Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy siblings statistic - gifted or no?

I have two kids that look very different but actually have the same FSIQ. Their GAI's are ~10 points apart but both should have had extended norms and didn't so it could be more/less.

They are sooooooo different. I will also point out that neither of them looked remotely like your DS5. Neither read particularly early (in fact DS was pretty late but when it eventually clicked he went from 0-60 in 2 seconds).

We mostly tested DD to be fair and because she shared genes with DS. DS screams gifted from every pore, by comparison she doesn't but on paper they are far closer than I would have thought.

My older son (who is now 19) at any given moment seemed to have average (or lower) intelligence with occasional flashes of brilliance from birth to age 7 or so. When he was 7, he was tested by the school in an attempt to discover why he struggled so much with learning and his IQ came back in the double digits.

When the older one was 8, his brother was 2 and acting very obviously gifted (extremely verbal, learning to read, that sort of thing). That's when I started reading about dyslexia and giftedness and 2e and it seemed to describe my son perfectly. A few years later, the dyslexia and the giftedness were confirmed with testing. Now, as a young adult, the giftedness is very apparent and the difficult aspects of dyslexia are much less so.

We also had the younger one tested. When comparing scores from testing done on the older one at age 12 and the younger one at age 7, the GAIs are within 10 points of each other without extended norms and 15 points with. The most glaring difference in their profiles is in working memory--the younger one's WMI was something like 40 points higher than the older one's.

So, in our case, obvious giftedness in one child caused us to look beyond the school's diagnosis of "just slow" in the other--and I'm so glad we did.

DD was at the ceiling of some school tests and had done extremely well on the EXPLORE, so we took the DC to a tester listed on Hoagies who was experienced with gifted children. DD and DS both had higher reasoning scores than index scores on the WISC, and we were told that the GAI was the more accurate composite. Still, she calculated both for us. DC have different personalities, but both seem quite bright.

DD - Higher VCI and PSI. DS - Higher PRI and WMI. Scores were within 1 point FSIQ of each other, and within 3 points GAI. Both DC qualified for extended norms in VCI, and DS's surprised me because DD is more obviously verbally gifted (which made me think DS was not, but apparently, that is all relative).

We tested DD first and her scores convinced us that we needed to figure out DS sooner rather than later, for planning purposes.

DS8 FSIQ = 122
DS7 FSIQ = 150

DS8 loves Lego building since he was younger than 3. He could follow the instruction booklet and put a Lego set (that is for 3-4 years older) together on his own. He started reading before K and his comprehension is always on the higher level than his peers. He memorizes his Karate moves after one or two demonstrations from the teacher. He can quickly remember the facts in social studies and contains that information very well. However, he did not show much of the characteristics of a gifted kid so we did not think of having him tested until we got the results for DS7. All his subtests are at or above 75% but his FRI was 97%. Thanks to aeh's explanations, I found out that all the above abilities are most likely due to his high fluid reasoning abilities. He could be considered optimally gifted which means that he should be expected to be a high level academic performer among his classmates. On the social side, he has no problem "fitting in" with his peers. He's always been the "best" student that every teacher wants. Basically, he's just a normal 3rd grader with above average IQ.

OTOH, my DS7 was far from normal since he was little. He showed many traits of giftedness. He showed intense interest in alphabets, socialized much better with adults and older kids than his peers and memorized and could free-handily draw the US states/map before the age of 5, just to name a few.

So yes, from the same parents and same environment, we have two very different kids in every aspect. We just need to have different parenting approaches for them.

My husband and I recently adjusted our views of our 3 year old after realizing we were misremembering the amazing things our 6 year old did. We had some old data/notes that were helpful!

Now I think they are going to be similar. A week ago I thought the younger one was behind... It's hard to be objective when remembering, I think!

My kids are as different as night and day in personality, abilities, EQ, interests, but testing last year showed them both to have GAIs above 145. They're not easily comparable other than that because one has a GAI but not FSIQ on the WISC-IV extended norms and the other took the WPPSI, but they seem to be in the same range.

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My three (18, 16 and 7) oddly enough have the exact same IQs and GAIs.

Recently scheduled YDS' assessments. He'll be six when they take place. Suddenly having cold feet about whether it's a waste of money to do the assessments since he, although clearly very smart, isn't as obviously as "out there" as ODS (DYS). OTOH, they had very different school environments to this age.

Our original purpose was to make sure we have the results in case they are helpful in future advocacy and to be fair to him. Now we are worrying that it might be too much information if his scores are dramatically lower (of course, we'll continue to provide lots of enrichment opportunities). Does that make any sort of sense to others here?

Yup - see my post at the top of the page. I could also dig up a pile of PM's to someone here where I was doubting myself and wondering if DD would be even remotely gifted along with their "ha ha - told you so" response to the results (in the nicest way possible of course ).

In the end it didn't change much but I'm so glad we did it. Regardless of scores we try to encourage them to explore, we try to expose them to lots of different things and opportunities and in general try to foster a love of learning.