Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Neurotypical Giftedness?

Polarbear- I just have to say that reading your post on this is very emotional for me. It's true the people here are looking for support and help (me especially); because people don't understand our kids or what we were trying to parent and nurture. Thanks for your post.

I second this from the bottom of my heart. And thank you so much, polarbear, for expressing it so perfectly. And thank you to everyone who has helped me/us with their feedback (and Davidson's, for sponsoring this site and everything else)--I can't imagine going through all of this stuff without some kind of support, and where are you going to find that besides someplace like here?

This is exactly my dd12. As it turned out a WISC at 11 showed her to be>MG which we had not expected.

Our boys haven't been tested yet but they both have issues. But from what it looks like so far, the younger one (DS3) we are suspecting to be HG+ or even PG is the one with the major issues. At home he's acting like an almost normal quirky child with some sensory problems, outside and to evaluators (diagnostic and other) he presents as highly functioning autistic and for school therapists / school setting he acts as if fully autistic. Our friends haven't even realized he has a diagnosis because to them he's just more reserved and very smart but they all look at me with a big surprise in their face when I say he should be autistic. So, clearly not "typical". DS4.5 who seems to be HG+ has PDD-NOS but not a set diagnosis. May change to Asperger's more likely upon further testing. He has a lot of sensory issues and overall for me and our daily life is the MORE difficult one yet for the school he's the easy one (basically, he's a total show off who can compensate for his problems really well vs. his younger brother who doesn't even attempt to compensate and is scared of anything outside his comfort zone)

Kids at the >99.9% level are one in a thousand and a tenth of those kids are one in ten thousand. Most teachers will never come across a single child at that level in their entire career.

We don't come across kids like ours in daily life because we don't meet thousands of other children and even if we did, it would be very hard to spot the difference between brilliant and atypical and just plain atypical, which seems more prevalent.

I'm looking for evidence of children who are >99.9% and who are otherwise completely neurotypical. According to the school's theory, they should outnumber the atypical kids by a wide margin.

This has been our experience. Dd's preschool and first school were terrible fits for her and she had all kinds of symptoms that made it look like there might be some other issues at play. She had significant social issues, selective mutism, sensory problems, she was extremely sensitive to change, sleep issues, etc. I used to sob to DH from time to time that I was so jealous of parents of NT kids who could just send their kids to school knowing they'd (by and large) enjoy the day, have friends, learn something. We finally found a school where dd fits and now I have one of those kids. All those issues have gone, she loves it, is learning, has great friends. I realise I say that as if it's a simple option, but given what we went through to find and get in to this school, I appreciate how incredibly lucky we are every. single. day. They don't do anything that is particularly special (or shouldn't be particularly special anyway!) It is just a regular public school with a diverse cohort of kids (though they have lots of gifties too because of their approach, which also helps)They just teach kids to their individual level, they're prepared to accelerate if need be, they interact with all the kids as individuals. We have looked a many, many schools and while they will ALL say this what they do do, once you scratch the surface it's always conditional (if it happens at all). It kills me that so many schools can't do this. But then it is rare in society in general, so perhaps it shouldn't surprise me (though chicken or egg I wonder?)

(Apologies for typos, on my phone)

Maybe they do... but it's probably not relevant either way, in light of the facts behind the rest of your post. Well-stated, actually.

While DD is completely NT as far as we can tell, we often hear "I've never seen/had a student/pupil/child like her" and we've come to accept that what they MEAN by this is simply her high cognitive ability. That's what they indicate when they discuss it further with us, anyway. The other part of the time, people will talk about having encountered "one" or "a couple" of people like her-- in a career/lifetime.

She is often a curiosity for adults who work with children because she challenges their assumptions about high IQ and 'weirdness' going hand in hand. They assume Bing Bang Theory, and she's not actually anything like that. She blends in about as well as she chooses to most of the time.


It makes sense just from a statistical perspective that few people have a lot of experience with persons of her LOG.

Well, this certainly means that she's well-socialized.

It's also a wonderful anecdote that supports my position.

Your daughter certainly sounds like the kind of counter-example I'm looking for.

Actually, it's possible our DD5 is one as well and I haven't yet realized her full potential. She's clearly very bright and has intense interest in people and history -- connecting emotionally with the plights of people across time.

Her passion seems 'normal' to me because she's interested in people. If she were as passionate about numbers or the way machines work, it would stand out as very unusual.

On the whole, she seems neurotypical, although she has bursts of intensity and occasionally complains that she has trouble controlling her impulses, despite being quite good at it for a child of five.

Both of my daughters certainly have many of the excitabilities Debrowski talks about - in fact it was in reading his stuff that DH and I began to understand our DDs. However, outside of that they are both NT. We get a lot of "wow I've never met a kid like her before" times 2, but it is in reference to their intelligence, not other things.

I don't know if they are the "norm" for pg kids or not but when we have met other PG kids most of them have seemed to be NT, based on my observations, but not on having lots of experience with them in a school situation. Our younger one has not been tested, but she appears to be a similar level to her sister.