Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Straight from the teacher's mouth!!

Wow - and we sometimes wonder why it is all so hard (from a teacher on another forum).......

"xxxxx has given her teacher point of view and I would like to give mine....

First I think it is too young to know yet.

Second there are money grabbing professionals just waiting for parents whose children are "gifted" and they will be more than happy to support it while you hand over HUNDREDS of dollars to prove it

Third ...as a teacher and this drives me to distraction, there are parents that focus on the "gifted" side and want extension and push and whinge and carry on and are general PITA (sorry- I have been teaching a LONG time) yet their child can't catch a ball or make a friend or write a sentence that is legible - which gets ignored

Fourth ...and lastly let your child be a child.... don't single them out as better than other children- they are going to want to be like everyone else...not different. When you are going to have to do something is when there is trouble at school- when they do start getting bored and causing trouble, when they are reading newspapers and the rest of the class is reading run spot run, when they choose to watch documentaries instead of Thomas the tank engine etc etc.

OK I can't stop... Fifth.. there are extension classes like the Opportunity classes that start in Year 5 and 6 FOR A REASON. Selective schools start at high school FOR A REASON. And that is let them be children for as long as possible. I have seen SOOOO many anxiety ridden children at the age of 6!!!!!!! because mummy wants to extend their giftedness and they just want a tickle fight

Now I am not accusing anyone here of any of this but I have seen too many UNHAPPY children because of the way the parents handled it"
__________________

not all teachers are like that, honest! Unfortunately there are quite a few...

I would really think that all of her complaints are relevant to parents who are seeing something in their children that is not there or who are pushing their children well beyond their children's own desires. That isn't the case for many parents of gifted kids.

While a gifted child might "want to be like everyone else... not different," the reality is that he is different even if we ignore it and pretend that he isn't until he starts to have problems or reaches the magic age of year 5 or high school. Once he is having problems, you have more work to do to fix things than if you had done things right from earlier on.

Sounds like the teacher has had a lot of bad experiences.

Bet we have alot those here! LOL

Are you telling me that there are kids who would rather watch Thomas the Tank Engine than Nova Science Now???

The only rational comment.



We give public schools billions and you still don't have a clue. What is a few dollars more?


Ever hear of 2e? Lack of true peers?

And for the record, a lot of us play on Tier 1 sports teams, too.


I walked out of your class because you could not let me read my books - I had to read spot books - and walked home. And when my mom called to pick me up, you could not find me. Who caused that problem? Did you enjoy almost getting fired for that?


So many PG kids are HS for a REASON!


And there are so many unhappy kids because of you.

We only do Netflix for Nova

If everyone agreed with this teacher there would be no mathematicians or classical musicians. Standard school curriculum (in the U.S. anyway) is incapable of instilling these skills (without supplementation).

Actually, I don't know this to be true. I just suspect it. Can anyone provide an example that refutes me? A brilliant individual who went through a regular HS and then got a PhD in math at MIT without the parents enrolling him/her in math camps or volunteering to help with math competition prep or otherwise pushing for more challenge. In other words, WITHOUT parents who "focus on the "gifted" side and want extension and push and whinge and carry on and are general PITA"?

Just for the record - my kids are really happy kids and a pleasure to be around. ALthough I must admit - they aren't as smart as many of the children I read about here!

Here is a list of largely self-taught, highly successful people. I think there are many examples of people who have succeeded despite little or no involvement on the part of their parents. Of course it's not ideal, but it certainly is possible.

When I read this post, I got a little upset so I was glad to see the other posts below it....if my child was in this poster's class, he would have probably missed getting his needs met....

and "Third ...as a teacher and this drives me to distraction, there are parents that focus on the "gifted" side and want extension and push and whinge and carry on and are general PITA (sorry- I have been teaching a LONG time) yet their child can't catch a ball or make a friend or write a sentence that is legible - which gets ignored"....

...this comment just bothers me....it has been studied and found that you need to FOCUS on a child's strengths all while building up their low points- not the other way around...you don't go in and focus on their flaws and build those up all in the event of ignoring their strengths. My DS7 has dyspraxia and can't throw a ball very well or write very well either and we have been told by his OT that he probably never will do either very well and he has been getting OT for YEARS...so because he can't throw a ball, has trouble with handwriting and will need to type most of his work and reads at a 5th grade level, does that mean we shouldn't be advocating for the teacher to allow him to work at his academic level all because he can't throw a ball and write?

OK, I might have missed some, but I saw no classical musicians and no 20th century American mathematicians, with the possible exception of Walter Pitts. I don't know who he is, but it says that he was "one of the scientists who laid the foundations of cognitive sciences, artifical intelligence and cybernetics." Those are all new fields, so that kind of makes sense. Not to say it's not an example that refutes my statement - it certainly is.


I wasn't really thinking about historical figures because the educational avenues available to people even just 100 years ago were so different. I would be interested in hearing about someone's neighbor or cousin who obtained a PhD in math at a highly competitive university or works as a professional classical musician who attended school in the U.S. and did NOT have parents who encouraged and facilitated their achievements pretty proactively.



P.S. - Oh - my bad! Joachim Raff Georg Philipp Telemann are two self taught classical composers. One of the others listed (Edward Elgar) had a parent who a was a musician, though.

That's true. Sort of. I guess I'm inclined to think that the same avenues are still available, though they are less popular these days.

I don't know anyone who has gotten a PhD in math at any university, much less a highly competitive university, but I do know a number of people who have worked as professional classical musicians. None of them are (seem to be?) highly gifted, and none of them had parents who did anything special to advance their education. Two of my close friends have dabbled in playing classical music professionally, and they learned in regular band class. The person I know who has played professionally (and without other employment) most of his life was self-taught.

I think so too, but I have trouble imagining a child navigating those avenues without parental support and intervention. I mean, I can imagine a child teaching himself/herself at home, but the parent would still have to jump through whatever hoops are required of homeschoolers. Otherwise their avilable time would be pretty limited. But it wouldn't be impossible. I also think that so much readily available recreation makes it less likely that a child will delve deep into interests on their own. Why study physics when you can pay videogames? OTOH, maybe the internet makes independent acquisition of knowledge more likely - A child could find a lot of information and guidance online without needing a parent to drive them to the library.


That's very interesting. My kids are pretty decent pianists (not great) and one thing I've noticed is that all the other kids at their age level have parents who are more knowledgable and involved than me (but my sample size is very small). I bet it's because my kids are still pretty young and other children whose parents are less involved catch up later. Thanks for that information. I wouldn't have expected that.

I don't mean to be contrarian... but when I read this post, I see that the teacher DOES say that something needs to be done if a child is reading well beyond their peers or preferring documentaries to Thomas... I am not saying that she is making productive suggestions; but my reading is that she is ranting about parents who are pushing for more for their kids when their kids aren't necessarily gifted. And those parents do exist. Honestly, sometimes I think I see a few of them here on this forum.

I do agree that this teacher could use some education on 2e, but I think our whole education system is just not geared to asynchonous development in kids. If there is one thing I would change in schools, I wouldn't get rid of this teacher -- I would set it up so everyone goes at their own pace academically so our gifted kids CAN surge ahead where they are ready.

Excellent post intparent - I agree....as an ex-teacher for many years, they do not train you very well at all in dealing with how to differentiate instruction and with the curriculum now a days being so scripted and structured- it does not allow a 2e or out of the box thinker to soar.

I understand your point & we do have a lot of bright but not gifted kids filling the TAG programming in our local schools as well. Some of these kids do have arrogant, pushy parents. And some of the gifted kids are never recognized as gifted b/c they don't present the same way as kids who have done four years of tutoring and enrichment.

I think that the parental frustration comes from the assumption that this teacher, and some others, seems to make that being gifted is something that needs no accommodation before late elementary or later. Bright kids who will do well in advanced classes don't necessarily need pushy parents and lots of accommodation early on. Kids who are wired differently may.

We weren't pushing for anything for our girls until we had problems -- partially b/c I didn't know that they were gifted until we had problems in school. In hindsight, it would have been a lot easier to have had them taught by people who understood uneven development, OEs and all of the other stuff that can go along with being gifted. We would have had a lot less damage to undo if they hadn't been so harmed by some of their school experiences. Dd11 seems to have come through it okay none the less, but dd9 still has a lot of emotional damage from some of her elementary experiences, teachers who didn't understand her, and those who left her feeling like she was weird but not too bright b/c she didn't come across as gifted to them.

(I hope that I am not one of those parents on this board whom you referenced at the end there ! )

Therein lies the problem.
Generally speaking, not attacking you directly

Why must success be defined what competitive university someone gets into? I feel sad for the parents who can only define success by that measure. That line of thinking is the reason we have so many pushy parents pressuring their kids to be the best and brightest.

If my kids grow up to be honest, independent, confident adults, then I will consider them to be a success. If they are happy working at McDonalds and taking care of their own, then I'll be proud for them.

Happiness cannot be earned or bought, it can only be found within yourself.

I'm not talking about success or happiness, I'm talking about achievement of a very specific type. I think the word string "highly competitive university" just sets off alarm bells in people's heads.

I'm not using that as my example (and my example was not getting admitted to a university, it was successful completion of a rigorous program) because of any prestige factor or to suggest it is a better goal than any other. Only because I think that very specific achievement is not possible without high parental expectations and/or an environment that is very different from what is typically found in US schools. And I may be wrong about that, but either way I'm not suggesting that it's a better goal than others or a better route to success and / or happiness.

I'm not sure, but I think she may be referring to underachieving kids who could use some guidance and encouragement to challenge themselves, without which they may choose the path of least mental resistance (the video games over the physics).

Yes, I'd agree with this. I think there's a lot of paranoia that builds if the system is confusing. I've seen it in my own school system where there are not enough spots at the gifted schools to serve the population and the system ends up being quite arbitrary. That open the doors for tutors for IQ tests, etc.

As for the self-taught learners or better put gifted students that didn't have parents pushing the schools for accommodations. Yes, they exist. I've known a few and happen to be married to one too. If you limit your criteria to one who gets a grad degree at MIT, no, I don't personally know anybody. But I do know others who have gotten absolutely no accommodations in school and have gone on to ivy league universities at some point in their lives (either as a professor or postdoc or student). These people have an absolute AMAZING drive and passion. I'd say it's not typical and there are some hang ups that can occur that can haunt them for the rest of their lives.

LOL master of none, I actually totally agree and think the same way. So I'll run defense for you.

This kind of thing runs rampant in our school district. And the vast majority of kids IDed as GT in our district are solidly working at grade level or just slightly ahead. I don't blame parents for advocating for their kids, but I can see why it can be hard for teachers to sort this out when half the parents come in with a GT labeled child they think needs more.

There are many "bright" kids in our local district's GT program and I get why the parents push. The general public school lessons are just too repetitive and lacking in depth for even the 115 IQ crowd, imho.

Maybe these parents are smart enough to know that kids should be getting something more during the school day and the only free way to do that is the enrichment classes during school?

If the school hadn't watered down their standards maybe this wouldn't be so necessary?

I'm not at the #1 program for it (turned that down because I could not do mathematics at that school), but I currently am doing an MD/PhD with a concentration in mathematics and epidemiology. My family mostly consists of people with high school degrees or less (minus my dad with a community college degree), and all of the schools that I attended before college were considered economically and academically disadvantaged.

This being said, I would strongly push for following a different path than mainstream school without acceleration or enrichment opportunities. I did not have an easy time getting to where I am now and spent a long time resenting authority and dealing with depression...

It's possible to get there, but it is not a pleasant road to travel in the least.

I have a similar experience. I "only" have undergrad degrees, but graduated w/honors from a competitive tech program that prided itself on failing out a good portion of every freshman class. I could have easily gone on to a bigger name grad program without a problem. I actually had enough credits for a grad degree with the double major.

I was never IDed as gifted and my parents were involved in my education at a pretty minimal level. They very much encouraged me to buck up and blend, and I was so intense and sensitive. I was the only person at my house who read for pleasure growing up. My parents are GT, but were encouraged even less than I was growing up. I would agree with not being pleasant in the least!

I look at my kids and don't think about big name schools. I mostly want them to have happy, well adjusted childhoods where they can be challenged and engaged appropriately. Where they can just be who they are. And hopefully they'll come out on the other end with a good sense of self and a strong work ethic.

Well...this idea really gets at the heart of the teacher's mistaken assumptions. She complains that it's important to let kids be kids, but fails to recognize that some kids just like science, or math or whatever.


It bothers me when teachers decide that there's a certain way of being a kid, and all other ways are somehow incorrect or due to parental pushing or whatever.

It bothers me even more that "learns faster" is being equated with "better." I don't even know that means, but I'm definitely tired of it. Sometimes I wonder if there's some resentment going on (?). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

FWIW, I spent a lot of time wanting to be "normal" when I was a kid and not understanding why I couldn't be. I hated being different, and looking back on it, I understand that part of the problem was that being different (in my case, thinking differently) just wasn't allowed.

It seems to me that this person's wants to to force highly gifted kids to be people they aren't --- which sounds a lot more damaging than watching Nova.

Schools of education put a lot of emphasis on "diversity" and accepting (even celebrating) differences between, say, ethnically diverse kids. This is nice, but does anyone find it interesting that the idea doesn't seem to extend to gifted kids?

I have to add that I completely understand complaints about parental pushiness. I've seen it (mostly in athletics, though many parents in New York hire coaches to boost standardized test scores for their toddlers). But a responsible teacher should be able to use her diversity training to recognize another type of difference.

Val

Hope the gifted girls in this teacher's class who hide their abilities and learn to blend in have PITA parents. This teacher's attitude seems to foster learned underachievement - no need to do anything unless the child is causing trouble. And when the parents pay for outside testing to show the children need something more, the psychologists are dismissed as "money grabbing professionals."
http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/gifted_girls_many_gifted_girls_few_eminent_women_why

My Uncle and maternal Aunt both have PHDs, the latter in Chemical Engineering. My Grandmother ran a business and had little time for them.

My story is pretty much the same as theirs. I was accepted at two Tier 1 colleges but went to a Tier 1 State U for financial reasons. I figured out what I needed to get into college by myself and did all the work including the money side. This pretty much sums up all of my activities. From my elementary years, I worked to get the money I needed to buy the things I wanted to play with or for books. I also figured out the public transit system when I was 12 and used it a lot or I walked.

And my best friend from college is from Mexico and he had even less than I. He made full professor in his 30s at a Tier 1 university.

Autodidacts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism

I've read (sorry, can recall the source) that some people learn better when they teach themselves. For some, a classroom environment just doesn't work.

This attribute could influence underachievement in some gifted students (and others?).

Val

After spending much of the past 6 years advocating for our gifted kids needs (3 boys, 10, 8 and 6) we have slowly come to a viewpoint that is not too far from what this teacher is (hopefully) trying to say. Our boys were born with an intellectual gift. It will never leave them. They can choose to tap into, exploit it, enjoy it, do whatever with it, anytime they choose. They may want to go down the academic path, but at the moment one wants to rescue wildlife, one wants to be a fireman and one wants to gets married and stay at home and look after the babies while his wife works (his words not ours!). These are all kids with 140 + IQ.

However, other life skills are learnt skills, including how to catch a ball and how to get along with people. Two of my kids have dyspraxia and one has borderline aspergers. The priority for us has been, in these younger years, to help them develop friendships and to help them develop motor skills so they can at least join in during lunchtime ball games with the other kids. This isn't to say that we ignore the academics, but we are now taking the approach that this isn't a race, and just because their intellectual gifts are not extended daily, doesn't mean that they will lose these gifts or lose interest in learning. We see the pain on their faces when they don't feel confident enough to join in a conversation with other kids, don't understand the subtle cues of "kid conversation" and become anxious about recess and lunchtime because they are excluded from joining in ball games. Their school results are just fine, they are working at their grade level with extension in subject (such as spelling and maths, as an example, DS who is 8 has a spelling age of 16 so has a different spelling list to other students). Sometimes they refuse to do their assignments because they are bored, and yes, my default response was to run to the school and say "this is an unfair expectation, he needs different work, of course he won't do this, it is far beneath his ability level". And then, after many years of the teacher rolling her eyes at me, I began to change my viewpoint. I now say to the kids "you know what, life can be boring and sometimes you have to do stuff that you don't particularly want to do but the trick is to just get it over with and move on." I also point out that many of the tasks that I have to do at work are really boring (like marking first year essays) but I will lose my job if I don't do it. Accepting that you will be bored sometimes is a lifeskill.

To be fair though, I think we live in a fair less pressured academic environment in Australia. We don't have private universities / colleges, they are all state run and 99% of students go to their local university. To comment on the PhD thing. Both my husband and I were labelled as gifted, we both went to very socio-economically disadvantaged schools, never had any extension but the innate ability was always there and we excelled at year 12 exams (which are used to gain entrance to university). We both gained PhDs without too much trouble and now have have very enjoyable academic careers.

Ouch.
Looking at a bell curve, it gives the impression that very few people sit at either tail, and it�s easy to think, therefore the entire tail must be made up completely of the most extraordinary examples that come to mind. However, I would submit that those who are profoundly gifted are really the �tail of the tail� (so to speak). The rest of the tail is still a tail though. It is out of synch with what is considered typical or normal, just as it is out of synch with the extreme end of the tail. Without spending a lot of money on testing, we are left to using more anecdotal tools�checklists with statements that begin, �compared to children his/her own age�.�; benchmark lists which seem unbelievably low and are maybe tailored to low average�or not; etc. Unfortunately, �compared to other children�.� Is a very relative term and many of us just aren�t sure. We have seen people respond to our children with amazement and people who respond with �oh there are lots of children who�.�. Which should we believe? There is research that shows that many gifted children do not, in fact, �do just fine on their own��and there is criticism of parents who try to make up for inadequate differentiation or acceleration in school. It is very no-win. Worse, trying to sort it out often feels like crossing a minefield. Which questions will slap a �pushy parent� label on my head? Which unasked questions will mean that my child can do fourth/fifth grade math as a seven year old�.and still be �working� on fourth and fifth grade math 2-3 years later? I have appreciated the opportunity to come here to share and question and sometimes complain�even as my confidence in my child�s giftedness ebbs and flows.

Yes�except this assumes that all gifted children know how to set an appropriate pace for themselves. I have found both in parenting and in teaching that when kids don�t feel �seen�, they sometimes assume that they are not capable of more and become afraid to move beyond the group.

Well said! This is the story of DD's school experience, and as I've watched this happen, I am shamed by the realization that there are too many times that I employed diplomacy when I really should have just moved into PITA mode.

I wouldn�t call that a bad habit
From my perspective, however, the whole attitude of the teacher�s post is problematic. As a teacher myself, I hope that the parents I work with will never find me to be judgmental of their parenting or of their attempts to advocate for their children. We should be finding ways to partner with the parents of our students�not arrogantly venting about what is �wrong with parents�.

Also well said�this is a significant problem in our area as well, and leads to distrust amongst parents, and between parents and school.

I was very sad after reading the original post. Angry. Then sad some more. It is very disappointing. Sad.


Yes, girls are forgotten.

It seems, as I've talked to a few different schools now, that as soon as I mention "advance learner" and that we have a psyc assessment ... some thing happens. I immediately get comments/push back -- oh yeah, sure... let's see.

Culturally, I think in the rest of the world, if you can afford it, you would hot house your kid. The competition is so high and the population so large. How many people would be in the 99.99 percentile for some of these countries? It is survival, yes?

Anyways, I digress.

This teacher's attitude... I mean I think being honest about how they really feel is a good step. Because, it is true. There are a lot of teachers that probably feel this way and who can blame them if there are a lot of parents out there who think their little sweetie-pie angel is perfect and awesome.

I wish every teacher did speak their mind. And then listened. Hear the 1% of parents who do have a gifted child and who are also struggling to understand what their kids are capable of and have a partnership.

I live in an ideal world and none of this is realistic. This is way too sad.

But for everyone, we all just want someone to understand and to hear and "see" us. See our children. See them for who they are and don't bring your hang-ups with the parent to your assessment/judgement.

I haven't read this whole thread, but it just occurred to me that the reason girls are overlooked may not only be because of those lovely long fuses and social skills.

It actually may be a kind of Internalized Sexism (The kind of Sexism that gets passed down from Adult Female to Young Female to 'prepare them to cope' with the most 'over the top' regular sexism)

Nowadays there are more opportunities than ever for females in the US, but all the old expectations ((Be Nice)) are still in full force. Of course, being nice is a generally good thing to be - but...I laugh at the TV sitcoms that show nakedly ambitious women, and I think I'm laughing at the comic version of poor social skills, but what am I really laughing at?

Sometimes when I hear the 'hot button' kind of 'who do these parents think that they are?' energy, I'll bet I would be better able to diffuse it if I remembered that all the Adult Female Teachers were once young girls, who were taught to hide their best abilities so that they could fit into the narrow box labeled 'correctly successful.'

Just a thought,
Grinity

I sent the article to DW. She said it fit her upbringing to a T. She won all kinds of awards up through the 8th grade, but once she got to HS, there were different expectations. No one put her on the AP track and with the exception of her Chemistry teacher, where she had a 99% average, no one took an interest in her.

She recently took an IQ test and a Pysch Profile for a management assessment and scored very high on the non-reading parts of the IQ test. She scored very high on verbal/listening/social inference skills of the profile. ( We both suspected she had reading issues. The tester pointed the reading slowness out as a oddity.) She placed within the top 10% for senior executives of mid sized firms. She tested herself right out of the job!!

She understands intellectually what this means, but feeling it is another. "That old 'be nice, don't rock the boat, dont stand out."

People think it's odd, with me being a teacher, that I plan to homeschool my future children. I just point them to teachers like this one.

Yup, me too. And way too many overheard conversations in the staff room.

Something to keep in mind in all of this:studies have shown that parents are actually very good at identifying gifted children - often actually underestimating their children's abilities. (I don't have to do the how yes, it depends, blah blah thing here do I?) I can't find the references right now (if I find it I'll post it), but it's worth keeping in mind when you doubt 'other people's children'.

I think this is what you're referring to:
Read more: Gifted and Talented Children - Identification Of Gifted Children - development http://family.jrank.org/pages/711/G...ation-Gifted-Children.html#ixzz0keXKL0If

Thank you Inky! I don't think that is identical to the page I looked at, but it says the same stuff!

See, and I take those studies to indicate that parents who judge their children to be gifted and are willing to put their money where their mouths are and have the kids IQ tested, are pretty good at identifying gifted kids. Those who go around stating that the kids are gifted but don't seek testing to support it -- it's anyone's guess as to how accurately they id their kids' abilities.

eta: I certainly won't argue with the quote from the link that states that teachers aren't particularly adept at iding gifted kids in their classrooms, though.

Okay, I'll have to backpedal a bit. I was in no way implying that those of you here who haven't had your kid's IQs tested are making up the fact that they are gifted. I, too, don't put full stock in IQ being the be-all end-all of accurate info on who a child is. Having one kid whose IQ varies from the upper 1-teens to the upper 1-40s on IQ tests, I have to admit that they can't be totally accurate at times depending on the child.

That said, I can say that I am as certain as I can be that I see a lot of parents who believe their kids to be gifted whose kids probably are not gifted. What I was getting at above, was that these studies that say that parents are good at iding their kids as gifted were done by psychologists who specialize in testing gifted kids. Sure, if you are the Gifted Development Center, probably the majority of people who are willing to bring their kids in and spend $1500+ to have them tested have accurately identified their kids as gifted. They also probably have a good reason for spending all of that $ for testing: their kids are having trouble in school due to being gifted (one of my dds was tested for that reason), their kids are being mislabeled as having other problems, etc.

If we can all agree that gifted is a person who is in the top few percentiles in terms of ability, then the schools that identify 15-25%+ of their kids as gifted (all of my local schools do this) are obviously identifying more kids as gifted than are actually gifted. Having kids who've been in these programs, I can tell you that most or all of the parents whose kids are in these TAG classes believe that their kids are very gifted. Some of the parents whose kids aren't in TAG also believe that their kids are gifted; maybe some of them are since our TAG programs seem to grab the high achievers more than the underachieving gifted kids. If 20%+ of my local parents believe that they have gifted kids, some of them are obviously not good at accurately identifying their kids as gifted, IMHO.

This Robinson & Robinson paper is much quoted in support of the "parents who think their DC are gifted are almost always right" meme, but has anyone here actually read the paper? I haven't been able to get hold of it, but the closest I can come to a description of what's actually in it is this quote from Miraca Gross (http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10124.aspx)
I don't doubt that this is, as she says, "statistically remarkable" given how rare IQs of 132+ are - but this still means that more than half of the children concerned did not have IQs over 132. This is hardly resounding support for the accuracy of parents' identification...

I have seen several other sources for similar claims, but I haven't yet found one that stood up to even cursory examination. E.g. Gross's book cites a paper from Gifted Children Quarterly (vol 18 pp202-09) which does indeed say that parents were effective at identifying gifted children - in the sense that most children who turned out to be gifted had been identified as such by their parents; but unfortunately, more than half of all the children had been identified as such by their parents! (So you could say parents were effective, but not efficient. Teachers missed more gifties, but they nominated far fewer children overall.)

Good points and here's the link to the book it's in. Our library doesn't have it but I'll try ILL:
Robinson, N.M. and Robinson, H. (1992). The use of standardized tests with young gifted children. In P.N. Klein and A.J. Tannenbaum (eds). To be young and gifted (141-170). New Jersey: Ablex.
http://www.amazon.com/Be-Young-Gifted-Pnina-Klein/dp/089391956X

Here's the Ciha, Harris, Hoffman and Potter study you mentioned.
http://gcq.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/18/3/191
Yes, it shows that parents tend to overestimate their own child's ability but it also shows the kindergarten teachers were only 22% effective and missed identifying many of the gifted children. This may be why some places tend to err on the side of identifying a larger pool in order to avoid missing too many of the truly gifted kids at an early age. Parents are obviously not infallible but they still do a pretty good job, especially if you consider over-identifying a lesser evil than under-identifying.

Other info on parent/teacher identification:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/on_testing.htm

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/e595.html

In 60 years of teaching, counseling, and assessing gifted children, I have met few parents who wrongly judged their children to be gifted. Even in cases where children failed to meet the cut-off score for giftedness on the intelligence scale, they exhibited other signs of high ability, and usually demonstrated giftedness in some areas assessed (Silverman,Chitwood & Waters, 1986; Silverman, 2008).

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/Myths%20About%20the%20Gifted.pdf

Ok, I'm playing devil's advocate here. But we don't know the distribution. Maybe the other half were right below the 132 mark. Also some of those kids could be 2E and don't have their IQs show up well with testing. There's probably at least some of those kids that had a bad day too. Also... testing between 2-5 is pretty inaccurate so I'd think that you'd probably have a big problem with kids that didn't comply with testing.

You could also look at the parents' mistaken beliefs another way. The schools say that as many as 25% of kids are gifted. This would correspond to an IQ at the 75th percentile, or ~110. This is pretty close to the mean of 100, and another 25% of kids will fit into the range between 100 and 110.

So if you look at it this way, and especially if the schools are using academic achievement to measure "giftedness," it's completely reasonable for up to half of parents to believe that their kids are gifted.

So, it's not that the parents aren't good at identifying giftedness accurately. It actually sounds to me like they're making reasonable judgments using the definitions given to them. So this means that the problem is actually that the schools are using improper definitions of giftedness.

Just my 2c.

Val

This would be even more pronounced if the school is using benchmarks that are below the average level of the children in the school, and all the parents are being told their children are 'above average'