Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Opinion, nature or nuture

LOL, Kriston! Last week I actually DID break out into hives and it was NOT FUN! Stress can do weird things to the body.

I'm late to this thread so I'll just jump in on a few points. DD6 had a nanny for her first 13 months of life, and then she went to a Montessori school for a little over a year. Her nanny never took her anywhere but provided her with love and attention--undivided attention. I stopped working when DD3 was born and so was home with her as a baby as well as now with DS1. I KNOW that DD6 got way more attention than my DS1 ever did, partly because now he spends a lot of his day in a car seat as we're running around for errands or taking the other two to activities. Sometimes I think he'd be better off in a daycare setting where they were able to just play with him all of the time (I don't really think this but sometimes that mommy guilt creeps in). I guess I can see where the nurture part has something to do with it, but I would think a lot of a child's ability would be from nature.

I chose to breastfeed my kids but it was always more for immunity benefits and because I just plain wanted to do so than it was because of IQ. I guess I always attributed the statistics to the fact that a lot of the women who now choose to breastfeed tend to be more educated and may have higher IQs themselves. I think Lorel has written about this somewhere on the forum too.

As others have more eloquently said, I just can't imagine that some of these choices (staying home v. daycare, breast v. bottle) would make that significant of a difference, at least not enough to make others feel guilty about their choices.

And I doubt my DD6 would look HG+ to a casual observer, which is probably why DH and I were a little surprised when we got her WPPSI scores. Even we missed it. Denial, denial, denial.