Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Non-Gifted Parents/Gifted Environment-Xperience?

I hope that you feel very welcome here. I have only been here a year, but I feel that all my posts have been answered in a constructive, non-judgmental manner. I was identified as "gifted" in school, and I may be. I was simply a well-behaved child who got things pretty quickly, enjoyed learning and did well on standardized tests. I think if my son (who s 4) was like that, I would never have found this forum because I would have known how to deal with a child like that. I came here becauae i just know his mind works differently and quicker than mine, and I found it very scary, and I didnt have anyone to talk to IRL. So, I searched and searched and thankfully, ended up here.

I just recently changed my screen name for more anonymity. I have never been identified as gifted and was not a good student in jr/sr high. I am the first in my family to go to college - I put myself through at 25 and then went to law school a few years later. While I was there, I had a baby. I have done work that is challenging and stimulating to me and I feel I am accomplished in my career.

My DH was id'ed as gifted and was in a self contained gifted program as a kid. I think his is HG+. He essentially skipped a grade when he missed a year for medical reasons and they did not hold him back. He and my DYS DS think the same and my thinking is a little different. However, the both of them have executive function deficits and I have a frontal lobe for 3. LOL. I think I am gifted but not as highly gifted as DH and DS but I have other strengths that make it easier for me than for them. I generally enjoy the pace of living with 2 2Eers and have never really found anything intense about our lives until I realized that not everyone is like us. I find it difficult to connect with people - not sure if it's giftedness or generally (though not extreme) introverted personality but I find a lot of kindred spirits here - like an OP said, for me it's the advocacy. That and the feeling that I am not alone in thinking that my kid deserves an education to his ability. In the real world, no one wants to hear about the issues you have with your kid that is too smart.

Funny story though, my DS was being funny and said "when you have a really smart person and a really athletic person you get a [then he said his name]. I asked which one of us was which and he said I was the smart one and DH was the athletic one.

I'm HG, and to be honest, typical people are the ones who intimidate me. I think it's a question of being outnumbered... my "IQ" (whatever that means ) is in the 1/2500 ish range (Stanford Binet), so typically I'm the odd person of any group who sees things differently and can't relate.

One aspect of being "smart" though, is that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know.

I think everyone has something to contribute. It doesn't matter what the cognitive test results say - you likely have seen something or have had an experience that I haven't, and you have a unique perspective to share.

Welcome

You have no idea how much I appreciate that, La Tex! I needed that laugh.

Glad you're feeling better.

Thank you for your kind words. I'm very interested in gifted topics and like to read the posts, but would like to participate more fully without sounding so ignorant. Oh well. Sometimes I don't answer a question to me in one of the posts I start because I'm not a good debater.

My son falls somewhere in the gifted range; I'm positive. I've read Ruf's 5 Levels of Gifted and from the descriptions, I'd say he's 3-ish. I'm here to learn how to help him with school and life.

My family and my DH's family have gifted members. Gifted in different ways. One was sort of Hemingway and another sort of Gates. Others in between. You know what I mean.

The closest family I have that would be able to talk to me shut me down. I said straight out that I thought DS was gifted and he told me no, just smart. He's my dad and thinks gifted only means 99.9+. He has never been one to open up (I think he has Aspie tendencies), anyway.

So, no...I'm not leaving the board. I just wish for the ability to understand more.

I been variously labelled as gifted, a borderline imbecile, gifted but lazy and smart but intense in that order up to this point in my life. I have never had my IQ tested so do not know what I am - lol.

Having had first hand experience of the mental and physical abuses that the English school system meted out on those judged stupid or slow In those days gave me a profound intolerance of injustice, hypocrisy and plain old-fashioned BS.

I am absolutely not a snob about 'intelligence' myself.

You're right. Reminds me of the intro to The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann

gifted but lazy

and this is how I knew that I belonged...


I like the rest of her sentiments, too.

I'm kind of anti-elitist, when you get right down to it. I fully believe that pretty much every experience can be SOME kind of learning experience if you look at from the right perspective. On the other hand, with kids, it's different because they don't have the life experience yet to know what they don't already know, if that makes sense. So they CANNOT know that there is more to this world than a third grade classroom which feels hellish. That's where advocacy comes in.

I don't understand a lot of the testing jargon that is routine in that forum, either. We've not gone down that path, so I've never had a reason to educate myself about it.

I like being part of a community where being laughed at good-naturedly really isn't anything more than because I did something doofy that was pretty gosh darned funny...

and not because it was a group of people looking for any signs of imperfection (or.... ahem... moral turpitude of some kind) and a way to 'take me down' a bit. THAT gets so so old in real life sometimes. Comes part and parcel with being HG/+ though-- as my DH and I both know to our chagrin.