Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Could this be "domain-specific" giftedness?

You and I were posting at the same time. This is a tricky one and I have just a few things I'll try to put together concisely. I can see as how having your self image questioned (average IQ, feeling that others are telling you that you are wrong) could be crushing.

I do know children and younger teens who read at a level similar to what you describe (started early, read around 7th-8th grade level by 4th grade) and who have had IQ testing done more than once on full measures (WISC, SB) and who have smack dab 50th percentile IQ scores. Knowing some of these kids, I honestly don't doubt that the IQ measures are accurate. They are good kids, great students, great readers, but not high IQ kids.

I don't think that it is out of the realm of possibility to say that someone with an average IQ can be a very advanced reader or very advanced in some other academic area. That isn't what I personally define as gifted, but as I said in my last post, there are so many different ways of defining gifted now a days that it is totally cool for you or the psych who tested you or any expert who defines gifted as high achievement in a domain to call you gifted.

The second thing is that you are posting on a forum where a lot of people have highly to profoundly gifted children by IQ measures. Our opinions are skewed as a result. We are probably looking for something more extreme as a result. Don't let us crush your self concept.

What brought you here in the first place if you were already inclined to view yourself as a gifted reader and the psych agreed? What left you asking if his report was right in the first place?

I do want to apologize if I am one of the ones who is making you feel crushed. I struggle between being honest with what my personal beliefs and definitions are and being kind to someone who is young and who may have, for all we know, incorrect measures for her.

For what its worth, I do not come from privilege although I cannot claim to come from poverty either just somewhere in between. I have been living on my own since I was 16 and moved out of my parents' home, though, and did put myself through college. I do understand feeling alienated and misunderstood and I do have to admit that having the understanding of myself as gifted once I realized that was what was going on with my children has been healing for me. I would not want to deny someone else the same and my definition of gifted may be as incorrect as the next person's.

"I was finally tested and proved correct, and then I come on here and everyone’s telling me I’m not a gifted reader and I feel absolutely crushed. "

so stop listening.
you do not need external validation to be a person of worth.
not from your parents and not from folks on a web site you never met.
you have great drive if you got your GED and are still striving to learn more. why did you pick Aikido? what draws you to this?
begin to think about the positives in your live and moving forward. not the negatives and "might have beens"
a test is just one momnet in time. if you are from people who are not educated ( like my family)perhaps you have that awe or innate respect for professionals like they have some power to see more. well guess what? they dont. they have tools they learn how to use. and they use them. just like aikido.
do not assign more weight to an IQ test than it is worth. it doesnt make you or label you. unless you let it.
Likewise the high scores dont label or make you either. they are just measurements made on one day by one guy using an imperfect yardstick.
plus you are not average. if you were you wouldn't be on this board seeking answers. you would be in nail school or cosmetology school or sweeping up in a shop thinking about school or looking for a guy to take care of you.
Though there are some people on this board who came from poverty and were able to get educated over time, most people on this board come from pretty priveledged backgrounds and cannot relate to your values or reasons for your angst.
I was lucky and got scholarships eventually. It is really hard for kids now because college is so expensive and taking on a debt is not something that should be done lightly.
but you can find free classes about writing and reading online and even at local libraries and community centers. Our library has a writers group that meets regularly and they take turns reading and commenting on one anothers work. there are also writiers workshops that have scholarships for promising young authors. there are more ways to learn for someone as bright as you without college. or without college just yet.
You can always go later if the opportunity presents itself and you still want to.
dont look for external validation. trust what you know to be true. and follow your dreams. they will be what you will write about later.

I'm seriously not trying to crush your ego. My wish for you is that you liberate yourself from these feelings.

You know that you'll never be the most gifted person out there in any particular area, right? Someone will always be a more gifted reader by your definition-- reading earlier, more ahead by the fourth grade, or whatever. This will hopefully come as a sort of relief; no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be at the top of the measures you are a bit fixated upon.

When you think about this, maybe you should consider why it is important to you that you see yourself as better than the great majority of the people out there that are average. Is it to give yourself courage, by thinking that even though you are just a GED holder you can achieve more in life than many with better credentials? (For what it's worth, I dropped out of high school at age 13 and later got my GED. Now I woudn't call myself a very high achiever or anything; I spent a decade in software engineering, where I certainly was at the top of my particular area of the game, and made some good money, but never achieved real fame and fortune. Later I went to law school and did well, but wasn't top in my class, partly because I have a tendency to focus very deeply on topics that interest me. But fairly often I've humiliated ultra-high-on-paper achievers in court, people from Harvard Law, people with vastly more experience, etc.)

You know that giftedness doesn't directly determine success in life, right? Quit stressing about this; it's a losing game. You will wind up either feeling like you're not living up to your potential, resting on your laurels ("I've achieved so much despite such humble beginnings, all due to my ability"), feeling bad because you don't stack up to others higher up the rankings, or something else that doesn't wind up helping you succeed.

It really doesn't matter how gifted (whatever that means) you are at this stage in your life; it matters what you do. Set yourself some goals and work toward them as hard as you can. If you really try as hard as humanly possible-- and I mean try so hard that you nearly break yourself-- you will almost certainly get somewhere that's good to be, even if you don't live up to your original self-concept in one way or another. Personally, I think it's more likely that you would exceed whatever you think yourself capable of by fixating on a couple of facets of your psychologist's report.

Let it go. Let the psychologist's determination that you're a gifted reader be a happy little nugget of self-confidence that no one can take away from you, and go on with your life. Don't doubt yourself because of your history, your parents' reading ability, or anything else. Just get on with becoming whatever you will become.

Sounds good to me !

I don't think that's naive at all in that it is something that is frequently discussed among experts in the field and parents alike. I think that, initially, the term gifted was in place to distinguish high IQ from other things, but then it morphed to mean a lot of different things. The term itself is not well loved b/c it implies that those who don't fall under that umbrella are lacking gifts.

eta: I've always liked this essay b/c it defines gifted more as a qualitative difference, which is what I see it as as well: http://www.georgeparkyncentre.org/documents/high-achievers-pdf.pdf

For me, that's the reason "advanced" isn't enough b/c it isn't just about academic advancement.

I can't offer advise as great what's already been given, but I just wanted to give you one other tiny bit of food for thought... the most important factor in a person's life - whether they are happy/fulfilled, is the CHOICES they make. You don't have much control over anything else in life, beyond the choices that you make. How you choose to respond to the things in your life will determine your path. Continue making good choices, and investing time in things that make you happy and fulfill you, and no one can ever make you regret your life.

My older sister was one of those kids who was so completely obviously gifted... but where is she today? After a lifetime of terrible choices and never taking responsibility for anything, she's jobless, married to a man who's constantly either working minimum wage or getting fired, has 3 kids she can't take care of, and spent most of last year in a homeless shelter! A high IQ and a 'gifted' label don't mean squat if you don't make good choices in your life!