Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy What "That Parent" looks like

I remember comparing LSAT scores at law school more than SAT scores in college.

This may be because I was in the honors program at a state school, so the group of students I was with was going to be significantly more intelligent than the general university.

In hindsight, I probably should not have attended a university that would admit someone as intelligent as my sisters, being that I'm pretty certain we have a 30 point IQ difference.

This is something that would have been nice to know, but when you're 18 your pretty much completely ignorant about how anything really works.

In any event this article is classic Salon and which is why I love reading Salon comments so to the extent that we are discussing this here, there needs to be some acknowlegement that it's Salon.

Even I have resisted the urge to join the commentariat at Salon because it's just too dangerous there.

Kind of like wandering through a bad part of town naked at midnight.

GGA.


I keep coming back to this thread...


and then realizing that, well, no; I still haven't had enough coffee-- er, time-- um, whatever-- to formulate anything coherent in response.

I think Megmeg probably articulated my horror here the most succinctly.

Is this kind of push parenting COMMONPLACE?? I shudder to think that maybe it is much more common than I'd thought. Now I'm sifting through a decade worth of offhand commentary from parent-strangers eager to demonstrate to me/us that their children are "bright, too" even when it's almost comically awkward to bring it up.

I'm a little dumbfounded; it would never have occurred to me that this kind of enmeshed parenting was behind that drive. I assumed that it was trophy parenting, which I suppose is just as bad in its own way.

I've always wondered why on earth parents would behave in such a way... WHY would you want your child to be "Gifted" (capital-G-gifted, I mean). Having lived this, honestly, I think I'd much rather have a kid who was 'bright, but not gifted' than PG. Besides, unless this is overtly delusional thinking, and what happens if you succeed in prepping your child into a gifted magnet (or whatever passes for the rarified differentiated instructional format locally)?? Won't it be pretty damaging for an otherwise bright, even above-average, youngster to try desperately to keep up with a pace and level of instruction that they simply aren't intended to cope with?? ??? I truly do NOT understand this in the context of loving parenting.

I think that this comes close to the heart of what bothered me most about the author's subtext. The author seems to be suggesting that her PERCEPTION of her intellect is all that matters. That she was "plenty smart enough" until she knew that she wasn't that unusual. Fair enough, and I don't disagree with the notion that you basically are what you can do, generally speaking...

BUT. What bugged me about this was the notion that the label is utterly without meaning, and that therefore gaming the system to GET it was just dandy. Because it implies that there ARE no truly 'gifted' kids-- only parents who are more (or less) motivated to purchase the label for their children.

That I clearly disagree with. I have to think such things are at least somewhat rare. Or maybe I just hope so. It's possible that a large percentage of "MG" kids in the 125 range are merely groomed to look that way instead, by parents who for some bizarre reason think that this will garner their kids more opportunities and better instructional quality (which is kind of laughable, if you ask me).


I hate to break it to her, but yes, Virginia, there is PG, and it looks very little like "groomed for the test." Some people really ARE that much 'smarter' than others. Not in some made-up way, but in an authentic, day-to-day way. Sorry that probably doesn't make her feel any better.

Wow.

Because you're a believer in positive eugenics and you want the entire human population to have IQs over 150?

I'd guess the motivation is commonly much more personal. "My child has a number that makes her super-awesome, thereby establishing my own super-awesomeness."

Well, my DW is pretty insistent that we get both our children into the "gifted" program so that we don't have to pull them out and send them to private schools.

However, that's so that they avoid things that will lead to deviance, social dysfunction, and laziness more than proving that they're "really smart".

But to answer your question,

Yes.

As in Push Parenting -----> Gifted = Winning!

Weelll.... yes, if that programme of education really does have a much faster pace and higher level of instruction than what the child would get otherwise. But, maybe it's a mistaken impression coming from the concentration of parents of children who need way more that we have here, but I don't have the impression that that's common over there. Provocative? suggestion: actually a bright, well-adjusted, well-motivated child with supportive parents would be just fine in almost (not quite!) any gifted magnet or rarified gifted programme in the US. The gifted programmes are just better education, full stop.

I think the relationship between IQ and success is monotonic -- the smarter the better. This does not mean, of course, that other qualities do not influence success or that the correlation between IQ and success, however defined, is very high. So it is not surprising that many parents want their children to be really smart (or good-looking, or athletic).

As for getting into a gifted program -- suppose the cut-off is 130, your child's "natural IQ" is 120 but he can be coached to a 130 score, and the alternative to the gifted program is a regular program where the average IQ is 100 and the curriculum is geared to students with IQ below that. I'd rather have my child in the gifted program.

I think this is pretty much my DW's logic.

I agree with this entirely, primarily because almost any gifted magnet or program in the US fails to meet the needs of the truly gifted, in my experience. These options appear to me to be optimized for the bright, well-adjusted, well-motivated, well-supported, not-quite-gifted child.

I'm guessing so, too. See, this is actually why we've deliberately chosen to go with "our DD is what she can DO, not a number" and not ever get her evaluated.

But I think that our real reasons do have a lot to do with the idea that:

a) you can't Un-know things once known (which is one of this author's main points, actually),

b) we don't even want the APPEARANCE of being parents like this (for whom the number is about our own needs), and

c) if the number is as high as we think, it potentially dwarfs WHO our child is for far too many people (honestly, even her overt abilities do that sometimes)-- if it's far lower, then what on earth would we change? Clearly what we and the school have done with DD is stuff she's well capable of, and they have not seen any reason to ask for the number either. I'm about accommodating a child's needs, not the number's needs.

I have my own IQ number. While it's in the range that this author clearly (still) envies, I haven't actually found it to be all that useful in practical terms. I absolutely don't need my DD's in order to bolster my own ego. I was left feeling incredibly sad for this woman's child... and significant anger and sadness directed at the author herself, who clearly needs to just grow up and get over herself already.