Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy To tell or not to tell....DS wants to know IQ

I'm fully in the camp of not telling, but sometimes I would really love to. DS9 really doesn't believe he is notably smart. He accepts that he must be quite intelligent, as he's in a GT program, but as his abilities are skewed very clearly toward language rather than Math, he thinks all the Math whizzes out there (including his younger brother) are way smarter than him. Also, in his opinion Mom just thinks he's smart because all Moms think that! I'd love to show him some 'proof' but think it's better in the long run to let him figure it out for himself (you'd think those MAP scores and Grades might give it away!) Another part of me just loves that he doesn't think he's 'all that'.

lol, I like that one. I do feel like saying something like that when DS gets mad at himself and says "I am studid." Or when he happens to lose a game and considers himself stupid. I feel like explaining to him just how smart he is, but it isn't the time or place. Instead I do my counseling stuff with and talk about his feelings. : )

And Dottie, I have heard similar stories of children "off the charts." I often wonder what charts they are referring to. I have a family member (that shall remain unnamed) that insists that his son is just as bright as my DS6 and that they did testing with him and he was told that he can do whatever job he wants to do in the future. I have never told him any details about my son, because he is one of those who loves to compare. Plus he likes to put down acceleration and all that and tell me his son is just fine in regular classes and how harmful it is to grade skip (he is also one of those who has lots of opinions and no real knowledge to back it up). I won't go into details but I would be shocked if his son fell anywhere near the gifted range. Although even ND people (such as myself) can do lots of things in life if they are dedicated and hard workers, but to tell me that he is the same is my son is ridiculous. So I do hesitate to say "off the charts" when referring to my son and when I hear others say it I am a little apprehensive at first.

I'll bet you a dollar that this friend has totally blanked on exactly how many grades ahead your DS actually is - LOL!

My parents would never really tell me either, although they did tell me lots of things they really shouldn't have, and I got a lot of half pictures.

Anyway, recently I was thinking about stuff, and was frustrated with the half-picture I had, so I took an online test. I was ammused to discover that I was roughly around the 75th %ile overall, with several scores in the high 90's... doing the percentiles upside down from the usual

Erm.... take that as you may. But I think that I would feel a lot better (even now) if I had a clearer picture of how my mind works _in compairison with others_. I've always joked that I'm a dumb person who just acts smart. And I might be right!

Maybe it's more important to know if you're 2e (or GLD, as I was labelled in my youth), since the picture is more complicated. For me the picture was very confusing, as someone else mentioned regarding her son a couple of posts ago.

Or maybe it's more important to the information-hog type. I remember an argument my father had with a nurse while he was having a heart attack (!), he wanted to see the monitor showing his vital signs, because it made him feel "better." She thought it would "stress him out." I wound up reading it off to him at intervals. Now THAT was stressful. (but biofeedback works)

Information doesn't kill people, people with information kill people.... wait, no, that's not the way that one went....

-Mich (who really should be doing something else right now)