Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment No external indicators of giftedness ...

My 6 y o DS is in the 99+ percentile of IQ according to an IQ test. That labels him as gifted. But, he is unmotivated, unfocused, not intense, gives up easily because of perfectionism and generally does not grab the tons of opportunities that we throw his way to find an interest or an object of his focus. We try to provide him with all kinds of inputs and enroll him in various classes and camps to expose him to different fields/activities. We play games with him, take him to museums, engage him in socaratic discussions, read aloud to him (both non-fiction and fiction), send him to different activities and classes, afterschool him using multiple interesting curricula but he just goes through life with no focus. For e.g. he went to an art tutor for weekly art classes for 6 months and came back with scribbled drawings. He went to chess classes and spent the whole time socializing with other kids. He goes to the museums with me and spends time pushing buttons to activate the display panel on exhibits instead of focusing on what I am talking to him about the exhibits. Basically, it is all fun and games to him. Now, isn't a gifted child supposed to be intense and focused to the point of obsession in an area of interest (like photography, science, math, geography, art, animals, languages or whatever)? How can a so called "gifted" child not be motivated about anything? He is extremely capable though - academically, he is above grade level in all the core subjects and is never resistant to any new curriculum that I introduce and never complains about work load and can cheerfully complete all the afterschool work I require of him. Though he will only do what I ask him to do ... and then move on to spend time working on Legos (which is what interests him most, but he is not so good at that either!)

I hear you are frustrated, but please understand that a six-year-old really doesn't need to be good at anything, other than being a six-year-old, even if he is highly or even profoundly gifted. Both of my kids were/are a little like you are describing. My DD is now 11, and I can see how her lack of focus when she was younger really wasn't a problem. She doesn't even have a tremendous focus now, and I really am okay with that. Both myself and my sister found our focus much later in our lives – in our 30s. Children learn best by playing. It sounds like your son loves to do that. How lovely that he has a good time socializing. That is an important part of life. Finally, I would like to chime in for creativity! Creativity often looks absolutely nothing like high achievement. In fact, it may not look like very much at all. i bet when your son is "doing nothing," there is actually a lot going on.

This seems well within the range of normal gifted six year old behavior.

My DD6 is not at all intense and focused to the point of obsession. She is, obviously, very smart and funny, and often surprises us with absolute brilliance when we least expect it (not when we ask for it!) Giftedness is all about the 'potential', it's not a requirement, especially at 6 - life is supposed to be fun!

Your DS sounds like just the kind of child I've always daydreamed of having. (Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes except without his learning problems).

I agree with gabalyn and Jon. I know it's hard to watch a gifted child go on unfocused because you know he has the potential to succeed but as they say, you can lead a horse to water, but...

I don't think your DS minds that he is not driven. He is happy as he is. So why would he want to do anything differently?

Nurturing talent of any kind in children is a slow cooking process. It's not what he is or isn't doing right now that matters. Precocious abilities and/or accomplishments are not necessary for him to be successful later in life.

That being said, a friend's friend had a gifted child who had no drive, ambition, or focus. That bothered his parents greatly so they took him out of a gifted school that was warm and fuzzy and sent him to another school that pushed and pushed their students. It worked out well in this particular case but I'm not sure if that's a solution for every child.

DD9 (a DYS) is also not motivated about anything in the sense of 'showing off' her intellect--and actually, in our experience, being 'focused to the point of obsession' would be considered a huge negative and evidence of a disorder (usually Asperger's/ autism spectrum). DD actually does not focus to the point of obsession, although she has been accused of being on the spectrum for other reasons (social issues). She reads almost all of the time outside of school but has only ever asked for extra instruction in math, which we have given her and encouraged her to continue with. But we have been following her lead all along. I feel the same way you describe that it sometimes seems like she may be squandering her potential (although she is only going into 5th grade), but I honestly have never personally seen pushing a kid work in a long-term, positive way--it always seems to backfire at some point and leave the kid with an even worse attitude than it seems like they might otherwise have had, sometimes with disastrous results such as the kids I met in college whose parents had pushed them to get into a program they couldn't keep up with. I can't speak to Mana's example (and I am glad there are some), but you might want to look at some of the Tiger Mom/Parent threads and discussions to get more perspective on that. I guess it does work for some kids, but it seems like for most it doesn't--the motivation has to come from within or it will not last. I think gentle encouragement and providing opportunities is the best approach, and it sounds like you are already doing a great job at that, so I would encourage you to be patient and remember that you are doing the best for your kid that you can--and try to relax and enjoy their childhood because that's the one thing you know will not last

Whatever you decide, best of luck!

I want to echo what the others have said - he's 6! We used to joke that our DD was profoundly gifted at dress up and sandpit. Still at 7 she'd mostly rather hunt for lizards with the dog (just barely 7) or play on her iPod. She's 99.9th. She DOES think and learn differently, but most often you see it when she looks at the sunrise through the winter trees out the dining room window and says "Look, it's like art in the sky!" or yesterday, randomly while playing Zombies v. Plants "It would be weird if a man loved a girl, no not a lady, a girl." (Seriously where did THAT come from?)... Academically she has risen to every challenge she's faced and then some, but she's so not pursuing any academic area for the fun of it. She comes home with books from the library on snakes and reptiles and when I ask if she's finished reading them yet she says "MUM!" (in her you-are-being-stupid voice) "I got them to look at the PICTURES. I'm not reading them". I know full well she's more than capable, her reading is somewhere between 3 and 5 years advanced at this point, her decoding is about 10 years advanced, but nope, she's looking at the pictures (and reading the snippets that interest her). The fact that she won't stretch herself academically, but will happily do as much as is asked, does make the question of acceleration a more frequent issue than we would like. We don't WANT to accelerate her more but her happy place is just above average for her class and for her that simply is not one grade accelerated... Yes we have our struggles and issues with her but really she's having a happy childhood, it's great!

I guess the other thing I wanted to ask is - do you need to check your yardstick? I would like to humbly suggest it's broken. Do you actually know what truly average for 6 looks like? Do you get that 99th is absolutely well and truly gifted but it's an order of magnitude different from many of the kids discussed here? If you are reading about the sort of way out there gifted kids on this forum and thinking that's what gifted looks like, well it's not really, not at all. It's what HG+/EG/PG looks like.

Coming back to add: I have children 20 points apart in verbal iq, 15 points in full scale, I wasn't trying to be mean at all with the above, just saying most people don't have a home grown example of: "wow that is what a standard deviation between kids looks like!"

Maybe it's hard for him to focus because there are so many different activities.

What Mumof3 said.

My daughter (a 14yo high school senior) can read peer-reviewed literature faster than most people with PhD's can.

But mostly, she'd choose to text or skype, or maybe to lay on the floor in her bedroom and listen to her MP3 player.

I truly do not know what she is actually capable of. We see glimmers occasionally that are (frankly) superhuman. But mostly, she doesn't really exert herself much.

Two things about that:

a) she's learned that being a side show freak isn't that much fun

b) extending yourself really doesn't come with much of a reward, and it can make others uncomfortable.

She's a stellar student, but just a "good" kid otherwise, not extraordinary-seeming in most ways. Until you realize that she does all of this without breaking a sweat-- and she's 4 years younger than most of the peers who are doing it through hard work.

DH and I are both HG+-- but our DD is something alien even to us.


Another thing that I'd offer as an observation is that most people who think about kids who are "super-gifted" are actually thinking about extraordinary instances of profound talent-- not actually about 'typical' 99th percentile kids.

Most 99th+ kids aren't going to be teaching calculus before they are kindergarten age.

The ones who really seem to hide are those that do NOT have a singular area of extraordinary ability that outpaces everything else.

I found the description of "omnibus gifted" enlightening in Ellen Winner's description of gifted children. I realized that this was why we didn't think of our DD (then about 3yo) as all that odd.

Well, most of her development was more-or-less in synch. She just acted more like a 6yo than a 3yo. Except when she didn't, and it always threw us that she was suddenly behaving like-- well, like a 3yo.

She still deals with that. She's 14. Not 19 or 20. And yet... most of the time, she acts as though she's a bright 19yo. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that she is continuously doing things that no 'average' 14yo could do.

She's merely "good" (not "great") at photography, at her dog training, at her community service activities, at sewing, at drawing, etc. She's REALLY good (but not 'amazingly' so) at public speaking, piano, writing, communications, and science. For a 17yo, I mean.

Her problem is that she sells herself short, too, as a result of this multipotentiality. College is really scary at this point, because she COULD do about a dozen different things, even as a 15yo. How on earth is she supposed to know at this point what she should choose??

My DS6 is HG, not profoundly gifted. I think there are some stereotypes about gifted kids- mainly that it's all "learning" (as we adults see it) all the time.

For instance, I put my son in some science camps this summer that I thought he would love, but he mostly enjoyed swimming, going to the park, and opportunities to socialize with other kids. He was fine with the camps, but not super excited.

Your comment about the museums rings true for us- DS cannot tolerate museums if he can't interact with the displays. Just "looking" causes almost immediate boredom and tuning out. We choose our museums based on the kids areas and interactive displays- we're saving the galleries and glass cases for later. Also, my DS does great in school, but he's not blowing anyone's socks off. He focuses where he wants to focus- right now, it's drawing and Legos and comic books.

I tried a bit of pushing with my DS this summer and yikes did it ever backfire. I'm just letting him take the lead on what he wants to learn and providing some interesting experiences where I can. Honestly, you may be surprised about the things that engage your DS.