Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How do you all define gifted?

I just brought up the educational because the first post was a spinoff from a school denying entry to their gifted pullout at a public school because they said hitting the top 99.9% on an iq test doesn't make you gifted unless you also have these common gifted characteristics.  (she said it on another thread- this one's a spin off).   

I agree with a few of your underlying premis.  The "it doesn't shut off when you're not told to perform ".  The "preference to have your mind to stay turned up most of the time.  Some others like it but only for short periods because they tire of it quickly.". Those were awesome!

I'm pretty sure your angst is with the local ladies telling you "why don't you make your kid color inside the lines of the giant letter A instead of comparing saliva to stomach juice.   Um, Just guessing because anatomy charts seem like they kind of are academics.

Just for clarity sake, I suspect that the major reason our school system was refusing to take IQ scores for GT admission b/c dd is 2e and her achievement scores were wildly erratic. Constant high achievement is really what they are looking for coupled with teacher recommendation. 90th - 95th percentile consistently on tests like SRI Lexile and NCLB annual tests would be much more likely to get you ided than 99th today and 55th tomorrow. They do also use behavioral rating scales but that usually happens when the ability scores come in too low.

We did get them to take the IQ scores eventually but not for the "general intellectual ability" id that her sister has despite lower IQ scores. They said that they could only use them for a language arts GT id b/c there is no math ability, social studies ability, or science ability test on the WISC.

So this is what I think happens, we mentally gather together all the people who make the cut off with an IQ test, and ask ourselves, who else 'fits' more with this group than with the default group? Then we ask, who else, if give thoughtful accommodations, would also fit better with this group in one domain, or in multiple domains?

My favorite example is algebra - it's hard for a 7 year olds chubby hands to do algebra, but given a work around for that, the gifted 7 year olds would enjoy it, (at least once the emotional block from enforced underachievement have been overcome)while regular 7 year olds would have neither the interest nor the ability.

So my favorite way to identify gifted kids would be to offer kids chances to participate in meaningful learning opportunities well above what is expected for their age level and see who thrives. Quantifiable? Perhaps we could have kids fill out a form after the experiences noting their level of interest and happiness.

My son thought for a while that the best way would be to ask kids, under lie detector situations, if school was too hard or too easy and which grade they belonged in.

It's also been studied just asking kids in the classroom - who is the smartest boy? who is the smartest girl? Or - which children here need more chances to learn hard stuff? It works quite well. There is an 'it' which IQ tests measure quite well (although far from perfectly) and as humans we know it when we see it in our peers. Except our really quiet or buttoned-up peers perhaps. We gravitate towards people who get our jokes, which depends on shared context, some of that context is all about intelligence.

One thing, I find interesting about 2E is that as the ansynchrony gets larger, it shades into 2E. If a child is ready to discuss college level books at age 9, what are the odds that they are also ready to write 30 page papers about them? Which part of the child do we address, which their mind is craving for, or what their organizational skills allow? And it isn't that discussing books is easier than writing about them. There are plenty of kids who can churn out the long papers efficiently but with superficial levels of thought, but can't follow that deeper level of thought in the discussion. And can you actually teach that kid to write 3 paragraph essays on Dick and Jane books? Maybe, Maybe not.

Shrugs and More Shrugs,
Grinity

I see giftedness as the insatiable desire to acquire knowledge and analyze everything and express this knowledge articulately so that other people notice the difference, the quick ability to notice things that most people don't, outside the box thinking when solving problems, inability to tolerate boredom or accept the status quo and always thinking of ways things could be changed for the better, in addition to creativity.

It's very interesting reading your posts. My children's school seems quite different in that it does use very narrow criteria to identify kids for the gifted program. Each year about 5 kids out of 125 are selected for the G/T program (which is really not intensive, just a one hour weekly pull-out).

My own child did not make the cut off because her score was too low.

But the reason I consider her "gifted" and what brings me to this message board is simply that she is driven to learn all the time. She is insatiably curious and picks up knowledge very easily. That innate desire to learn is not found in all people and is definitely something to be nurtured.

In our limited experience, gifted means having certain intellectual, emotional, sensory, or imaginative overexcitabilities to such a degree that intervention is required. We found the existence of these as well as high scores on aptitude tests did not correlate at all to achievement or interest/drive, at least in our child.

On the other hand, I find the concept of a caged cheetah compelling, and wonder whether certain gifted children--girls in particular--are wired in such a way and so adept at fitting in and meeting expectations that they fool us.

If I were more gifted, these answers might come easier.

I like this and could totally get on board with this.

The only problem I see in implementation (b/c this happens a lot locally to me) is that, if the majority of the kids who show up/enroll are not gifted, the programming morphs to "looking at bugs" like another mom posted about in her thread about summer camps. Rather than weeding out the kids who aren't a match for the program, the program morphs to be a match for who showed up and becomes less and less of a fit for kids who need and want the meaningful, advanced, deep learning opportunities.

But, that is a different thread -- lol!

For me, this is a very interesting question. When I was in grade 2, Ms. Daffin asked me if I spoke English at home (my parents were eastern European in a very WASP (95%) community. The following year, Ms. Daffin had to accept my accerlation through 4th grade after an IQ test. And suddenly I was her second favorite.

DH is an amazing guy who got into Harvard from a small town in PA. A very literal thinking, focused, who probably has a fact file that rivals Britannica. I cannot remember a name unless I visualize it and heard it 3 times. Though I could remember the person's phone number.

Now we have DD, high energy, highly extrovert, other people have commented to me on her brilliance though her first SBV (modified) showed EG, not PG, though she had high math ability since 2, just coming out with stuff and then she had that piano prodigy stuff that comes with mathematical ability. Her next IQ test was up 10 points.

I think there is a range of giftedness and defining a kid is hard. I have had brilliant PhD's in physics commenting on my type of thinking as being serious genius yet I look at them and wonder if they are doing serious drugs. I have done strategy for most of the top investment banks and exchanges in the world and when I was doing it, I thought it was simple work.

Yet, I could never program a super computer or think to create an Iphone.

So my point, is that giftedness is a whole range of things. My kid does the math and the piano like something out of movie, but she also does dance choreography since 18 months. This is what struck me most. Watching her create different dances, and remember them for each song on some CD that helped counting 1-10. There was something determined in her to make this dances specific. Something I noticed that was unusual. At a jazz festival of 100, 000 people she was mentioned and photographed for city of 4MM newspaper because of her dancing for one of the bands.

People have come up to me after a ballet recital and mentioned her, even when in a class of older kids, because she was advanced.

So yes, her IQ is way up there, yes, she is much advanced in math and now 3 years ahead in reading (just from school) and the piano stuff, but then there is the dance stuff and I would say she is gifted in dance. I cannot really define it other than what I said, and she is doing a preprofessional program that many other kids are doing. But you see something.

I was in the store checking out and this really little kid, maybe 3, was asking his mother was comes after 80. She told him 81, then he asked what comes after, 82, then 83, then she asked him what comes next, he thought and said 84. He was gifted. How did I come up with that? Just watching him, seeing him ask, figure it out at 3. I didn't have a check list. I, myself are just brilliant

Ren

I agree that this is probably what actually happens in real life, unless that adults involved are 100% committed to making education work for gifted and unusually gifted kids. That's why I like moving the child to the place where other kids match their ready-to-learn level, instead of trying to modify the existing program to keep a kid with agemates. But then we get our dear 2E kids who would need tons of accommodation to keep up with the kids who share their ready-to-learn level. And would the pace match? No wonder it is a mess!

Ah! There's the rub!

The anatomy stiff (too funny a typo to correct) isn't really academic, because the way DS is approaching it isn't. There is a real difference of quality between an anthropology student learning compairative anatomy, and my son putting together a mental model of motion and body movement. He's just doing regular 3 yr old dig with the toy backhoe stuff, only he desires to do it with more complex systems, and with more abstract ways of approaching the info (a chart rather than an articulated toy). He percieves that bodies must contain mechanical motion-producing parts, and wants to generalize beyond the typical range of a 3yr old's motion study. He only cares what an ulna is called because he wants to be able to communicate with me about it right now, not because he sees a long-term benefit of knowing about ulnas tied to some future anthropological research. Otherwise he'd want to spell it.

And if his relative (male, incidentally) asked him what that bone was called, he'd say he didn't know, just like he did when asked if he knew what an sparrow was. He doesn't want to demonstrate knowing, he wants to hear what the relative is going to say to explain what an sparrow is. He even got mad at me for flashing his hand and telling that he really did know. If his interest were academic, he'd want to demonstrate knowing as well as wanting to learn more/hear a new perspective.

It's totally not precocious, it's just deeper and clearer interest in age-normal preoccupations. The more I remind myself of that the more I manage to give the answers he was looking for, and not bore him with side-tracks... and the more he keeps asking untill he breaks my head... but I kinda like that

I'm enjoying this train of thought becasue it really does help me understand my kid better, y'know. Keep makin' me think folks! This kicks a$$,