so different from my own ideas. It allows me to expand my point of reference which is cool.

Peace,
Incog

Incog - beautifully stated.

I think there are good and not so good reasons to test early. Whoever spoke about their child spending a lot of time in day care was a great example. I was (and am) a stay at home parent. I bought my preschooler lego set's for teenagers (and I assumed all 4 year olds could assemble them) and had a science lab in my kitchen. I taught my 4 year old how to play chess. He was highly demanding. His preschool was very open ended and active. He wouldn't have been ready for formal curriculum, although I wish I would have left some early readers laying around, instead of going from baby books to Roald Dahl. I'm sure he would have read much earlier with minimal effort.

I found he was only limited once he got to all day kindergaten. And unfortunately for him, now is very well behaved and is more than satisfied with blending into the crowd. I feel like I'm much more in tune to DD3.

And I can totally relate to being in a gifted denial family. That was completely my family growing up. It is comforting to be validated. When I found out DS was highly gifted it really made so much of my childhood make perfect sense.

Wow J!
DOK ((drooling on the keyboard))
Children in families, even with varying LOG, seem to be much closer together in ability than children in classrooms, or daycare. I remember smiling when Dottie called it her homecluster! or something like that. If your least gifted one was willing to play monopoly at 4, my guess is that that one is pretty gifted also - even if they did make bad trades.

My son is an only, and if I could have rented some 4 year olds to play monopoly with him, I would have! Basically at our house, it was "me or TV" because my extroverted son wasn't a 'go build something' kid.

Strangly, lots of parents will hear a child ask for a very specific thing and assume that they know better, and put the book back on the library shelf. Perhaps those parents need the scores early as permission to follow the child's lead?

Slightly OT, my son knew just what to do with those stiff toddler books. Get me to stack them so he could knock them down.

Smiles,
Trinity

gratified3: I appreciate your efforts to clarify for me. For my part, I hope what follows is clearer, but if it isn't, I probably won't try again. I think this is the 3rd time I've explained/justified myself, and if it's not better by now, it probably is just not going to improve...

Where I come from, saying that someone has "a different parenting philosophy" is just about the nastiest way to slam a fellow parent that there is. It's a highly judgmental comment, usually made in a holier-than-thou tone, and it's not even remotely nice.

Apparently that's not what you meant. But in the context of the rest of your post, that's how it sounded to me. Even your last post sounds like you're making a *lot* of incorrect assumptions about my family and my parenting. (One case in point: DS6 isn't an only child, as you imply. I just don't know if DS3 is GT or not yet, so I don't post about him a lot here. He may be GT with an LD--yet another reason for early ID!--or he may be ND. We dunno.) These assumptions you're making about me/us seem to be an important part of our problem here.

I repeat: my parenting philosophy doesn't seem to me to be any different from yours based on what you've written. The things you describe doing with your kids, I do/have always done with mine, too. I, too, set my kids loose at the library. But our library has two distinct areas: the kids' room and the adult section. If I only set them loose in the children's room--as I have always done, because why would an MG kid need anything else?--and never in the adult section, then they will never know that the adult room is an option for them. I've closed off opportunities to them because of MY assumptions. If DS6 wanted to get an adult book, I'd reply with a wholehearted yes. (I don't censor books.) But if he doesn't ever even SEE the adult books, how could he know to ask?

That's very much what happened at home, too.

So you see, it's not about a parenting philosophy. It's about my assumptions about his abilities and how those assumptions closed off opportunities. I'm not a "helicopter parent" AT ALL, as I explained already. I certainly encourage my kids to play by themselves and offer them little guidance. I have always followed their lead on what interests them. That stuff is not what I regret. I regret not giving DS6 more opportunities for challenge that were appropriate to his abilities, which were much higher than I recognized.

I still stand by my statement that early ID is best for these kids pretty much without exception. But I think you're reading that statement far too narrowly. I would argue that your kids *WERE* ID'd early--by you! Early ID doesn't necessarily mean testing--that's the whole point of this thread, right? We were exploring what else could we do to ID HG+ besides testing? I never said I believe in early *testing*. I flat-out said I do NOT believe in early testing. I don't think an IQ score at age 3 tells us any more than you think it does. But I do think that knowing how a child learns and what he needs is vital to his development at any age.

For us, DS6 was pegged (by us) as *GT* practically from birth. But he was not ID'd as *HG+*, and I do think that distinction would have been helpful to know sooner, through some means, because there's a significant difference between the needs of HG+ kids and those of MG or plain GT kids, a point I think you made yourself in another thread about your very own children.

I don't like most blanket statements about HG+ kids either. I certainly would argue against anyone who said that public school is unworkable for all HG+ kids! But if you don't realize that a kid is HG+ and that HG+ kid more self-sufficient and easygoing than most HG+ kids (as DS6 is), then my experience demonstrates that it's hard to meet that child's needs, no matter what his age.

That's where I'm coming from. Thanks.

Does anyone have a link with the study?

I think too like Kriston and Trinity that for 'EG' or 'PG' an early id is/would better.



Back to read the rest ....

Ok, let's see if I can post now.

I do agree with Kriston that the higher the IQ the better an early identification, by the parents themselves or testing or whatever means.

Officially speaking DD4 is 'only' MG but I am (almost?) certain she is EG at least and that I have (by what I did or did not at home), as well thanks to her preschool, contributed to her underachievement.

For me, an earlier identification of DD's capabilities would have made a big difference.

I'm updating this old thread to link to Hoagies Gifted Education Page, which offers a chart for comparing the scores from various IQ tests: Highly/Exceptionally/Profoundly Gifted ~ What does it mean?

Hoagies webpage summarizes the approximate equivalent test scores. These are overall test scores, Full Scale IQs, not individual subtests nor GAIs. Hoagies shows four levels of gifted, each with progressively higher scores:
1) Gifted (G) or Moderately Gifted (MG)
2) Highly Gifted (HG)
3) Exceptionally Gifted (EG)
4) Profoundly Gifted (PG)

This shows G/MG < HG < EG < PG.
The term HG+ would apply to HG + EG + PG.

The equivalency table may be seen as similar to a conversion between centimeters and inches. The numbers will change when a different measurement instrument is utilized (cm side of tape measure vs. inch side of tape measure), even when the same object is measured and found to be the same (equivalent) size.