Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Growing up gifted

Have either or both parents, of the gifted children we're discussing, grown up gifted and/or were you surrounded by other gifted siblings or parents or is giftedness a new thing for you [in your child/ren]? Just curious.

I grew up in a very artistic family. I am one of 5 siblings and 2 of my brothers are in the PG category. One being a musical prodigy and traveled the world since a teenager in the classical music circles. Another brother is a math and statistics whiz who did the class schedules and teacher assignments for his high school as a "fun summer project" for the principal. I would not label myself PG, but somewhere in the gifted continuum. I wasn't challenged with school until college and had to unlearn many bad habits caused by this.

DH was in gifted programs since 1st grade and completed many college math and comp. science courses before the AP courses were around. He had a wonderful mentor and knew he and his friends were different, but in that environment it didn't matter. His brother is a classic gifted underachiever.

We are surrounded by various examples of how a gifted child can turn out. This certainly affects our desire to keep DD challenged and motivated in school.

I never knew anything about giftedness until now.

DH and I were both ID'd as GT as kids, as were his only sibling and my only sibling. There's also reason to believe that at least a couple of our parents were GT (if not all 4), though they were not tested or ID'd as such back in those days.

There are pros and cons to all that GTness in families. I think it's one of the reasons I didn't realize right away just how bright DS7 really was. MG (or higher) was the norm to us, so I just assumed DS7 was MG. His high test scores were a huge shock to me, even though I really should have known better because I'd been reading about GTness since I was a child. (My mom was the founder of a support group for parents and GT kids, so she had all the books back then. I read literally everything I could get my hands on, including her books. Back then, GT books didn't really talk about LOGs though. More reason for my cluelessness about DS7's specific situation, even though I was pretty well-versed in GTness long before I had kids...)

Finally, it turns out that most of DS7's young friends through his life have probably been MG, but at the time I had always figured they were ND and he was MG. Without a good sense of what ND looked like, my whole frame of reference skewed low.

So I would argue that in some cases, the more GTness you see, the less aware you are of GTness. It seems backwards, but I think I was a *lot* more confused and freaked out when I got here than newbies I've seen since who haven't had as much GT experience as I had. GT denial is easier to stay in--and harder to shake yourself out of!--when virtually everyone you know is GT.

If that makes any sense...

I grew up being identified as gifted and participating in a few gifted pullouts in grade school. Because the programs back then were just enrichment activities that everyone would benefit from, my mom complained to the school about them and tried to make sure everyone got to do them (she was unsuccessful). She probably did this because my older brother was not identified as gifted by the school (looking back, i'm guessing he would be 2e). My parents never made a big deal out of giftedness, and so I never thought of myself as gifted. I was part of the state's first post-secondary enrollment plan, where I took all my classes my senior year at the local university.

DH never thought of himself as gifted either, and he had similar gifted pullout experiences and a mom who lobbied for gifted kids. He thought DS4's behaviors (including reading at 2.5) were normal.

The giftedness only kicked in when reading about our ds4's giftedness. I remember reading stories and saying "that was me!"

I have just started learning about giftedness about a year ago. I mostly never saw myself as such, but now with the research I think I was or am. I moved arround alot as a child maybe 10 plus times, mother married and devorced a lot, 4 times all before 18. Mostly rural schools with no Gifted programs. Once I was tested, or so I have been told in 1st or 2nd, they wanted to send me to some special school, but we moved again. Reading was easy, however learning by whole word vs phonics, has made spelling and writting difficult. Also the pace of writting is very difficult even today. My brother who is a year younger has ADHD, was on ritlain, and had a very difficult time in school. I always thought of him as not so bright, he was in special ed classes, he was kicked out of K, he has a lot of issues fitting in, even more then myself. The funny part is my DW mentioned that my brother is very bright, (I never saw it). It turns out he is, just that it is masked by behavior issues, and by his lack of education. For myself school was too easy, so I did not particpate, only on things that interested me did I do well. You know you may be a geek when you get the frineds of the library award in MS (I think they made that one up for me).Because of my past I think I am a stronger advocate for my DS5. On ADD, one of my clients a Phycologist mentioned that if my brother was ADHD, that I may be ADD. I have never thought so. I took on online test though last year, it says I was and that I should seek help immeadatly, (I think its a marketing ploy). My wifes family all seem very bright, they learn quickly, thier children seem quick, but it is thier norm. GT issues never came up for any of them, but in looking at the criterior many are MG. If you look at our parents, no white coller types, but almost all of them are quick verbally, and also seem somewhat gifted. I know this is an over simlification, I have no real data. But it does seem like there is some past history of giftness, that is there.

No one ever used the word gifted while I was growing up. No one at my small, private school was identified gifted. The only kids that got any special attention at all were the families that contributed a lot of money or time to the school or affiliated church. In elementary school I always felt like a misfit and underachieved as much as humanly possible to fit into my class. I was miserable. I was quickly in the top 10 in a class of 300+ at high school without really trying. (probably because I found a peer group)

But I still felt like Kriston with my own kids. I didn't even have gifted in my vocab. This was never an issue or a thought before kindergarten. Lots of kids in this area read before kindy (due to hothousing/Montessori). I actually thought my kid was behind. Sure he related to older kids, understood conceptual math beyond his years, and could put together legos sets for 12 year olds, but so what? I'm sure all of us as a family naturally gravitate to GT people and kids. My husband was always the smartest of 3 siblings and even though his own kid is off the charts and we're likely homeschoolers, he still isn't comfortable with GT talk. This research into the world of GT has opened my eyes to my own childhood.

Interestingly, my mother was identified GT in elementary school.

All three of us were id'ed as gifted kids in school. My parents are definitely gifted, although I don't think they were identified as such during childhood. My dad is an accelerator physicist, and my mom is an artist.

My mom was early entranced to K at age 4 by her mother who gave the school a false birth certificate. My mom could already read and tried "help" the other kids read the color names on their crayons to teach them their colors, LOL. She got in trouble at school a lot for not staying in her seat and for singing in the bathroom.

My dad's mother was a teacher who didn't "believe in" giftedness even though she was certainly gifted herself...

Okay, I have a little bit of a mom-crush on your mom for this, Cathy! LOL!

I know! I must know all your moms too well now!

But getting in trouble in K for singing in the bathroom? How can you not love that?!?

Oooh! 10 spankings! I had no idea I was buddied up to such a rebel!

I was such a perfectionist that I'd have died of shame if I'd been spanked even once, I think. One of my worst memories of school was once having to eat lunch standing at the freezer because I talked when the lights were out. Oh, the trauma!!!

So how did you get the balloons to blow up? That seems like a weird thing for you to have access to if you weren't allowed to blow them up--???

LOL!

I like it too. But she was paddled for it in front of the class. It was very humiliating. Her mom just wanted her to behave and not make waves. She snuck her into school early because she was a single mom who worked all day and she couldn't afford daycare. My mom suffered a lot of abuse growing up from sitters and from her own mom.

Oh, I'm sorry about all that.

Kriston, she is an amazingly resilient person. She is ok despite all she went through.

We're all sort of posting willy-nilly! Lots of overlap today.

That's the best way, I think, though it can lead to some confusing threads if we're not careful.

Still, great fun reading it all!

Of course she is! I mean, duh! She sings in the bathroom! Ergo ipso facto and all that...

You see, I may have weird crushes, but I choose them quite wisely.

Nevermind, Dottie. It's kind of a funny story about the birth certificate. My mom was born on the first of the month. The first birth certificate her mom was given had the wrong birthdate written on it. It was listed as the first of the previous month--probably because everyone had a month to get used to writing that.

Anyway, she got a corrected birth certificate but kept the wrong one. When it came time for my mom to go to school, it happened that her birthday was just after the cutoff. Then her mom remembered the incorrect birth certificate. So the one she gave the school was absolutely genuine. Just had the wrong birthdate on it.

I'm completely new to this site and looking for some suggestions/support, etc. We have a five year old daughter who is definitely advanced and possibly gifted. She fits many of the descriptions listed on this site to a "t." Her Kindergarten teacher suggested we wait a few years and then have her officially tested once she's older.

Our issues are less about her intellectual capacity and more about her emotional issues. She's intense, highly sensitive, anxious, resists change, etc. and it's causing problems with her socially and within the family.

She's obviously very young, but I'd like to know if any of you have followed a plan of action that helped you with some of the issues we have above.

I'd appreciate any insight!

Thanks!

LOL! When I'm on this website, DS7 is frequently standing over my shoulder. He could care less about the actual posts though. He often comments on the number of posts you two have however. He is very impressed!

He thinks I'm a slacker though. I think I just generally feel less qualified to answer posts. I'm on here reading plenty!

rlmom, here's a great resource for you at the SENG website:

http://www.sengifted.org/articles_index.shtml

Another good source of info is http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/

For our own family, I'm not sure I could say that I have a plan of action--but we have worked on some of these same issues with our kids. I think you have to know when to encourage kids to try something and when to let it go. There are moments when my kids are more receptive and I try to take advantage of those growth opportunities. I'm sure that's very vague advice but it depends so much on the child and the personal dynamic you have with your child.

Do you have something specific you are concerned about?

I snorted aloud when I read this.

Qualifications? We don' need no stinkin' qualifications!!!!

Seriously, my attitude is that opinions are like...ahem...well, you know what they're like, and everybody has one! I just feel free to share mine more often than others do! (That's my opinion, naturally. Not my ahem. LOL!)

Seriously, I cringe everytime DOTTIE brings up the numbers! Let me post in peace, woman!

<snicker>

I have a whole buncha siblings, and a good share of us are probably gifted - maybe the whole bunch - but I don't think anybody was identified officially. Well, maybe some of the younger ones. Our sd didn't have a gifted program until I was in 5th grade or so, and then it was only for elementary school. They only tested the kids teachers recommended though.

I was just a regular bright quiet kid until we took PSAT's and I got the highest score in my class. Because of that, I got to go to a summer gifted program through the state. I have several siblings who also went. As far as I know, none of us has taken a real IQ test, but we all took SAT's and there's supposed to be some correlation. Based on my SAT's, I could join Mensa, so I think I'm gifted.

My dh also comes from a big family. He's also gifted based on his SAT's. Some LD's.

I was identified fairly early as gifted, scoring 99th percentile on the verbal side of things on some standardized testing around 3rd rade. I was lucky to already be in a good school, but they also put me in a class were we got to build things, which was pretty fun though I dont know how much I learned.
I was also allowed to take french early and I have always enjoyed it since...
I was selected to take one of the early 7th or 8th grade sats, I was told it was to see how
to design the test for older regular kids, which I thought was a kick. I did ok on those, though I really dont remember a score.
I remember being called a walking encyclopedia by a few of my friends, I loved to read, would read overnight just to get through books to move on to the next ones...
I do regret not being directed more into math early on, because according to my last set of sat scores, at the regular age, I was really kicking some butt in math! verbal scores were still good but just about every one was shocked I did even better in math. Funny. Maybe that side of my brain was still catching up with the other side through most of my childhood...
Anway, after 15 years of being told I wasn't a math person, one test score was not going to turn things around...although I did get brave and take a couple of calc courses in college.
Since then I have had a turn around the business world and landed eventually in programming, which I find to be a darn good fit for my skills. I am able to stretch myself when doing
trouble shooting, there is a constant need to learn new things and I stand out from a lot of the other folks because I also have strong communication and even people skills(!).

Cool story! I was told I was not a math person. In fact the high school I went to never asked me to take higher than Algebra I because the school pysch. said I had math anxiety.

Interesting, in college I took a computer programming class and I found it so easy I felt I must have been doing it wrong. I aced the class, most students seemed to struggle.

I ended up being a financial analyst. Hee hee hee

Finance? Awesome! I am still a bit shy on computation, but in proramming I always joke that you really only have to know how to add up 0 and 1! (and the computer does it for you
Thankfully there is a lot of creativity needed in areas like analysis and coding to keep us happy!

I was identified as GT in elementary. Got to do some pull out stuff. Took the SAT in 8th grade "for fun" and went away to GT summer camp in our area. I never thought much about it though since my friends were all bright too.

My DH went through Catholic school and although I contend he is much smarter than I am, he was never labeled GT.

So this is completely new to him and I send him links to particularly relevant threads on this board from time to time for educational purposes.

Mainly, we're both feeling a bit like we're stumbling around int he dark. My GT label was probably borderline. I was bright, but when I look at DS, I don't recognize myself so much.

Not only do I feel as I'm stumbling in the dark.....I kind of feel as I am RUNNING WITH SHARP SCISSORS in the dark.

I do feel like I recognize myself in my ds8, but I am trying not to go read too much into that. He's very verbal but still there's something mathy there, I think. Anyway, I do try to keep that door open for him since it wasn't presented as much of an option for me.

I am definetely not gifted. Bright but not gifted.

In the uk they didn't test at all. My ds is way brighter than me and all the rest of my family. He knows it too and everybody else does. Because we don't have any experience of children like this I spend a lot of time trying to explain his behaviour and reaction to things.

He is so different and marches to his own drummer that life is becoming increasingly difficult. He is largely misunderstood too by all my family but me.

It is very hard and lonely. That is why it is so great to have discovered this board.

It kind of knocks the genetic theory on the head too.

Well...Not necessarily. GT adults tend to have GT denial about themselves, too, not just about their kids. We tend to think of ourselves as more average/less GT than we are. In fact, that can be one of the reasons we don't realize just how bright our kids are: "He's like me, and I was probably MG, so he must be MG, too." But if Mom is NOT MG, but is actually HG+, then the whole train of logic is off.

I wouldn't toss out the idea that there's some genetic component of GTness just yet...

My DW intially said that she is not GT.

I questioned her closely about her education.

Turns out she skipped 1st grade. She could not recall her first grade teacher, but could recall all the others. She was the top child in her 8th grade class and won some district wide awards. She has nearly total recall of anything she hears.

I think she has some sort of deficiency when it comes to reading. She is smoking fast on excel, etc, and can usually learn and max out on a videogame in one night, but she reads 1 page every 5 minutes. She does not have total recall for what she reads, but can look at a page of numbers and pick out the discrepancies AND can tell you if something changed if she has seen that page before.

Austin, I'm the opposite of your wife, numbers vs. words. I have good visual discrepency for picures and words, not numbers. I also can max out a videogame in one night, though.



In hindsight, probably most people in my family are gifted on some level or another. The culture in my family was to downplay any talent so as not to appear "superior".

My whole family is gifted denial. My sister seems to be coming around, though.

Whether or not you are gifted doesn't really matter, though, in terms of taking care of a gifted child. Nurturing their talents is one in the same as nurturing them as a whole. It's just a part of who they are, and you love all of it!

Neato

Whether or not you are gifted doesn't really matter, though, in terms of taking care of a gifted child. Nurturing their talents is one in the same as nurturing them as a whole. It's just a part of who they are, and you love all of it!

So true! I often say that my ds has developed and nurtured his talents despite me! We had an extremely rough time until two years ago when we got our own home. Before that we moved around every six months in rented accomodation. I was actually living in a womens refuge whilst expecting him and then had to return to full time work at four months. His early life was very unsettled and I spent way too little time with him as I was working all hours.

So thats nature and nurture both discounted. I love him dearly and do my best, but I really don't know where he gets it from.

I too wish I could keep up with my ds. He goes at a hundred miles an hour and sleeps, if I am lucky for maybe six hours. He too runs rings round me and I wish I was way smarter than I am, just to keep one step ahead.

I advise others to underestimate him at their peril. Once when he was between three and four he had been very naughty. I had gone upstairs after taking some beloved lego away. Less than five minutes later the door bell rang. Its the postwoman. "Go and look in your window" she said. Sellotaped to the window was a note he had written. "Help me. My mummy has broken my heart"

Good job she knows him

He actually becomes aggressive if I can't answer his questions quickly enough or in enough depth, and he asks lots of stuff that is out of my depth. He is just not emotionally ready to deal with the answers yet, especially with death and disease.

But I tell myself that you get what you're given and I have to learn to deal with it. I cannot believe that there is so little help from the state to accomplish this.

It is so unfair to ignore a group of children with special needs to such a degree.

These issues are just as difficult if you are a gifted parent. It's just part of the package.