Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion I am really surprised....

I see your example as more of a cultural issue than just rich vs poor angle. Though Texas is a tri-culture; the Hispanics and Blacks were the minority and lumped together under the separate but equal laws. I am not certain of the Black culture in reference to the above example but the response you received from your friend's father is very similar to Hispanic culture. You are to be happy with your place and not push to better yourself. If it was good enough for your grandparents and us than it is perfectly fine for you. (And if anyone hasn't seen "Real Women have Curves" I highly recommend it. It is a great example of the 'typical' Hispanic culture and a girl of intelligence who had to battle her mother to simply go to college. Hispanic culture is all about family extension and is why many of them live with multiple families under one roof. (Not that that part was relevant but I find the culture interesting and love the idea of extended network all under one roof.)

So when reading your example I found it shocking to be from a Black family and granted I am being general in my statements to the point of stereotyping which I hate, but the Black culture has come from a great deficit and have had to literally break the chains and build from there; so having the attitude of good enough is interesting.




I don't agree and find this argument too simplified and think culture is a huge part of it, not just the Rich vs Poor. It is bred in us and isn't exactly the easiest thing to overcome. But you are correct in that the target for change has to be the grandparents and parents but it definitely will not be easy. I see it more as a pebble tossed in the pond with small ripples, not giant waves such as you suggest. Winning over a parent/grandparent would perhaps open the eyes of the family for one child but not the entire community.

I don't know. Our pediatrician pointed out to us when DD was 4months old that she definitely was doing things for her age that were very unusual (to the point that she'd never seen other kids DD's age do). All our pediatrician visits from then on have just reconfirmed this.

Maybe this is an usual example but I'm VERY glad our pediatrician said that to us. I think keeping in mind that DD could possibly be gifted made worry less about somethings and give us more confidence in others. For instance, it was helpful for me to know that it's not uncommon for gifted kids to sleep less or for them to be active non-stop during the day. It also gave me more confidence to follow her lead on things (like letting her dress herself) at a younger age than I would think of doing that otherwise.

I can see how it could go the other way where parents would assume their child is gifted and push them more but that's never been our intention. We used to go to the pediatrician's office with a long list of questions because there was so many things going on with DD we didn't understand. After doing more research into giftedness I realized that maybe some of things weren't as crazy as I had initially thought. I really helped to set my mind at ease.

I've said this before, and I know several of you disagree with me, but let me say it once more.

Doctors are experts in medicine. They spend years training in that subject matter. They are very knowledgeable in that field. Giftedness and gifted education is simply something that is not now taught in medical school. It's not something pediatricians know anything about unless they've researched it on their own for their own purposes. They are by no means experts in that field. They aren't even experts in child development. They know just enough to be able to spot a problem, and in most cases they'd refer a problem to a specialist rather than dealing with it themselves.

So if they give their opinions, they are lay opinions, not expert opinions. Now, I have nothing against people giving lay opinions, but in the context of a doctor's visit, people are going to give the doctor's opinion far more weight than it deserves. And we are going to have some (but obviously not all) pediatricians giving awful, ill-informed, and totally inappropriate advice and parents taking that advice as absolute truth.

I think it's wonderful that some of you have gotten good advice from your pediatricians on this topic. But I am only too aware of the terrible advice pediatricians often give on topics that are outside their area of expertise.

Okay, rant over.

Our experience is that teachers generally respond with "oh, you think your child is gifted, well I will spend the next year trying to prove to you that they aren't".

While doctors generally respond with "well, of course they are gifted, I don't need any testing to tell me that, you only need to spend 5 minutes with the child !".

We have even had one doctor tell us "like always recognise like", meaning that gifted always recognise other gifted (secret language maybe). Yes, he was an odd fellow, a senior paediatric neurologist, but he got on wonderfully with our son.

Yet to meet a teacher who doesn't throw the pysch report to the back of the desk never to be seen again.

I agree with no5no5 about the doctors. However, that is an excellent point Jennie72 about like recognizing like.
I know someone, not a doctor, who is gifted, has a highly gifted husband and 3 gifted kids (teens), who recognized things in my DS long before I did. I would mention something he did and she would say "of course he can do that!". It is pretty funny.

I think I agree that doctors probably aren't prepared to accurately "diagnose" giftedness...not because they can't but because they don't really learn much about it. But I like this. How often do gifted people have the chance to step in anymore and say "I can do this without education." Back in the day I think many people who ran our country and got ahead would be considered gifted in today's world and few of them had a high school education much less a college degree. ex. Abraham Lincoln. But now college is so important for almost any field and let us face it.....many gifted don't ever finish school. I am finding it hard in college now after being out of school for almost a decade because I am absolutely bored with the assignments. I think helping to identify gifted children could be something that could inspire many gifted students to finish college. I for one am planning on spending my life looking for a better way to test for giftedness, to bring awareness to the cause, and even if only one child at a time build confidence in children who need to be recognized and helped. We should all come together and find ways to solve these problems. Maybe in solving them we can level out the emotions behind the subject and find a way to all get along. Maybe by solving these problems we can not only help the gifted find joy in school again but also help every other student find a love for learning.
I think there are a lot of factors that play into why giftedness is not accepted in many families. I have seen it in every race and on every economic level. I think many of the gifted are shy. Some are labeled bad kids because behavior issues that sometimes follow the ability. I think the most important factor that desperately needs to be corrected, is that the parent no longer feels the need in most cases to be in charge of a child's education. When a child is behind or causing problems, somehow it becomes the schools responsibility to make corrections. Parents have to be given and have to take more control over what their children are learning, at what pace they are learning, and who teachers them. We cannot decide that a school is just a place to send our children while we are work. I see this happen way too often. I have seen parents cuss out teachers and faculty because their child failed. When the parent is asked about what their child should have been learning, the parent has no clue. We have to change this American mentality that it is the school's job to raise our children.
I do think that more priority should be put on identifying the gifted at a young age. I also think that a few minutes with a doctor won't cut it. I think observation over a period of time is key...much like how ADHD is diagnosed. It still has flaws but it is a better start. I would like all pre-k to attend summer day camps in small student to teacher ratios. Then we group this with parent interviews and psychological testing. Each group attends a week or so and at the end a full report is drawn. If a child shows the ability to learn quickly or manipulate their environment in a way that may point to giftedness than they should be enrolled in a gifted magnet school......these schools I think should also have room for children with autism. I think these groups need to at least be taught together for periods during the day. (that's a whole other subject for me...I could write a book on) Then once enrolled the children are observed and tested for another 3 years...including children in regular public schools to help identify anyone who was missed or who had been drilled by parents to do well but really couldn't handle it. Finally, I think schools and programs for the gifted have to extend all the way through high school. I know once my gifted programs dropped off my involvement in school and my grades did as well. I usually sat in class and played with silly putty or read. We have to find a way to bring awareness to get something in place that will help determine who needs help. We have to find more funding and we need good representatives. I know cancer and heart disease need hollywood support, but my argument is that if we can fix the problems in our education system then we are more likely to find cures and solutions for the problems in our world. I do agree... the gifted always recognize the gifted. I think that is why I feel my purpose is to help find solutions. I think the gifted adult community needs to come together to make sure the next generation does not face the problems of our generation.
Sorry, if this reply is filled with grammatical mistakes. I have trouble writing and reading when I get hyped up about something:)

If doctors can be trained to recognize atypical development on the left side of the Bell Curve, it seems like they could pretty easily be trained to spot it on the right side. (Especially since many already are spotting it...)

I hear what you're saying about people giving too much weight to what doctors say, no5no5. And there's no guarantee that any screening by anyone is going to be perfect or all-encompassing. Mistakes are bound to happen. Nobody's neutral. etc. etc.

But doctors see a lot of kids, and they already ask the right sort of questions. It doesn't seem a big leap to add giftedness to the list. It would be another case of referring the family to a specialist in the area, not of giving extensive advice. I don't see a problem with that approach. After all, most teachers are laypeople in the area of gifted education, too, and they're giving extensive advice...

<shrug> It's not something I'm going to work hard to make happen or anything. But it seems like it could work pretty efficiently.

Sure, they could be trained to do it. They're smart people. They could be trained to do anything. But they haven't been. And, frankly, their brains are packed so full of warning signs and treatment strategies and whatnot that none of them know all of what they should know. I wouldn't add a single additional burden, even if it were possible to waive a magic wand and teach all the doctors in the country how to recognize potentially gifted children. If I could waive that magic wand, I'd teach educators how to recognize them. Giftedness isn't a medical problem; it is an educational issue.


Eh. DD's never seen a doctor who asked appropriate questions of her development. We've seen doctors who were hugely impressed for no apparent reason (as when DD said "no way" when the doctor asked if she would open her mouth at her two-year checkup) and doctors who were inappropriately worried (as when a nurse-practitioner spent the whole of DD's one-year checkup running down the list designed for three-year checkups and then giving up when I pointed out her mistake and she couldn't find the appropriate list).

I guess I don't need to say that I see huge flaws in both the medical and educational systems. I think both need a lot of work. And I don't think that shifting the burden from one failing system to another would help.

I hear you. But I guess I wasn't thinking of shifting the burden, so much as adding another way to figure it out to what's already there. I don't see schools stopping the process. But more pre-screening to help clueless parents (speaking as one who was!) seems like a good idea, failing systems or no...

I get the sense that you're thinking of something way more extensive than what I'm thinking of. All it would take is a sheet with checkboxes, much as they already use to detect delays. That doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Of course, I've never had someone use the wrong checklist with my child...

It wouldn't have been so funny if I had actually been concerned about her development, but I'll admit that I got a big laugh out of it at the time. Does my baby ride a tricycle? Dress herself? LOL

I guess I just don't see the benefit of taking up the time of doctors to run down another checklist, particularly when there's no checklist that I know of that can accurately identify gifted kids. And I can see the cost in terms of time and money as well as in the misidentification (both under and over) that would inevitably happen.