Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Are you a gifted parent?

GeoMamma,

Your school career sounds just like mine! As does your approach to wanting it to be better for your DS
K x

I completely missed this fabulously interesting thread over the holidays!

Part of the reason I went looking for answers and found this board six months ago was this question - was DS more than what DH and I were and does he need more. No IQ data for us. I read at 4 was always in gifted programs, off the charts verbal but struggled in math - turns out I was dyslexic and used my giftedness to compensate - wasn't revealed until matrices in college math - rows and rows of numbers was an awful awakening to my disability - discovered by my TA!

I always thought I was smart - and reveled in being the smart rather than the pretty popular one. Once DS started revealing his skills and gifts, I started to question what I had been at 4, what did my parents do, what level was I etc. As we tested and began the hunt for appropriate schools I asked my mom whether she thought he was "more" than my brother and I. And she said absolutely. Which was surprising because smart is what our family was "supposed" to be, so this was usual acknowledgement of his difference. She said I read picture books - he is reading encyclopedias - I wasn't doing chapter books till later. Of course I am also thinking she didn't offer them to me either - but I think the voraciousness of gathering information and processing is different - I devoured books but not knowledge. I did not make connections the way DS does. I wasn't making a sticker collage of my own universe with a ringed planet tilted on its side like Uranus at 4.5 (if ever). In retrospect I would say I was somewhere between a level 2-3 - optimally gifted with the LD factored in - perhaps not if it had been dealt with - but I think DS is a pretty solid 4 most of the time although does have some level 5 stuff.

I think one of the reasons I am so obsessive and worried about kindergarten is the feeling that I didn't get what I needed - I was so bored in school - and knew it from an early age - I was always finished first. DH doesn't have those same memories but everything came super easy for him - both of us had periods where we suddenly had to work much much harder - me in my gifted high school and him for college.

I think this thread is like therapy!

DeHe

I'm not surprised, Katebee.



Yes, me too!

Actually this recently came up again for me personally. Another issue really bought up some really uncomfortable reminders for me. It is difficult in this kind of format to explain, but in recent discussions regarding my choices regarding my children's education, some things came up that I hadn't been aware of. I find I am carrying a lot more anger about it than I had really thought about. And I realised how much of an impact this was having on me. I'm still trying to work out what to do about it.

DH and I are both 2E. He tested at 167 on the SB-LM and I tested 173, way back when nobody questioned the norms because they were current. DH is dyslexic,and was not identified as such until he was in the military,and I am dysgraphic, also not identified until I was out of school. Our experiences in school with boredom and frustration, partly from failure to provide appropriate curriculum, and partly from failure to accommodate undiagnosed disability, certainly influenced our willingness (or lack thereof) to go along with the public school's ideas about what an appropriate education would look like for our son, who is also 2E (visual and motor impairments, possibly autism spectrum - most recent eval says Asperger's). We homeschool in large part to protect him from the sheer hell that we both experienced.

I certainly won't claim that being gifted makes us understand my son - he is a unique individual who experiences the world in his own way - but it has given us perspective that someone who hasn't lived in a gifted brain doesn't have, and allowed us to share that perspective with him when he is perplexed by the fact that most of the rest of the world doesn't see things his way, and it has given him teachers who can keep up with him, for the most part, which I don't think he would have had in our local schools.

I am probably going to be the odd one out here. As a child I was socially out of it, picked on constantly. Also was very depressed and would not do homework or study. Homelife was disfunctional. My mother had mentioned to me later that she had tryed to get me into Special Education. I did enough to get through school without ever being held back, and graduated high school with a 0.9 GPA (a feat that I havn't and hopefully will not ever hear broken). College was never presented as an option to me, so I never thought of pursuing it.

After the military I had the funds with the GI bill to get an education. My girls provided me with the motivation and my dh became my rock I needed to get up my self esteem. It wasn't until I started pulling all A's, and invited to join the Honor's Society that I thought there may be brains in there lol. Now I have my Associates in Nursing and would love to go back to school to go further. I would like at least a Masters Degree.

Now its my passion to make sure that my kids embrase their quirkyness, and to know that college is expected as are good grades. Life is good!

It doesn't sound odd to me Adrienne. I think way too many gifted children grow up thinking they are not.

Thanks GeoMamma, I'm slowly finding that out. But also wishing that I could have known some of this while I was growing up. But then I wouldn't be the person I am today.

It was interesting, I was finding out (officially from teachers) about DD10 being gifted at 2.5 years while I was finding out about my own ability in college.

Aculady, you must be my lost twin, LOL. Very similar reasons for homeschooling and very similar IQ on the SB-LM. Though I believe I understand dd so much better because I am gifted and (still) can keep up with her. Dh and I and get the brilliance in the way she thinks--skipping lots of steps in between and making higher level connections--because our brains work the same way.

Heee.

DH is HG, I am HG/EG (been tested several times), and my father was PG.

Our DD has never been evaluated; partly that has been deliberate on our part. We want her to be more than her IQ score, as long as she is adequately served without the number-- but I say that knowing that it would be VERY high-- high enough to have a definite impact on how she is treated. Her school was willing to accelerate her a full four grades without it, though... so no problems on that front. We wouldn't be getting anything better with a full eval. I feel very comfortable saying that she is EG/PG based on what her school's GT team has said, and based on her cognitive development as a whole. She has behaviors that you just don't see in G/MG/HG people.

I was reading at ~3-4 yo, talking well before a year, etc. but my DD's abilities have even made me pretty astonished by how fast she learns, how well she remembers, etc. She's much more like my father's development. His USN records indicate an IQ over 175 in the 1950's, though they don't mention the tool used.

My (Our?) major insights into my daughter are not based on shared giftedness per se. Mostly they are based on shared temperment and sensory sensitivities on my part, and on shared learning style in DH's case. He is a strongly auditory learner, I'm strongly a strongly visual one; he remembers what he HEARS, I remember what I write, and to a lesser extent, read/see. DD is a hybrid-- she listens, reads/watches, and remembers what she SAYS, and to a lesser extent what she hears and reads/sees. She's a totally didactic learner who talks and reads her way through every school day. Lucky me.... auditory sensitivity here. LOL!

My DH and I were both incredibly fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time for authentic GT education in public schools during the 1970's.

Astounding. Very cool!