Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Help! younger kid about to pass older one

My oldest son (just 6) has a reading block of sorts. We have tested vision at Optometrist and Opthalmologist levels. I suspect dyslexia or similar (there is family history of this too).

Anyway Nathan (just 4) has no such issues and HIS reading skills are about to surpass Aiden's. Tonight they chose to read the same book to me just before bedtime stories. And he read it more easily and fluently, although Aiden still comprehends more (age thing).

It's not for his lack of trying, there is a very real issue here and where he currently attends a homeschoool enrichment program 1 day a week they agree with me, picked it up within 20 minutes of being with him and are actively working on helping him find working solutions.


How can I start preparing Aiden for this? Any help and advice would be most appreciated!

Focus on another strength that he has and help it grow, and teach him that everyone has different strengths regardless of age. It's more about his self esteem than it is about the reading.

I've had to work on this with my DS8 (language processing issues). "I'm bad at French" he'd say. I'd say "But you're good at math. Most people are like you - they have strengths and weaknesses." He seems fine with it. He's very comfortable laughing and saying "I suck at that" about one thing, then saying "I'm awesome at that!" about something else.

If Aiden feels like there isn't something he's good at, you can say "you're only six - you just haven't found it yet."

Yes, as in... sift through the different ideas until you find one that feels right for your own situation. There's no paint brush solution that meets everyone's needs or affects every individual the same way. As parents we all have our own child-specific intuition that guides us.


Yup x 1,000

EJ(7), first grade, surpassed Frannie (9), third grade, in math last year and has just surpassed her in reading. Its a good thing they like different books ! She has always known he is better/quicker then her in math. Its never been an issue. I think she realizes he has these talents. She asks some questions about it and we answer truthfully. She is a very strong student. She is artistically talented.

We try to focus on each of their stregnths. We stress that everyone has a talent.. whether the are good at school work, sports, or something else.... we are all different.

I was lying in bed thinking about this tonight. My 6.5yr old read to me last night and she's going to surpass her almost 11yr old sister in read aloud skills very soon, if she hasn't already. 4y4mths is a lot more confronting gap for a younger sibling to leapfrog.... My elder daughter's reading interests and silent reading skills are still ahead, but even that is probably not that far off. And spelling too.

I am reading with interest!

I passed my brother, who was older by nearly two years. Not only is he not gifted, but he had physical delays due to an issue at birth that the doctors were confident he'd never survive (basically vomitted all food intake). As a result, we ended up roughly in sync with our growth curves, and many times we were mistaken for twins.

I'm pretty sure I caught up with him in reading when I was 4, because he left his first-grade reading book behind, and I read it cover-to-cover that morning, enjoying it thoroughly. So if he was on that level, so was I.

When I was 9, we were both signed up for football. I managed to stick with it for 3 years, while his coach pretty much asked my mom to please pull him out immediately before he gets killed. We were the same size, but he was stuck playing with older boys who were much bigger. As a result, I was putting more demands on my body and building confidence athletically, and as a result, I ended up being stronger than him, too. Whenever we played any sports related games, I would beat him. And of course, whenever we played strategy related games, I would beat him.

He found his "thing" in junior high, when he started singing in choir. As a way to distance myself from him and give him his thing, I purposely decided not to pursue that in junior high. Then, by sheer happenstance, the choir teacher heard me sing, and invited me to join the highest group, which nobody is supposed to be joining without having spent a year in the basic class and being selected. I was so flattered I couldn't turn it down, so he no longer had exclusive domain over that, either. At least he'd already moved on to high school by then, so we weren't in the same class.

When I did get to high school, I found out that he'd been hanging around with a lot of underclassmen, and I heard the phrase, "I'm so glad you're nothing like your brother!" from several people he counted as friends, so apparently the whole social thing wasn't working out too well for him, either.

We finally did end up in one class together for one semester, a music class. It was his last semester of senior year, toward the end, when performance season was over and class was pretty much free time. Our social circles in that class did not overlap, so I was joking with my friends in one area while he and a bunch of seniors were arm-wrestling at the piano. He'd been at it for quite a while, getting beaten every time because he was so skinny, when someone decided he needed to wrestle his "little" brother, and the chant was taken up. I just looked at him and said, "Dude... you don't want to do this." Yeah, I was skinny too, but I was still stronger than he was, and I hadn't been abusing my arm for the last half hour... and I even offered him that excuse as a reason to turn down the match. There was no way I was going to throw the match on purpose to help him save face, but at the same time, I knew the seniors were going to humiliate him if he lost to his "little" brother. He decided not to heed my advice, and so, results unfolded as predicted.

So anyway, that's my personal experience of what would have to be a worst-case scenario of sibling rivalry and a younger gifted kid, because he pretty much got beaten in every domain. We were great friends when we were younger, but into the teen years he really began to resent me. For my part, I certainly never looked at him and thought "big brother," or even anything resembling "role model." And because things are complicated, and there was way more going on in his life than me, it's hard to say how much of a factor this was in how his life turned out... but anyway, the guy turned 40 last year, and he has pretty much never acquired a job on his own initiative in his entire life. Someone has basically had to do the legwork for him. In fact, the one who got him his first job was me.

He told me a story about a promotion he was in line for, in which he established that he basically had zero self-esteem, because after a few months of talking about it and nothing happening, he decided to have a mopey conversation with his boss about how he guess it was never gonna happen, and he was okay with that. Honestly, if I were his boss, that would be the last reaction I'd want to hear.

I don't know if this is of any help. It's how we value things that matter. It’s easy to look at school as a value judgment as to where we are. I read better therefore I am smarter there therefor I am better. I do 7th grade work while you do 5th grade work so I win the race. We all know this is not true. Unfortunately we tend to value being smart (Learning fast) over working hard. I would try to value the working hard stuff over the smart stuff. We should not allow them to define themselves as smart; the value should be on effort, and actions.

I haven't read this because my child doesn't have siblings but I've heard good things about it and it might be helpful, despite not being directly about giftedness.

http://www.amazon.com/Siblings-Without-Rivalry-Children-Together/dp/0380799006

I would also like to challenge the idea that faster = smarter, or earlier = smarter. There are a lot of parents of hares on this board, but there are also tortoise geniuses too. If it were me, I'd work really hard to avoid the idea that a particular subject "belongs" to the kid who is more accelerated in it. The sibling who is moving forward less quickly in math, for example, may end up going quite far into advanced math, maybe even making it an integral part of her career . . . as long as she believes that she is allowed to "own" math, regardless of her sibling.

my boys are 19 months apart both very smart but the younger one already couple months ago at 2.5 years old started surpassing his older brother at certain things (like reading). At first the older one was not happy about it. His big thing was that he wanted to teach his little brother everything and suddenly realized he couldn't. But it has given him motivation to see if he can do what his younger brother can do and he just tries harder sometimes.

For now, it's not really an issue at our house, I just try to find things when the older one can teach his younger one and feel like he's a good big brother. As he says, it's "his job to teach his brother things"

There is a chance that come Middle school, the younger one might be more grade skipped / subject accelerated than the older one and then we may run into problems but even then I'm sure we'll find a way to let them both feel good about themselves.