Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion how many of you parents are also gifted?

I never had my IQ tested...I never did the SAT and just barely made it through highschool. I did college courses in highschool for English and Literature and graduated with 9 credits already but after 2 years of college I dropped out. I moved out at 17/18 as soon as I barely graduated highschool and have been working full time and being to independent. I would have never considered myself smart. My husband is book smart, my father is one of the top engineers in our state and my mom is a retired teacher who now is our kids "daycare". I have very intelligent people in my family and although hubby would like to take credit for our sons and daughters brilliance I wouldn't necessarily agree lol...but I won't tell him that. My parents continue to believe the kids got my inteeligence and hubbys book smarts but I just don't agree. Anyways according to specialists we have seen they believe giftedness is a maternal genetic component...anyone agree with that?

IQ seems to be a combination of genetics and environment, as well as the test itself (the measurement tool).

And a child's mother is *both* genetics and environment.

I have no idea what the current thinking is on the complexity of human inherited traits, but the gist of what I've read over the years is that intelligence is really much more complex than "maternal genetic component".

It's intelligence even considered to be something that is directly heritable these days? I thought that too many genes and possible gene combinations were involved.

By maternal genetic component, do you mean passed from the mother's side?

That's certainly not true in my family's case. My mother's intelligence is probably close to average, whereas my father is clearly PG, and I am likely PG (never tested).

Going to the next generation, my wife is probably MG, but for our two kids D is HG-PG, and S is most definitely PG.

I am not aware of the latest studies, but older research indicates that intelligence is highly inheritable.

An anecdotal observation: When our son was 6 weeks old, we took him to a pediatrician, who had been practicing for almost 40 years had treated thousands of kids over his career (he has since retired). We knew him well because he had also been the pediatrician for our daughter, who was 3 years old at the time. After the 6-weeks exam, the pediatrician told us jokingly "don't bother saving money for college with this one, he will get scholarships for everything". He said this because our son was unusually attentive relative to the many other patients he had.

Since then DS, has been tested and found to be PG. Obviously at six weeks there was no unusual nurturing for DS compared to DD, so the difference was really nature.

This is all interesting to me. I would never consider myself gifted or intelligent. Hubby does but it certainly isn't from his family lol. Compared to my siblings I'm not even close ha! So I just figures it was something he got from my dad and brothers. But the notion of it being genetic I intrigues me.

Intelligence is one of the most heritable traits--but it's a complex inheritance. Many, many genes are involved, and they are transmitted from both parents.

If you follow some of the links attached to Bostonian's recent posting in GT Research, there are some summaries of genetic findings on intelligence.

Yes, it's highly heritable, and yes, it's also quite complex.

Besides, looking at an individual and trying to gauge relative levels of cognitive ability via performance proxies is really just a guessing game unless you know that you're seeing glimpses of what that person is truly capable of, and that they have no other disability/challenge which is preventing that kind of performance.

Without all of the adaptive tech, Stephen Hawking wouldn't still be able to wow people with his insights, YK?

That's an extreme example, but just because you didn't finish an undergraduate education, that doesn't make you less intelligent.

My father was definitely PG-- certified by the Navy repeatedly, in fact-- but his path was a non-academic one, by and large.

My family and my DH's, our paternal genetics is where our cognitive outlier status comes from. DD seems (from a functional stance) probably PG, and family who have known them both well compare her to my father. In my DH's family, there is no comparable person. My family produces the occasional PG person (seems to be about 1 of 20 or so), among a backdrop of a majority of people who are MG, and a regular sprinkling of those at higher LOG. I'm at least EG, depending upon which instrument one considers. I'm not in my dad's league-- using the same instrument, his IQ was over 10pt higher than mine (SB-LM). On the other hand, mine is ten points higher than my DH's.

Functionally, there isn't a TON to separate my DH and myself in day to day life. I'm a little quicker than he is at strategic thinking, but he's faster than I am computationally.

My mom and my DH's mother were both 'bright' at most. But both had siblings who were clearly gifted of one variety or another.

We expected DD to be gifted. Maybe even HG. But I'm not sure that any parent is truly prepared to deal with a child who turns out to be PG. There is no preparing for it because that kind of extreme asynchrony turns out to be a developmental arc like a fingerprint-- almost unique due to the shaping forces and number of influences swirling together. Those things, in turn, push the individual into outlier range in various dimensions of human experience, and ultimately produce an adult individual who is still an outlier because of a lack of peers with shared experiences.

My dad found me enchanting intellectually-- my cognitive abilities delighted him. We have found our DD to be a similar delight. There is no need to over-simplify concepts or conversation with such children. A lifetime of that kind of intense relationship is an amazing bond to share with your child.

You can compare it to the heritability of height. Two moderately-tall people can have short children, medium-height children, or tall children, just as two tall people can have a very short child, for example. But on the average, the female offspring will be the mid-parental height (average) minus two inches, and the male offspring will be plus two inches. It has historically been observed that the first generation after immigration to the first world is taller than the parental generation, and that the generation after that is still taller, but that after a few generations, the height of the population stabilizes. Height and intelligence are both continuous traits, with strong effects from genetics, but also effects from environment that you can conceptualize as nutritive.

And yes, I would agree that the measurement tool is a factor. I would add, as a corollary, that the traits valued by a particular community might be involved in the definition and measurement of intelligence.

My eldest's pediatrician said basically the same thing about my son at the same age. At checkups starting at 2 or 4 weeks, he would get him to do things like follow an object or turn to a noise, and then exclaim, "99th percentile!" My daughter was probably more obviously gifted as a newborn, and her pediatrician commented on her too (we had moved). My second was born early and didn't meet milestones the way his brother did until he was around 5 months old. His verbal abilities are better; math, not so much.

All I know about my IQ is that the tester told me I was past the 99th percentile. I suspect I'm well past it, based primarily on how long I can concentrate (many hours), how quickly I pick up things, and how much I can teach myself (and the results of my son's test, I suppose. Before it, I had always thought we were of roughly the same intelligence).

When DH and I talk about the cognitive strengths our kids have, we can see traits that they get from one or both of us; there are traits from both that seem to surpass what either parent has. This apparent synergistic effect may be related to environment, though, as neither of us was encouraged cognitively the way our kids are.

I agree about the high heritability of intelligence and also understand that there is an environmental component. A good environment can presumable help a child reach his full cognitive potential, whereas a bad one can presumably do a lot of damage.

I suspect that intelligence is complex and multifactorial, but that IQ tests are a good place to start.

When DH and I talk about the cognitive strengths our kids have, we can see traits that they get from one or both of us; there are traits from both that seem to surpass what either parent has. This apparent synergistic effect may be related to environment, though, as neither of us was encouraged cognitively the way our kids are.


That mirrors our household, as well. DD is both the sum of, and more than, either of us as individuals. I think that what makes us not automatically think of her in exclusively those terms is my father, who shared a certain personality and set of strengths/interests with her. But we also don't have any way to see them side-by-side-- so she reminds people of him. People who knew my father remark on it.


She was another one who was extremely remarkable as a newborn and young infant. Her level of motor control, curiosity, and alertness raised a LOT of comment from every one of the professionals in the delivery room. We have those exclamations on tape.