Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Is he really gifted?

Hmm... perhaps perfectionism also rears its subtle head... when you place a high value on obeying social mores and combine that with some perfectionism... the more complex the social environment the longer before you are ready to enter. Even more complicated for a kid when other kids are following mutable social rules.

A not quite introverted, not ASD situation that may be quite common amongst gifted? Even worse is if you have a high degree of empathy and read frequent disconnects between what is said and done and what is felt.

Sorry to quote an entire post, but referring back to the original post... fwiw... I agree with absolutely everything DeeDee wrote below.

I've also been in the position as a parent of receiving input from a teacher that I didn't want to hear - and an opinion from that teacher that pointed at a diagnosis which of course she wasn't qualified to make. I also knew my child has an extremely high IQ and hadn't seen the same struggles the teacher was seeing at home (or so I thought). So it felt natural to me to come to the defense of my child an think NO WAY is what this teacher is saying valid (she thought he had ADHD). My dh and I brushed off her opinion for months because it was easy for us to attribute his behaviors to either being bored in class or being a perfectionist or any 900 million other things that appear on lists of characteristics of highly gifted children - when really, nothing the teacher noticed negated any of those things with respect to our ds' intelligence, but we were completely ignoring that the person who was concerned about our ds' behavior had years of classroom experience observing a wide spectrum of children and she was noticing things that she realized were a problem and challenge for our child.

I think that when a teacher or other adult notices something puzzling or troublesome in a child's behavior they may think it's ADHD or Autism or whatever simply because they have known other children with the same behaviors who had official diagnoses, and that's the sum total of their experience with kids who had those behaviors. Most of us draw conclusions based on our past experiences. What a professional such as a developmental pediatrician or neuropsych can tease out for us though are the underpinnings of what's causing those behaviors. Our ds is diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder and has been evaluated for both ADHD and ASD. Our neuropsych has a chart which shows how there is a very large overlap of shared symptoms between ADHD, Austim and developmental disorders such s Developmental Coordination Disorder. While there are many overlaps of symptoms, there are also very distinct symptoms which are markedly different between each, and that's where having a full and complete evaluation becomes so very important.

It's easy to think, as Astroboy did, these things must be happening because my child is gifted, so I'll get an IQ test and show that my child is gifted and that proves nothing else is going on. But being gifted doesn't rule out any of the other, and if you limit your view to just looking at gifted it's easy to miss out on something else that is very very important.

I've told our ds' story before here and also been very honest - I absolutely had no respect for his 2nd grade teacher when she was trying to tell us our son was struggling and possibly ADHD and/or lazy or dumb. I was quick to find a reasonable explanation for everything she was telling us based on what we knew of our ds - but in hindsight, I am *forever* grateful to her and have a ton of respect for her for having the gumption to speak up to us as parents and not back down, because her concern was spot-on - no, our ds doesn't have ADHD, but yes, he has some very big challenges. I only wish we'd listened to her the first time she approached us.

Stepping off my soapbox again

polarbear

Astroboy, re your original questions


There are many different definitions of what is "gifted" relative to an IQ score. I personally think that 4 years old is so young to know whether or not you can trust that the score you get on a test is truly representative of a child's ability, especially when you have observations from the tester that the child wasn't attentive etc. OTOH, if you're looking at FSIQ to explain his behaviors that are challenging outside the home... and just fwiw, I think that when you read lists that describe the challenges potentially faced by high IQ kids, this wouldn't be an IQ that would place a child on that list - this is totally my take on it and I'm *not* in any way shape or form a professional, but from what I've observed it seems that the children who really are square-pegs in round holes due to high IQ are kids with *extremely* high IQs. I've also seen in our own school district school staff trying to place kids with moderately high IQs in that label of behavior-caused-by-IQ or "we can't accurately measure IQ due to behavior" etc as a way of dealing with behaviors that are causing a problem in the classroom.


I'm really sorry your ds has had troubles being accepted - I'm curious if the problems you've had are at *one* particular childhood center or at several different centers or situations. The reason this would be important to me as a parent is - it's quite possible to find your child in a situation where, for whatever reason, the adults he's with just don't like him or have a biased opinion and may make assumptions that are entirely inaccurate. The likelihood of that happening in multiple centers/situations is low. We had a ton of trouble with our older dd at one particular preschool - she was always in trouble, we were always hearing complaints, the staff tried to insist she was deaf at one point, things like that. We took her out of that preschool, put her into another preschool and we never ever heard anything remotely similar to those complaints again and the staff at the new preschool were stunned to hear about what had happened at the previous preschool. If we'd put her in that 2nd preschool and received similar reports of behavioral issues from the staff... that would send off a red flag for me that there was something important to consider in what we were hearing.

I also want to add that among all of the friends I have who are teachers and all the teachers I've known who have worked with my kids (preschool and regular school) - teachers don't talk to parents about regular rough-and-tumble boy stuff or routine quiet-introversion or regular routine difficulties with adjustments etc other than at conferences or if a parent asks. If a teacher is telling a parent that something is out of the ordinary, there's a very good likelihood it is out of the ordinary.



My last 2 cents - I know a few children with autism and other developmental challenges. Behaviors aren't an all-or-nothing thing - like most children, they will have days when things go well and days when anxiety ramps up and life is challenging. They also have the capability of being extremely compassionate. I think that when we hear a label we sometimes think all-or-nothing and life really isn't like that for any of us.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Ooh... interesting!! What a great interpretation. This definitely makes sense.

This is EXACTLY my son... plus he is just intorverted by nature as well. He's so much more complicated than your average kid. And, yeah there is truth to what Polarbear said - of course. BUT A LOT of teachers just aren't very good and don't understand (or take the time to understand) a more intelligent/complicated kiddo.

Amy, I agree with you 100% And, I bet your son feels absolutely awesome now he has some friends.