Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How imporant are exclusive gifted schools for PG?

Hi -
Our pediatrician alerted us to the fact that our daughter - who is only 16 months - is likely profoundly gifted. To give the cliff notes, she has a massive vocab of thousands of words, knows colors, shapes, letters, counts to 20, can also count backwards from 10 or 12, can read a few sight words and also attempts to sound out some words. It's overwhelming, shocking, crazy, and ... did I mention overwhelming? She has a 3 year old brother who is also likely gifted (been reading since 2, great math and puzzle skills) and he loves to teach her things. We don't specifically teach her things, she just picks up a lot.

Our pediatrician told us that we would be wise to start looking for special education services in our area for her, and to prepare ourselves for the idea that she is going to need resources.

There is a private gifted school, about 50 minutes from our home. It's pretty expensive, and not a short drive. However, we would be willing to relocate if needed and make financial sacrifices where needed as well.

My question -- how would we know if an exclusive gifted school is needed? Are PG children generally best served by an exclusive gifted school? Our other option would be to send her to the local public schools. Their gifted programs, however, do not even begin until 3rd grade (they are cluster classrooms). The local public schools, like most in our state, are over crowded and underfunded. We live in Illinois, so there is no mandate for gifted programs and also no funding.

I guess I am hoping to hear from parents of other highly gifted or profoundly gifted children to hear what worked for them. How did you decide what schooling options to take? I'm not sure how to assess the value of this private gifted school, much less weigh that against moving our family to a new house.

Any thoughts? Also I'd love to hear from anyone whose kid sound similar to mine - especially those that are older now. I wonder if she may "level out" a bit and not seem quite so extreme as she gets older. Right now she is a bit of a spectacle where ever we go (she isn't shy, so you can imagine.)

Thanks in advance!

Sweatpeas, you have found the right place. I am not in the US, so someone else will have to answer your education questions for you, but I wanted to say welcome!

And no, a child as advanced as your DD is at 16 months is highly unlikely to level out by grade 3. If she is PG (which she sounds) then she is as different from an MG kid as an MG kid is from normally developing, a typical gifted program will not be targeted at at her needs. And the early years of school before, your local public gifted programs start, when all the other kids are figuring out the alphabet, reading and counting will likely throw her difference into particularly stark contrast. I would say your paed was right to warn you to start thinking now!

First, welcome! My thoughts as the parent of a moderately gifted (MG) child are that you will absolutely need the services of a private gifted school. Our public school was able to accommodate our MG child in K last year through subject acceleration, and hopefully will this year too, but we've had some frustrations. I cannot imagine how our public school or our district's HGT (highly gifted and talented) magnet program would accommodate a PG child like yours.

The HGT programs in our area are not designed for PG kids. They're designed for kids who are working about two, maybe three, grade levels ahead. Your DD16-months is working at kindergarten level, at least four years ahead of her age. Based on everything I've read, no, your DD isn't likely to level out; I agree with mumofthree's assessment above.

The Davidson Young Scholars program would be of use to you in the future. I know very little about it, and hope others on this site will give you some information on the program.

You may know this already, but in case not - when preparing financially for private school, only a small percent of the money in a 529 plan counts against you for financial aid. A higher percent of the money in an UTMA counts against you. And of course retirement plans are not counted, unlike taxable accounts. Where you put your money can make a big difference in your ability to get financial aid in the future.

I have a son who is 6 and PG. If we had a school for PG kids in our area, there is no doubt he would go there. Not only for the educational aspect, but mainly for the social aspect. We suppplement his education at home to meet his educational needs. It would be beyond wonderful for DS to have true peers. I would like nothing more than to find another 6 year old who shares his interests.

You might find this an interesting read.

PG children, like all children, are individuals. Their educational needs are individual as well. I can safely say that you can reasonably expect to have to do more work regarding making sure that the educational environment is a good fit and that there are good resources available to your child than the average parent of the average child will have to, but what that good fit will look like at any given point in time is anyone's guess right now, and it can change from month to month. Be prepared to do a lot of "investigating your options", and learn to pay close attention to what your child's behavior is telling you.

You have a great resource here in the Davidson forums; don't be afraid to use it. Feel free to bounce your thoughts and concerns off the folks here. There are a lot of good perspectives, and incredible amounts of accumulated experience with off-the charts kids.

Welcome! My first comment would be: first think about education for your son, for whom it's a more urgent problem... You describe him as "likely gifted" but it may be that your yardstick is off; it wouldn't surprise me if he also turns out to be PG. Certainly self-taught reading at 2 is pretty rare (in general, although not on this board!)

I'm not in the US, so can't help with specifics, but I will say: if you do school, what you'll need is a supremely flexible school that really manages to treat each child as an individual. That doesn't necessarily mean a gifted school - in fact, some of the gifted schools we hear about here are very inflexible, and we've heard many stories of the problems that leads to when an HG+ child goes to one. If home education is a feasible option for you, you'll probably want to consider that seriously too (lots of people here can help).

I suggest having a browse around here; one useful technique is to keep your eyes open for people who write things that chime with you, and then go and read the threads they've started (click on the username to the left, choose View posts from the menu) - at any rate, I've found that a useful way to read about the experiences people with similar children have had.

I agree, and by educating yourself through the process of getting your son's needs met, you will be getting the world ready for your DD. The best way to get an idea of your son's level is to spend a few hours objectively observing the local kindergarden classrooms. Would the activities, lessons and books on the shelf be engaging for either your son or your daughter now? Given their personalities, what would be the likely effect of 3 or 6 hours a day of that for 9 months?

Read - Genius Denied by Jan Davidson
Read - 5 levels of Giftedness by Deb Ruf
Read - Transforming the Difficult Child by Lisa Bravo

So here's the deal. You may live in one of the few Chicago Suburbs where lots and lots of High IQ families exist, and if so, the public schools might be just fine with lots and lots of flexibility on everyone's part. Private gifted schools are aimed at the top 5% of kids, or maybe 3% of kids. They may work fine for some PGlets (top 0.1%) or (top 0.01%) and be awful for others - but because they are generally so successful with their target version of 'gifted' they are rarely able to perceive that PG kids really are different and need something else. This is just a human nature thing - the more successful we are, the less open we are to the idea that we are totally missing the boat once in a while. I'm sure you know some local parents who think that because their children are well behaved that they have the key to parenting. It's like that - magnified by 1000.

This is also why sometimes modest school systems work better than 'we are so proud of us' public school systems, although if you can find one of those 'best of the best' there can be enough other similar kids that things go really well.

No Magic Bullet. No Magic Mirror. School of Hard Knocks is the only way for you to learn about life with schools of any kind.

I would start learning everything I could about homeschooling if I were in your shoes. There may already be an underground network of people who are homeschooling and don't even know that they are homeschooling because their kids are have special -advanced- educational needs.

(Kid who are gifted tend to have parents who grew up gifted - and those people are ripe for believing that bricks and mortar schools are horrible places where no one learns -(which couldn't be further from the truth)- of course we think that - it's the only way to maintain the illusion that we are 'just normal folks like everyone else-nothing unusual.' I was like that, but took it one step further - I totally bought the idea that the schools were the place where one learned to fit in and this is the most important thing in life. Yup. I got a crash course in the school of hard knocks!)

There may be co-ops where you drop your kids off in the AM and get to keep your day job. I would be moving towards a life situation where if one adult needs to become a homeschooling parent instead of a wage earner, your family's financial life isn't in jeopardy. So yes - stop thinking about selling the house and taking on more financial obligations unless you know '100% for sure' that this is the place for your child. If only your school problems could be solved that easily!

I've collected some names of local psychologists that folks here have liked, but I can't remember who contributed this one -
http://www.drmarkmckee.com/Home_Page.html
Website says that he does public speaking, so I would keep my eyes peeled for one of his speaking engagements and attend so you can start to figure out who you will use for IQ testing when the time comes. With kids like your son and daughter, they really need to be tested by someone who has a lot of experience with highly gifted kids. As kids like yours get older and meet more and more adults who react to them as if they are a side show, they tend to get resistant of cooperating with 'that sort' of adult. This can generalize to testers who act 'overly impressed' with PGlets. They need someone who is self aware and gives respect to all people regardless of age - without behaving as though they have much preconceived ideas of what folks should be like at any particular age. You need a tester who treats your children (and you!) as though it's normal to be intelligent and understand things. Some people are just blessed with the ability to flexibly react to other people while dialing up or down, IQ and otherwise, how best to communicate - it's amazing when you see it in action.

I love Colin's Mom's suggestion:

Also post something in the Geographical Topic area - you may get lucky! Finding family friends with similar kids (or close enough) is mind blowing. I saw a whole side of my son that I hadn't know was there when I got him together with some boys I met through Davidson Young Scholar's Program. I have chills just remembering it now, and that was 7 years ago!

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I doubt if there are any kids in that school like your daughter. I'd go and visit and see. I'll bet they are working on letters and counting 1-10 with the 4 and five year olds.

Intellectually, your daughter should be put in with the 4 and 5 year olds but in a month she will learn everything they can teach her. Then she will need to go on to 1st grade and will learn all that material in a month. And so on.

We are finding out that there are no schools for PG kids until high school. And even then its fleeting.

PG kids are truly unique and very rare. With the exception of the elite high schools, people have never worked with one.

Here is another article to take a look at.

http://talentigniter.com/ruf-estimates

I'm probably going to just reiterate what others have said, but I doubt that either a gifted school or a gifted program in a public school is going to be the best fit for your children. My kids are not as advanced as yours and fall more into the HG+ area (and one of them is 2e), but your options sound similar to our local schools except the only semi-local private gifted school closed a few years ago.

Like Grinity mentioned, programs aimed at gifted kids in public and private schools are usually looking @ about 5% of the population or even more if they are doing what we see locally to me. Here they look at kids who are in the top 5% in any one area, so a 95th percentile score in any area (reading, math, writing, etc.) plus a 95th percentile score on any one area of a group test like the CogAT or OLSAT (again, verbal, non-verbal, quantitative, etc.) will qualify you for a GT and possibly placement in GT classrooms. They also take kids with high achievement scores into those classes even if they don't have ids b/c they don't hit the requisite group ability test score.

I'd start by looking at what qualifies as gifted in your local public schools. The broader the definition, the more inclusive, unfortunately the less likely it is to meet the needs of your kids.

I'd also give a call to the GT coordinator for your district and the admissions or curriculum person for the gifted school and ask them how many kids they have like yours. If they tell you lots, I'd look elsewhere b/c it is more likely that they don't understand the rarity than that they have tons of PG kids. I recall a conversation I had w/ a GT coordinator for a local school regarding my 2e child when we were looking at changing to that school. I didn't even ask how many kids they had like her but the coordinator volunteered that she had lots of kids who were gifted and just like dd (dd has a 99.9th percentile GAI on the WISC-IV (IQ) and ADD). Knowing the school from some prior experience there, it told me more about the coordinator's lack of understanding of what that meant than the population of the school being full of HG+ kids.

Other options would be looking at homeschooling if that is an option for your family. Do you have a homeschooling cooperative locally? Something like this was my dream to have locally for a long time: http://www.voyagersinc.org/wiki/bin/view/Public/WebHome

You might want to contact some of the IL groups on the Gifted Homeschoolers forum: http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/giftedresourceselsewhere.html

Even if you don't go the homeschooling route, they might have some resources for you and give you some good social connections.

Just a thought--research your options, but don't assume you know your kids' giftedness levels yet for sure. I agree that you should look at your 3yo first for now. I do have a daughter whose early milestones were very much like your DD's but who appears to be more MG or HG. She is definitely not PG, anyway. Also, my son (who is 3) had fewer early milestones and was not nearly as dazzling as she as a young toddler, but now seems to be well on the road to reading at 3 (DD did not read till nearly 5). I suspect he may end up to be of similar IQ as DD, maybe even higher. However, he is more of a go-along kid whereas DD is a major squeaky wheel.

In other words, in your shoes I would assume that both kids are gifted and that it's hard to tell who is more so and who will need what. Definitely do your research, but don't lock yourself into a particular opinion just yet. They are both really young.

ETA: FWIW, our local distruct requires 99th% IQ OR qualification via an alternate program intended to ID ESL or otherwise disadvantaged students for entry into the GT program. We are only in our 3rd week of FT gifted school but so far the kids seem to certainly be gifted, not just high achievers.