Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Parents as Excellent Identifiers of Giftedness?

Many of us probably have read the article from Linda Silverman, the Director of Gifted Development Center.
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/learned.htm

I'm wondering how good are we really in recognizing our children's abilities?

A little background about our experience. We had our son tested last September. He subsequently took SCAT and WIAT, and got into DYS in late April. We always knew that he was very bright since he absorbs information like sponges and is able to retain and recall them quite accurately since he was little.

We've dragged our feet long enough, and finally had our 2nd child tested last week, too. Mainly because of "test one - test all". We're planning to test our youngest once she turns 6, so it's only fair to test our 2nd child as well. Her result was really surprising because we found out that her PRI was actually higher than her older brother! We're really glad that we had her tested, because obviously, in her case, we were not the excellent identifiers we're supposed to be!

The rest of the article, I have to say, is quite accurate.

What do you think?





http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/learned.htm

Very interesting article.

We had no idea our HG+ daughter was gifted. We knew something was up... we thought just ADHD. Her psych-ed assessment blew us away. How could we have parented her for 7 years and not know?? In hindsight, she was premature, talked very late (3.5) and was functionally blind in one eye and vision in the other was very poor. She didn't reach milestones early. Her memory was amazing and she could do fractions at 4. Those things were freaky, but she was our first and we had no yardstick to compare her to. Her little brother is 2.5 and I am of two minds about him: either a) we are paying attention to little things and noticing his abilities more than we did with his sister, or b) he is a smart cookie. I will be shocked if he is not at least as gifted as his sister. Her ADHD hides ALOT. Classic underachiever.

Here are the parts of the article that stuck out for me:

14. Perfectionism, sensitivity and intensity are three personality traits associated with giftedness.

I remind DH of this when DS 2.5 has full-blown anxiety attacks when bugs fly near him, he gets his hair cut, someone gets upset with him, the hair dryer is turned on, the dog looks at him while he is eating, we try to get him to sit on a ride-on toy, or another child looks at his trains. He wants to know why our children can't act normally. Who else has to wrap their child in a blanket with one parent laying on top while the other does a hack job on the hair with a pair of clippers, all because no salon in the city will let him in??

18. Many cases of underachievement are linked to chronic early ear infections (9 or more in the first three years), with residual effects of auditory sequential processing deficits and attentional problems. Spelling, arithmetic, handwriting, rote memorization, attention, and motivation to do written work are all typically affected.

Our pedicatrician often jokes that we keep her in business. Both kids had chronic, non-stop ear infections.

I remember - ah, and thanks to google, can even find! - a long thread on which I ranted. I won't repeat the rant, but the short version is: to decide whether parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness, you have to agree beforehand on definitions of "giftedness", "identifiers" and "excellent" :-) We do not, as far as I or anyone could find then, have evidence for any claim along the lines "of those parents who believe without testing that their children have FSIQs over 130, 90% are correct" (even though you might well think we did, from what various authors have written with impressive-looking cites). What we do have experience of is that both parents and teachers can be wrong, and both ways! It may be that teachers tend to under-identify and parents tend to over-identify. Beyond that I'd say the situation is very murky.

Not in my case, even when my DS started reading at 2.5, I just kind of thought, "oh look how cute, he reads!" I remember thinking that he was probably not that gifted because he couldn't write or draw!!! Obviously his mother is not gifted. Lol.

There's a few of those custom yardsticks going around though.

I only worry about the teenage years. DD's strategic ability is amazing at 6. I wonder how she will try and outmaneuver in those difficult years....

Ren

I find this a fascinating topic, and I admit I am confused about it. On the one hand, as parents I'm sure we can read and interpret and project abilities before any objective measure of them is possible. When our DS6 was 3, for example, he stunned me one day in the middle of a game of catch when, completely out of the blue, he stopped to remark (correctly) that since he was 3 I must have been X when he was born. (X remains a variable in this version of the story to protect the innocent.) This was clearly an indication to me that he knew things about the relations between numbers. And yet, it was such a relatively non-repeatable event, that it is extremely unlikely any objective tester would have caught it. He did correctly say how old his mother must have been when she was born, and his uncle, but he soon tired of the game. And if you asked him the equivalent subtraction problem he had no idea what you were talking about. That said, I had seen enough to be convinced he had some ability.

On the other hand, I don't have anything like the kind of experience one would have to have with other children his age to know how unusual these abilities are. Indeed, the main experience I have with other kids his age with respect to these kinds of abilities is from stories within our own family about how a variety of now-very-accomplished adult family members acted when they were children. This is obviously a skewed comparison class, but I have no idea how skewed, and it is difficult to know really how DS measures up to it anyway. So even though I feel that as parents we can see better what abilities he has, I don't know how those abilities measure up to the norm. As a result, I remain completely confused about the level at which to place him.

Moreover, as a parent, I tend to take much more seriously his apparent inability to do things I'd have thought he could do than his apparent ability to do (what I'm told are) relatively advanced things that others his age can't. So even when objective observers (like his math mentor) say they are "floored" at how quickly he can learn things, I tend to assume there is something a little over-eager or over-generous about the comment. To top it all off, I'm totally confused about how to understand this reaction of mine. I vacillate between thinking it is an appropriate kind of caution, which keeps me from too quickly categorizing DS, and thinking it is deeply unfair to him, since I am refusing to admit his abilities.

In general, then, it seems to me that there are so many issues in the area that I just have no idea how to answer the question.

But then again, that's the way I feel about most interesting questions. Thanks to the OP for asking it.

I'd love to know if this kind of confusion resonates with others.

This reminded me of when we gave my oldest dd swim goggles for her third birthday. She didn't seem that interested and instead told her dad, "Maybe I will wear goggles when I'm 10 ... in 7 years."

That one stopped us cold. Thanks for reminding me of that story.

As for this topic as a whole, I think I sensed early on that older dd was advanced because we did a lot of playgroups and had interactions with same age kids. And when your kiddo is reading things out loud at two, and other people comment on it, it's tough to ignore.

However, I will be very interested when we test our younger dd next school year. She, I would not identify as anything but maybe MG (she's nearly 5.5 and just now plowing through things like Frog and Toad, doing basic subtraction and addition, etc). If her numbers come back anywhere near older sister's (who is a DYS), you will all need to mop me off the floor.

Here's a passage from the GDC link posted: 1. Parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness in their children: 84% of 1,000 children whose parents felt that they exhibited 3/4 of the traits in our Characteristics of Giftedness Scale tested in the superior or gifted range. Over 95% demonstrated giftedness in at least one area, but were asynchronous in their development, and their weaknesses depressed their composite IQ scores.

To me that doesn't seem like it says very much. It says that of the 84% who had 3/4 of the traits, most had at least one area of giftedness but their development or IQ may not show it. Am I understanding it that this of families who made the considerable commitment to travel and pay for testing at the GDC? Right there I'm thinking that would be a big screening device.

My anecdotal experience is in real life parents are often wrong. I've had parents tell me their kids are gifted based on stuff like reading Magic Tree House books as a seven year old, learning the ABC song as a three year old, etc. These are wonderful bits of development of course and should be celebrated. However, parents vary a lot in their knowledge of child development and some parents don't spend a lot of time around other kids. Typically developing babies, toddlers, and preschoolers can develop at a stunningly fast pace. One day they don't know something that the next day they do.

I don't think parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness. I often see numbers quoted to support the notion, but don't recall seeing any credible numbers about how many parents misidentify their kids as gifted. I think the internet has hugely intensified pushy-parent syndrome, so that if a child is not obviously delayed there's a bigger chance than ever that her parents will think she's possibly gifted.

I think this happens for lots of reasons. Talking about giftedness is trendier than ever, prompting many over-competitive types to focus their unholy energies in that direction instead of botoxing their children for the latest pageant, forcing their kiddos to run marathons, etc. Over-focusing on over-simplified milestone lists, especially with confusion over just how much early development truly correlates to giftedness, can only magnify this trend. At least in the US, concentration of needed resources in magnet schools, where there is typically some sort of bar to entry, adds incentive and angst. Etc. etc. etc.

ETA: I think ordinary parents are too-optimistic identifiers, and highly gifted parents too-pessimistic if anything.