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I think that's what they mean, too, LMom. And, yes, DS6 has gone from one all-consuming obession to another his whole life. Each has lasted a year or more--a lifetime for a 2 or 3yo!--and each time he positively devoted his life to that particular obsession.

For example: at 2, while potty training, DS6 would have us read the "Consumer Reports" auto edition to him so that he could memorize the make and model of every car on the road. This was definitely NOT hothousing! Believe me, I did NOT want to sit in the bathroom and read a car magazine aloud to him over and over and over! LOL! But it was his favorite thing in the world to do. His grandparents even gave him his own copy so that he could carry it around and study the pictures wherever he went. A trip through a parking lot was better than an amusement park for this kid, and he walked down the rows saying, "Chevy Malibu...Audi 4000...Volkswagen Rabbit..." From a mile away (literally), he could ID a moving car correctly from behind. I often joked that if we were in a hit-and-run accident, I'd have my 2yo ID the car for me because I was clueless and he was an EXPERT!

He did the same sort of thing with colors ("No, Mommy, that's Cornflower Blue, not Sky Blue!"), NASCAR (even though NO ONE ELSE likes NASCAR!), and construction vehicles. To this day I know the difference between a tracked excavator and a backhoe because of my son's obsession. My DH has a relative who owns a contruction company, and he and my DS spent over an hour discussing the equipment. The guy said he'd never had such an in-depth conversation about his equipment with anyone so knowledgeable, regardless of age. Our DS was not yet 2 at the time.

He drew pictures, asked questions, pretended, and wanted to read only about his obsession. If you have a kid who does this, there's no doubt about it!

I'd say Disney princesses could count, but only if it goes to this sort of extreme. There's a big difference between liking Disney princesses and the GT-style obsession!

"Agreed. Though we just took the WISC and I was surprised at how much FOK stuff there was in it. That stuff could be hothoused if you knew it was on the test. "-Kriston

I'll agree with that that, but I still think hot housing your child on FOK stuff still won't put them in the top 2% in the WISC. FOK counts accounts for what, 1 or 2 subcategories? I believe they are not sufficiently weighted to carry a FSIQ into HG or PG territory if the innate reasoning skills are lacking.
Dottie, please jump in on this if I am misinformed here.

"Two, you can hothouse to get great scores. There was a study done on the SB. You can use the SB to hot house or use the pre-k books etc. You can gain an average of 13 IQ points, almost a standard deviation. So you could go from 66th percentile to 95th, approximately. But I think it only works in the younger set."- Ren

This may be true of the SB, in fact, this is the reason some don't like the test as much anymore, the score can present as inflated. It's often viewed as outdated.
However, You cannot hot house a child into an HG or PG score on the WISC IV, I'll stand by that statement. The test has been updated to make it harder to ceiling out.
IQ is supposed to be measuring the extent to which a child can learn, not what they already know. I would't defend a statement that processing speed and WMI accurately measure IQ, or even claim I could tangibly tell you what IQ is.
However, the major thing I have noticed with both my HG child and my PG child is the how quickly they master concepts and how much they remember and from how far back they have retained it from(although WMI doesn't exactly measure this). In terms of these categories, there is a vast difference if you compare the two of them with a child who is average or even moderately gifted. Indeed, there is a noticible difference between the two of them even though they are only 3/10th of 1% difference in terms or their score.
Some view the brain as like a muscle in terms of being able to excercise it and improve performance.

I'll agree to a point, but I don't think you can hot house a child into thinking more quickly and remembering more.

Lastly, there are lots of generalizations and stereotypes concerning how a gifted child is supposed "to be". I think we can all agree that sterotypes can be wrong and sometimes harmful. I think it's outrageous that someone could come up with a checklist of gifted traits and make a subjective determination whether or not a child is gifted based on matching up perfectly with the list. This has been done in our school district, which is why I cringe when I see these lists.


Incog

Hey 'Neato,

What do you think about GAI as a measure for the WISC IV? My daughter had really significant scatter and the psychologist argued (as does Harcourt Brace) to use the GAI rather than the FSIQ for her GT referral.Although she qualified both ways, her scores were driven way down by the WM and Ps scores.

You, Grinity and Dottie seem to be the testing experts on this forum so I'd love to have your opinions.

aline

Thanks Dottie

So far DD9, who seems to me as I've said elsewhere to me to BE mg but with much higher Ruf level behaviors/ traits/indicators, seems to be just bored with simple level stuff-- and I've seen her do that in testing situations, but time will tell. Her strongest score on all tests is Fluid Reasoning (or its equivalent.)

Down deep I feel , as my father used to point out to his varied and ridiculously GT family, IQ tests scores measure how well you take IQ tests. I like the insistent demystification but it sounds much better when we're all in the top 1% of the pile...

This forum is so great because I feel that we can oh so subjectively begin to tease out the beyond the test issues.


aline

Aline,

First of all the only thing I'm an expert at is being opinionated!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I usually rely on Dottie's wisdom, she is the test info guru.

I like discussing the tests and what they mean, but if you get into a discussion with me concerning what IQ means, it will most likely deviate into a very cloudy and abstract dialogue.........then it will ultimately circle back into meaninglessness......see what I mean?

I guess I'm saying, is, I think the test measures something, I'm just not sure what.

And I've heard that some "high IQ" people just don't test well and aren't identified that way, although, I understand it's less common.

I

Thank you for all the comments. I have asked the library for Marica Gross' book Exceptionally Gifted Children and I look forward to seeing the differences between auditory and non-linear learners.

I asked my husband about his obsessional type learning. And he remembered going to the library with his father at 4 to learn all about space travel. But he said that DD asks questions about a picture in a story book to understand the story behind the story. "What is that guy doing?" He said he never did that, her obsession is to understand the whole situation. She just gathers information as you goes along and files it somewhere, because it comes up again, when you least expect it. So I am curious how it all defines itself by learning styles.

Everyone was very helpful.

The public gifted school is trying to go back to the SB, the school board made them go to the OLSAT and they are getting moderately gifted kids.

Though that is an interesting one. My friend, whose son scored 98th percentile on the SB for Hunter, got the Kindergarten-test prep for the OLSAT. He was getting them all wrong when starting, now after prepping aces. And from her perspective he is going to get into a great school with an accelerated curriculum.

At the end of the day, we provide the best education for our kids and they have to figure out what to do with it. Never thought I would go to Wall Street. And I think that really works for non-linear types.

Ren