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.