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I am wondering if there have been any good discussions on parenting when you have a standard deviation or more between siblings - and the younger has the higher IQ? I am usually pretty good at searching old posts but I am stumped for the right set of terms to get a useful result here and thinking someone who has been here long enough to remember any relevant threads might have more luck pointing me in the right direction?

Or we could of course discuss this issue right here :-).

I have just had both my girls re-tested and have exactly 15 points between them, the younger one testing 15 points higher. This morning she asked to be grade skipped to her sisters class (that would be a 4 yr skip :-).

I'm not a parent, so I can't give you much advice there. However, I am a younger sibling. And when I was in 6th grade in the late 1970s, my sister was in 8th, and we were both tested for the gifted program in our district. She didn't make the cut. In fact, the school psych reportedly told our mom that my sister was likely to drop out of high school.

On the other hand, he thought the 5th & 6th grade enrichment class would not be stimulating enough for me. I ended up in the 8th grade enrichment class--with my sister's classmates--but still in the sixth grade classes for the vast majority of the instructional week. But that's a whole other story.

I can't remember my sister saying anything about this situation, and I can't imagine what she could have said. I did move into adolescence with the understanding that I was not allowed to make any friends in my sister's class or the class in between our years!

My sister did not drop out of high school. The school psych was her instructor in the community college, and neither one of them ever mentioned his prediction. The same sister who did not make the cut for gifted class is now a medical doctor in charge of the training of radiology residents. She makes somewhere between ten and twenty times as much money as I do. I try not to talk to her about money. I seem to have some 6th grade karma to work off, because I now teach 6th grade!

In this day and age--by Renzulli's Three-Ring criteria--my sister's task commitment and other attributes would probably land her in the gifted class. Those attributes, an educational experience that had her in or near her zone of proximal development most of the time, and a sense of having something to prove are probably big factors in her success.

My older sister and I are separated by more than a standard deviation IQ-wise, and mine is higher. I believe my sister has at least one learning disability, and I don't have any of which I know. Aside from that, though, we're also very different in terms of intellectual ability levels and intensity. My mother seemed to respond to this by oohing and ahing at even fairly tame accomplishments of my sister's. My sister had an inferiority complex nevertheless. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from my situation, as our family was dysfunctional.

It seems like there might be some unhealthy egotism or competitiveness brewing. In any event I don't see 15 points between siblings as such a vast gulf. Are they very different in terms of other attributes (drive, types of interests, etc.)?

I found these old posts on IQ differences in siblings in general. Maybe something will pique your interest:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....114883/Staffing_for_the_Other_Child.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/14002/1/Just_curious_siblings.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....2549/Gifted_And_Non_Gifted_Siblings.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/36107/Gifted_younger_siblings.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/87985/2E_or_ND_ADHD.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/80237/Re_Kindergarten_2010_2011.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/20569/1
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/41858/10.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/4534/1.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/16739/2.html
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/15252/7.html

My oldest and youngest are exactly 15 points apart on the WISC-IV, however you would NEVER guess this difference because older one's verbal is much higher and she out performed the little one at the same age. We also suspect the oldest is 2e.

Thank you for the insights, I will have to read all those threads tomorrow Locounu!

I should have said DD#1 (9yrs) definitely has LDs at play and probably ADHD, possibly mild ASD issues. It's all still being investigated. She's come a long way in the last two years though. The two girls are intense in different ways but DD9yrs is the more intense one in many ways. DD#2 is the middle child, the easy child, and would have been TOTALLY overlooked had we not taken her to the OT to make sure we hadn't missed sensory issues in her too. It was the OT who recommended the ed psych eval...

Locounu I don't think DD#2 is being at competitive with her older sister. I think she's bored and she likes her sister (who is probably the best friend she has at the moment), so wants to be with her, and her sister's friends who she also likes, and thinks their class might be more interesting than the one she's in at the moment (and she's probably right there!). According to the SB5 manual I just read, her "mental age" would be about the right for grade 3/4. Academically she is absolutely not ready for a 4 yr grade skip (yet) and even if she were, it's not going to happen :-). But the one year skip she has coming probably isn't going to help much.

DD2 is working on math a year above DD1. My oldest tells me she "brags" about her younger sister at school "because she is so cool to be doing that". I don't know how we got to this place, but they are pretty supportive of each other. That said, it's only subject acceleration, so they both get to have things they are good at. I don't know how it would be if DD2 was placed a full grade above DD1!

I don't know whether having a 4yr 4mth gap is going to make things better or worse for us. Your story is very interesting MoN