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

I know that they say that siblings' IQs are usually within 10 points of each other...but how often is that really the case? Do a lot of parents on this forum have multiple gifted kids or are there a lot of people hanging around with one PG kid and one normal kid? Which is more likely? Also, the higher the IQ of one...does that mean the likelihood increases of higher IQ of a sibling? Is is more common to have a 130 and a 110 vs a 160 and a 110? I know what they say and what I have heard, but I was wondering, IRL, what the statistics are.

We have two sons: DYS5 is very obviously gifted. Passionate and crazy advanced in math, reading at 2, that sort of thing. It's kind of impossible to miss just how advanced he is. Then there is DS2. SO different. Different personality, different EQ, vastly different interests. He doesn't want to play with numbers and words and academic things like his brother. He's fanatical about Frozen, and dressing up, and pretend play of all kinds, like legos but he actually plays with the little lego people, vs building machines. That sort of thing. I always think it's funny just how different two kids can be, from the same parents. We obviously do very different things with DS2, because we follow interest. Also, getting him to do anything he doesn't want to do is an exercise in futility. But then there are hints of things. He is precociously verbal...doesn't really talk like a 2 year old. He knows a ton of weird shapes in addition to the normal ones...octagon, rhombus, parallelogram, cube, cylinder....I mean, he knows his letters and has a quantity sense of up to maybe 5? Can count to ten and can get to 20ish or higher (but it gets all funky past 12.) In other words, in a lot of ways, compared to what DS5 was doing at 2...he just seems way closer to normal. Clearly he's bright, and if that's all he is, that's fine, but I also don't want him to slip through the cracks if he is gifted, because he presents in a vastly different way than his older brother. He will make his way in the world just fine with his intense tenacity and flair for the dramatic, that's for sure. I was just curious about other families with multiple kids and what kinds of combinations you see in terms of giftedness vs not. And if anyone has a kid that SEEMED super gifted vs one that didn't.

DS8 was/is a verbal superstar and very showy gifted. He was the three year old that could explain and build a model of a desalination plant. He's also dyslexic so there were some usual holes (hated even looking at numbers/letters). DS5 is not a verbal kid. Early on there was an almost creepy attention to the route we took to various locations and perfect recall even months later of how to get to places he wanted to go. At five he has a natural ability with numbers his older brother doesn't have. Skip counting, mental math, multiplication - he just gets it without any instruction.

DS5 has not been tested but I suspect he is in gifted range but probably with different strengths.

If you go back through the threads, you'll find a few stories...I've recounted mine before (my kids haven't been tested):

I'm one of a sibling group, all ID'd as GT, where one is PG, and the remainder are HG+. The HG+ sibs test within 10 points of each other. The PG sib has about 3 to 4 standard deviations on us (more or less, using the old SBLM, which isn't deviation IQs, so I'm estimating a bit here). All of the HG+ sibs presented differently as young children, with reading, for example, ranging from self-taught before age 3 up to parent taught at nearly age 5. One of us (that would be me) almost wasn't tested because of being perceived as being NT.

I'm sure you've heard it before...if you've seen one GT kid...

DS11, 159 GAI, 138 FSIQ
DD8, 160 GAI, 147 FSIQ

So in my case, the GAI was very close, and FSIQ was within 10 points. My DS is very showy gifted, can talk to you about fossil types and phylum, animal classes etc. Little professor type.

My daughter seems like just a regular third grader. Very social, and apparently underachieving for reasons unknown. I did not even think she was gifted, but tested her because I had heard the statistic and didn't want to short change her. But no other real reason to think she was gifted really.

So I'm a believer in the statistic

My fraternal twins are both gifted and are within 10pts but the one with the higher WISC has a lower achievement and vice versa for the other twin. Both 2e but in different ways. The one with the lower WISC/higher achievement, we didn't even know was gifted until we got feedback from AEH and so had her tested as well. These are our only kids so we assumed all kids were like this.

Ds8 fsiq 158
Ds6 fsiq 143

So more than 10 points. Tested on Wjiii cognitive so no GAI (confusing because their fsiq is called a general index of intelligence) but as WM and PS are among their higher scores it would be tbe same I guess.

Eta. Or general ability index? Gai or gia or something.

My kids are very different socially too. DS8 is social with quirky kids but not the rough and tumble type. DS5 is a very typical boy. He likes sports and rough physical play.

Nature verses nurture? DS12 (adopted) FSIQ 140, strong verbal, strong visual spatial. DS10 FSIQ 140, strong verbal, 99.9 mathy subsets,, also strong v.s.

DD11 GAI=148
DS7 GAI=121

That's almost two standard deviations of difference between siblings. The report says that DS7's score is probably something of an underestimate, but I definitely see the differences between them.

Marnie, pardon me for pointing this out... but your youngest sounds HG+ to me, though more in the verbally sense than the mathy one. My DYS-level son sounds a lot like him when he was 2. Precocious talker, can count to ten (keep in mind that's quite unusual at 2), classifications of unusual objects, favors imaginative play... all of that sounds eerily familiar.

My kid's social intelligence ended up being astounding. He can get along with almost anyone he meets, be it younger kids, age mates, teenagers, or adults. He exudes confidence in nearly every situation, and many kids seem to admire him. Yet he seemed "stealthily gifted" to us because he wasn't doing things like reading early or algebra at the age of 5. I guess our perspective was a bit skewed...

I think you're likely underestimating him simply because you're comparing him to his sibling.

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.

Just have to say I'm very curious about this. DH was gifted; his sister was never assessed and I would doubt she was. It's always been a source of contention in his family (not the gifted label -- DH didn't know he was gifted because there were not G&T programs in his school, but his mom showed me his assessments). But regardless of labels, DH was the "smart one" and that's really frustrating for a sibling. His sister certainly wasn't stupid...just average.

My DD4 is suspected gifted and it's very "showy". I feel bad for DS3 because gifted or not, we always underestimate him. I was reflecting the other day on how DD was reading and writing at 3 and thinking that DS didn't even know his alphabet (although I knew he could recognize his name and his sister's name). Cue 2 weeks later I realize he knows all his letters, can write his name, and recognizes his friends' names too. Yesterday he spent all day organizing various objects in our home from tallest to shortest. Nothing mind-blowing, nothing that screams "gifted"..but he's certainly bright, and I'm only just now starting to realize it. Given the answers in his thread, I'll probably have him assessed when he's in kindergarten just like DD will be (assuming DD4 is actually assessed as gifted).

My post is a few posts before. My DS8 and DS7 have pretty big gap in their test results. We did not want to test DS8 until DS7 tested very high. We wondered if he was MG or HG. He's neither according to the score. However, the test result showed his areas of strength. He's the type of kid that he'll just do the bare minimum. With the test result, we know what areas we can push him further and give him more challenges because he has the potential to do better.

DS11 147+
DS9 132 with very uneven profile, 30 points difference between VSI and PRI

I'm sure that early speaking/writing/reading/etc is highly correlated with high IQ's but I'd also caution that the absence of them doesn't mean the child isn't gifted. Gifted kids can be very asynchronous and/or have other exceptionalities which along with the whole personality aspect can mean some kids are more obvious than others or they are obvious in some moments but then average or behind in others. You can find stories here of kids reading at 2-3 while other kids here were barely speaking and in speech therapy at that age. Fast forward a few years and they can both test PG.

I will also say that having one kid that is one flavour of gifted also really skews your judgement of what all gifted kids look like and what is actually average. Volunteering weekly in DS's average grade 1 classroom was a real eyeopening experience a few years ago (DS is 2e so it eyeopening on both ends of the spectrum).

The research I have seen seems to be mixed. However, it seems to depend on whether both parents have similar cognitive abilities. Each child tends to be more like one parent or the other in terms of cognitive abilities, not a mixture or average. So, if you have two gifted parents then most children will probably be gifted. If you have one gifted and one not it is a crap shoot, you could end up with all or none gifted. From the actual research I have seen environment does not necessarily make a huge difference (no more than a standard deviation) unless, there is a particularly negative (most likely abusive) environment involved.

DD12 FSIQ 124 GAI 130 (WISC -IV)
DS10 FSIQ 134 GAI 140 (WISC-V)

They have similar profiles but are very different. He was also tested on WISC-IV at 6yrs (WISC-V was at 9y10m). He is a math type kid and she is artsy. He hit the ceiling on the FRI index for both subtests. Should be interesting to see what happened when the extended norms come out.

My DS17 was obviously gifted as a preschooler, he read at 3 but I didn't have him tested till he was 15. My DH is profoundly gifted so it didn't come as a surprise. My older DD21 and is NOT gifted she tests above average but with notable LD's and has struggled in school. Thankfully they are 4 1/2 years apart so the older one didn't compare herself too much to him.

As to your comment that DS3 doesn't seem gifted because he's not reading like his sister. I've known many very gifted kids who don't read till they were 7 or so and never do anything "showy". You will see of this board many a parent say they didn't have a clue till they started to be very bored in early elementary.

DS when 3 also did that thing where skills came out of nowhere. One day out of curiosity I asked him if he could write his name having never seen him write a letter in his life. I figured we could work on the first 3 letters. He proceeded to write his name & then announced to me "now I'll write the alphabet". And except for a few upside down letters it very very legible.

My kids fall in the very similar IQ range (within just a few points), but very very different kiddos. Like many others here, one (DS11) was the 'showy' gifted type -- insatiably curious, passionate about his interests. My younger (DD9) we knew was *bright* but would never have assumed gifted. She was tested when she became a behavior problem in 2nd grade (boredom, lack of appropriate work). Thankfully our principal suggested the testing, b/c I don't think I even would have. Turns out she's the one with the higher scores... LOL!

eta: btw, DD didn't start reading early. Partly or largely b/c of her perfectionism: she'd have had to admit less than perfect knowledge if she admitted to reading early whereas by the time she "learned" in school, she was well beyond her peers (we knew she was reading - she could tell us what words said w/out having seen them before or w/out having memorized a book, but she would claim that wasn't reading LOL). DS, on the other hand, began reading at 3. Their verbal score is their high one, and they are the same (slightly different scores on subtests, but the overall verbal is the same).

I'm curious about this, too. DD5 is very different from DD10. (That being said, Marnie, P-J is totally at the very least HG, or at least that's my personal observation.)