Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion is it becoming true...

My son did not even out by third grade. He was homeschooled and, if anything, he was more ahead in third grade than previously. However, I would think that it would be quite possible for a child who is not being challenged in school to appear to even out.

I agree with Kai. If anything, this is a reason why we enrolled DD in a public (albeit 'virtual') charter school at that point (3rd)-- we were seeing a gap that was actually widening into fairly frightening proportions, given that her maturity was still just about keeping pace with her age-mates. We enrolled her to slow her down some. True story.

So she was a wayyyyyyy-wayyyyy beyond material 3rd grader who was afterschooled/enriched, a still-well-beyond 4th grader who also completed 5th that year without really even challenging herself (oh, plus enrichment), and a GT 6th grader who found (only) math a bit if a challenge because we had skipped her forward into pre-algebra... etc. etc. It really hasn't been until this year that I see anything like actual "appropriate" curriculum, and she's 13 and taking 2 AP courses, one of them Physics.

No way would she have "evened out" with her now 7th and 8th grade agemates, because we couldn't seem to keep her from reading and learning more on her own. It does limit her TIME to do that kind of thing if we have her enrolled in a school situation that demands busy-work from her at least part of the day, though, so it attenuates rate. On the other hand, I do believe that she'd have been several teachers' worst nightmares in a bricks-and-mortar setting with agemates.

Wow!

I have to kind-of agree that this is possibility. This happened to my husband, sort-of. They actually thought he was "slow" in the early years, all his "gifted friends" went off to whatever they called it "Leap" or something like that. He was in a special something class/activity (he had hypotonia but I don't think they knew about it back then so it was never labled or addressed). Anyway, I don't know all the details but in 4th grade I believe it was his mom went to the parent-teacher conference fully prepared to hear about and dscuss my DH's deficits and the teacher was like - "Uh your son is very, very smart." By middle school he was doing much better than his "gifted" buddies and was grade accelerated in math classes in middle school and high school. He's one of the samrtest and non-arrogant people I know and he is a brilliant computer engineer today.

So, I believe that it can definitely happen and probabaly does happen a fair amount.

I don't agree with that. Some kids entering K have been taught, worked with, others don't know the alphabet. There is not necessarily a correlation with their innate ability.

I'm not saying they all even out, but it is true that by third grade as compared to K they have all had exposure, and instruction, and any effects of early interest or instruction will be gone.

If academic skills are too charged, how about gross motor skills. My oldest started walking at nine months because she was small, light, and very interested in it. She was queen of the playground compared to all the other babies, running, climbing, jumping, while they were all crawling, and a reasonable number were not even doing that. But, fast forward to three or four years old, and some of those kids who weren't even crawling are stronger, or taller, or more co-ordinated than her. They've "evened out" in the same way kids do with academics. They're not all the same, but the distribution of skill is not correlated with the distribution of skill at the point where it was an emergent skill.

BUT. The OP's kid has a gifted-level IQ score. Surely that counts for quite a lot. If her child was simply an untested high achiever, that would be different.

Ultramarina - that's what I meant... you can't coach a kid into a high IQ (looking back at my post I see that I didn't word it well). Tallulah are you referring to the hothoused kids? Because you'd be right about that, for sure. Meanwhile some untested high achievers are hothoused, and some have high IQ's. As for the ones who have tested high... is it even possible to get a false positive for giftedness? A false negative, sure.. there are many things that could suppress a score.

I think that it's possible to get a false positive for giftedness, meaning that you test having a high IQ, but you aren't really gifted.

I agree-- particularly true in younger kids who have been hothoused by well-meaning (but Tigerish) parents.

What I think cannot be mistaken is the rate at which gifted children learn, or how rapidly they attain mastery.

I do not think that a child who is not gifted can, for example, go from basic decoding skills (e.g. Bob books) to late high school reading ability (no, not just decoding, but actual comprehension) in just a few weeks or months.

The problem with this idea of 'evening out' is that while it may be true that other kids learn to read during this period, and achieve basic numeracy... if a gifted child is allowed to learn, too, then they will still be traveling that road in a faster car, if that makes sense.

So while the differences may be more subtle than "this three year old can read, and all these others can't," there is little doubt that the third grader who has been fully literate for YEARS will have experienced much more during that time than his/her newly literate classmates will have in the last 18 months.

And they should put more distance between them and their same age peers as they go through life.

Because it's all about the trajectory.

People in the same intellectual cohort will eventually even out with each other.

People in different intellectual cohorts will eventually move further away from each other.