Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parents as Excellent Identifiers of Giftedness?

I find this a fascinating topic, and I admit I am confused about it. On the one hand, as parents I'm sure we can read and interpret and project abilities before any objective measure of them is possible. When our DS6 was 3, for example, he stunned me one day in the middle of a game of catch when, completely out of the blue, he stopped to remark (correctly) that since he was 3 I must have been X when he was born. (X remains a variable in this version of the story to protect the innocent.) This was clearly an indication to me that he knew things about the relations between numbers. And yet, it was such a relatively non-repeatable event, that it is extremely unlikely any objective tester would have caught it. He did correctly say how old his mother must have been when she was born, and his uncle, but he soon tired of the game. And if you asked him the equivalent subtraction problem he had no idea what you were talking about. That said, I had seen enough to be convinced he had some ability.

On the other hand, I don't have anything like the kind of experience one would have to have with other children his age to know how unusual these abilities are. Indeed, the main experience I have with other kids his age with respect to these kinds of abilities is from stories within our own family about how a variety of now-very-accomplished adult family members acted when they were children. This is obviously a skewed comparison class, but I have no idea how skewed, and it is difficult to know really how DS measures up to it anyway. So even though I feel that as parents we can see better what abilities he has, I don't know how those abilities measure up to the norm. As a result, I remain completely confused about the level at which to place him.

Moreover, as a parent, I tend to take much more seriously his apparent inability to do things I'd have thought he could do than his apparent ability to do (what I'm told are) relatively advanced things that others his age can't. So even when objective observers (like his math mentor) say they are "floored" at how quickly he can learn things, I tend to assume there is something a little over-eager or over-generous about the comment. To top it all off, I'm totally confused about how to understand this reaction of mine. I vacillate between thinking it is an appropriate kind of caution, which keeps me from too quickly categorizing DS, and thinking it is deeply unfair to him, since I am refusing to admit his abilities.

In general, then, it seems to me that there are so many issues in the area that I just have no idea how to answer the question.

But then again, that's the way I feel about most interesting questions. Thanks to the OP for asking it.

I'd love to know if this kind of confusion resonates with others.