Here's a very good blog post on that subject:
http://davincilearning.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/oh-no-my-kid-might-be-gifted-where-do-i-start/The short answer is, 'if my kid is so gifted, why is his fly unzipped?'
IQ measures a sort of 'unusualness' of intellectual development - and 150 GAI is more than a bit unusual. On the other hand, you may mostly be surrounded by friends and family members who are quite similar - we call that the 'broken yardstick' around here. If you are from a 'broken yardstick' sort of family, you may think you are all perfectly ordinary, that party tricks like calculus at age 10 are what gifted is, and that something is mysteriously wrong with random people you meet from outside your daily close contacts. It takes a while, and hanging out, over the Internet or in person through DYS with families who are in similar situations often is very helpful in getting that yardstick fixed, or if not fixed, at least you start to believe that the yardstick you carry around isn't the standard issue yardstick, and you learn how to develop a sort of double vision where you use both the standard yardstick and your personal one at the same time.
Gifted doesn't have to be 'across the board' advancement in all areas. An unusually gifted kid might self teach all sorts of things and might not self teach at all. A gifted kid might also have other 'exceptionalities' as in poor spelling (like me) or ADHD or Asperger's syndrome(AS) and most people might mis-attribute those kid's odd behaviors to their giftedness when actually it might be their other challenges, or the combination that is what is fueling the picture.
Basically you could put the correct information about gifted kids that most folks in the general population have in a teaspoon (and that was you and most of us until that test report came back, no matter how many gifted behaviors we were doing while we were acting as if it were perfectly normal to, for example, read 30 parenting books during our first pregancy, and a few 'how to choose a college guides' for good measure. ok I'm exageratting a little) and the misconceptions that most 'at a distance' folks have about giftedness in a wheelbarrow. Giftedness is just one of those 'blind men and the elephant' kinds of concepts that so very slippery!
It's possible that the Davidson people and the Internet's ability to bring people together across great distances and luck will change all that. I hope so, and I'm glad I've got a front row seat.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
