Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Have you told your child about their test results?

I see two parallel discussions here.

One is to tell your kid the numbers.
The other is to tell your kid that he or she is gifted according to whatever metric you hold up.

I see these as different discussions here. The program in my kids' school is called "gifted," which necessitates that we use this word at least some. I initially balked at the gifted intervention teacher leading a discussion about what it meant to be gifted, but I can see that this discussion, held over 3 years time, did a lot of good for these kids. They understand who they are and why their experience is different, and they've also discussed positive ways to address these issues amongst their general ed peers.

In our house, we mostly refer to the gifted population as "kids who think like you do," or "kids who learn quickly like you do." Both kids see that they are different compared to the gifted cohort as well, at which point we've started the conversation of differences in strengths and weaknesses amongst the cohort.

We did not tell specific numbers when our ds was younger, but we did discuss where he was on the bell curve (and explained the bell curve lol) by the time he was in 3rd grade, because he was becoming frustrated with other children when it took them longer to grasp concepts than it did him or when he tried talking about things that they didn't understand. He was aslo frustrated with the pace of school as well as frustrated with his own inability to perform in some areas due to his 2e challenges - so explaining the test results in age-appropriate terms was extremely helpful and reassuring to him. Now that he's a teen, he's asked just recently to see his actual scores (this happened when we reviewed the recent link that HappilyMom posted that explains LDs - an excellent resource btw!). We are planning to look through the actual reports together at this point - he's mature enough as well as confident enough in his own skin at this point in time to see the numbers, and I don't have to worry about him running out on the playground and telling the world lol.

FWIW, I'll also add - he was getting a lot of comments from adults at a young age about how smart he was, and starting in kindergarten other kids in his class noticed and said things about how smart he was. So it's not like our kids are living in vacuums - they get feedback about their intellectual "gifts" from others whether or not we share test scores with them.

polarbear

Hard to completely dodge the concept as like with momoftwins, DS has seen at least one book about gifted kids in the house. He knows he did all sorts of testing (code word:fun puzzles) last year which led to his skip. Other than numbers, there isn't much room to dodge a sharp aware kid when he isn't being age-appropriately obtuse.

We watched the "Big Brain Theory" engineering competition, and they put up IQs for the contestants. So, some discussion there. But no, no number for him. I actually don't think we have a number I believe is quite right to tell him anyhow.

My main summary line with him is "you can be as smart as you want to put the effort into being."

One of the reasons I will not tell my kids they are "gifted" or "smart" is because research says this can actually be detrimental to kids and they perform worse. Kids do better when they are praised for effort rather than innate characteristics or labels such as "good", "smart", "talented", etc.
I like the book "Nurture Shock"--it describes the research and says not to over-praise kids or tell them how wonderful they are.

Yes, we told them, but they were in 7th grade. They also knew that the law in PA is if you have IQ >= 130, the school must provide gifted services. Additionally, they are expected to attend the yearly GIEP meetings, so pretty much impossible to hide it from them. They know kids at the HS and elsewhere who are PG (they are not), so while they know they are "smart", they know kids who are far smarter.

I think there's a difference here in the basic question though - I too don't believe in parading my kids around and proclaiming how smart (or athletic or beautiful or whatever) they are, and I wouldn't ever sit at the dinner table and tell my ds "Hey, you are smart!" just to build his self-esteem. That's different than sharing information honestly as kids ask about it. My ds, starting at around 5 years old, really wanted to know why other kids (and sometimes adults) didn't understand what he was talking about - it was frustrating to him, and a simple explanation of the different ways people can be smart, one of the ways he was smart, and where that ability was for him relative to most other kids really helped him feel at peace with what had been very frustrating. All kids are different, of course, but having that bit of age-appropriate knowledge about his own intellect didn't lead him to be unmotivated or perform poorly in school - he's always tried very hard in school - which I personally don't think is related to giftedness or to how he was parented or anything external at all - I think it is who he innately is.

I also think it's important to realize our kids *are* smart, so they're going to start seeing/feeling what that means even at an early age - as well as having other people (adults and children) tell them they're smart. Giving them some info that explains what their particular type of "smart" is in quantitative terms, like the bell curve etc, can help them navigate through understanding why they have people telling them they are smart and help them understand why they sometimes may feel a bit out of place among their same-age peers. I think if my ds could have skipped ages 3-10 or so, he wouldn't have needed to know what his scores are (for those reasons) because by the time he was 11 he had enough emotional maturity and intuition to figure out where he was on that bell curve all by himself. At 5, however, he didn't have the life experience or enough social interactions under his belt to understand that.

On a slightly different note, as a twice-exceptional teen who needs accommodations going forward in school, I believe that having knowledge of his test scores and what the ups/downs/discrepancies etc mean is really important.

polarbear

If the conversation is handled carefully, I can see what you are saying polarbear. But I think it should not be over-done and a discussion of effort is also in order, or the bell curve or IQ score is meaningless. Kids who are lower on that bell curve but more motivated may end up doing much better in the long run (and are truly the "gifted" ones in the end). Dh's brother was a national merit scholar and his mom was always talking about IQ scores of various people. Her national merit scholar ended up dropping out of college with various "F's" and "Incompletes" on his transcript and now he drives an ambulance part time after living with mom and dad til age 30.
Dh's brother was/is 2e and has ADHD. His mom was always using the ADHD to excuse laziness, underperformance and all kinds of behaviors. I hope to handle it much better (both of the "e's")in my own kids.

This is a great question. We never told our kids their IQ. The actual number can be misleading unless you really can put it in a context.

I tried to explain the concept of "gifted" to them, since the term would be used at school anyway, and tried to give it meaning, both in terms of what it means and does NOT mean. I wanted to make sure they knew that this did NOT mean they were more special than other kids, just that they had learning differences that required different learning instruction.

I went into this more in detail in a blog post, since it is such a complicated question for so many parents: http://giftedchallenges.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-to-say-to-your-gifted-childabout.html

Gail Post/ www.giftedchallenges.com

I prefer the two-pronged approach of praising and valuing effort *and* telling my kids they're wonderful and smart

Also, just putting it out there that gifted kids aren't necessarily academically advanced ...

We'll tell DD her "number" when she's older but at 6 it's not interesting or useful information for her. I also don't share her number with anyone especially friends with a gifted boy who seem to like to compare and contrast whenever they can

Madeinuk, I appreciate your approach! I think it is possible to share our joy in our children for their natural talents, for how we feel parental tenderness toward them (ex. wonderful) AND to give praise when they work hard at something.