Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Highly gifted vs prodigy...how to tell the differe

Even though your DS was identified very young (age 5?), it is likely that he is highly gifted. Whether he is also a musical prodigy requires more information and time to determine. Your DS certainly has musical talent but a musical prodigy is far more rare. In my mind, it is a wider distinction than that between moderately gifted and profoundly gifted (and I don't mean by the lower DYS standards). The recorder is a very basic instrument and therefore too blunt of a measure to determine the level of his musical ability. Perhaps it would make sense to try him on the clarinet or saxophone or something in the string family and see how far he develops in the next six months. I don't know whether there is an official definition but I personally would not consider any child under age 10 to be a prodigy unless he was at the level of a professional adult. It appears that in most cases, the prodigious ability appears far earlier although without opportunity . . .

Yes; and see, DD learned to play at about five, but just wasn't that interested once she beat me, her dad, and her grandpa once each.

She definitely lacked motivation or interest in it. She's as proficient as most adults will ever be, but has no interest in excellence in the domain, basically. She hasn't played in years at this point. Which is kind of disappointing to her friends who are chess geeks, because she is still awfully good-- way better than most people who are trying.


ETA: This example points up the difference, I think, between "PG" and "prodigy." DD is quite likely the former (I could provide a lot of anecdotal support for the claim that her reasoning ability was that of at least undergraduate level when she was 4-7yo)-- but clearly not the latter. COULD she be in the right domain? Perhaps, but we've certainly not seen anything that lights her fire that way long-term. Mostly, she inhales information and is then 'done' with whatever it is, or dabbles periodically over a longer period of time.


On second thought, she does have a current interest-- marksmanship-- where "prodigy" could turn out to be the appropriate term. As in, national rankings, possible Olympic level. She's probably going to qualify for nationals this year and she's been shooting for less than six months. She's passionate about it, and she's very very good. It remains to be seen, though, if she'll sustain the interest when she hits a rough patch. But she regularly out-shoots everyone on the range except the elite shooters who compete nationally/internationally. They are adults who have been shooting for years, and mostly for decades. She is 14. So yeah-- that might be an example of prodigy-like passion/ability.

Also--

Prodigy is about developing/developed TALENT, the way that I see it.

Giftedness (profound or otherwise) is about cognitive potential.

I'm not sure that the two things are really much related to one another by anything but coincidence.

I think males are more likely to develop obsessive interests and thus harness their talents to become prodigies. It's not clear that if as many women were obsessive as men that things would be better. To make a good living it suffices to be very good at one thing, but a parent must play the roles of teacher, dietician, psychologist, and doctor, among other roles. Maybe females have evolved to be more well-rounded and less obsessive because their domestic roles have required that.

My DD would probably dress you down quite furiously for that remark, Bostonian.

Actually, I would not describe DS as "obsessive" about chess. Chess is joy for him. What I see with him and chess is not something I have seen often in my lifetime.

DD tends a bit more towards obsessive in personality than he does, TBH. DS is also dramatically more emotionally self-aware, has a much higher EQ, and is far tidier. Oh, and a much better dancer. DD can draw better, though. They both are uninterested in babies. Neither has ever liked superheroes, but they both loved cars as toddlers, though neither cares about them now. DD seems to be better in math than DS is currently shaping up to be, and DS read more than a year earlier than DD. And...

Wait, did none of that fit in the boxes??

And to follow onto UM's post above--

my DD is not an example of "less obsessive" in any way, actually. She's serially obsessive about whatever interest she has which is new and shiny.

This is the entire reason why I've been reluctant to call marksmanship anything but a current interest. She was at one time this way about almost everything. It's just that she's so clearly got prodigy-potential in this domain.

Also laughing a bit at the notion that this particular skill set could have been shaped for some care-giving/domestic need by evolution. LOL.

It's worth noting that far too many EG/PG people are distinctly androgynous in their interests and strengths to make gender-based statements about them. IMO, I mean.

Being serially obsessive won't make you a prodigy. I still think males are more likely to obsess over a narrow field for a long period of time, as Bobby Fischer did with chess.


I am a gifted adult interested in chess, politics, finance, and computer programming. All those fields are male-dominated.

Meaning, Bostonian? I understand that you conform to your hypothesis quite nicely. However, any example which disproves the hypothesis renders it invalid as a generality, yes?

My HG+ spouse is interested in dog training and cognition in animals, in apiculture, theater and in fine lathe-work. He's a regional authority in some of those sub-specialties, so his interest is pretty darned high there. He's also obsessive about his interest in popcorn consumption, but I hardly figure that this counts for much.


I am a gifted (female) adult interested in history, political science, economic theory, and several arcane areas of STEM, in addition to my more gender-normative pursuits (fiber arts, pharmacology, neuroscience, music). But in any case, I hardly consider that even meaningful anecdote given that this is an N of one, albeit it does disprove the theory that gender determines obsessive interest areas. I have had any number of male-dominated interests in my life, and certainly spent much of my professional life in such settings without a lot of discomfiture that my interests were not supported, probably because my interests are not gender-normative in many ways. Even my more gender-typical interests, I have noticed that I tend to focus on the technical or logic-driven side of things. I'm a scientist at heart, I think, and it colors the way that I interact with the world-- I was very definitely born this way.

I'd say that higher LOG correlates nicely with curiosity, which is probably more likely to result in an encounter that has the potential to be interesting enough to render it "obsessive" (at least it seems that way to others), long-term or otherwise. I also tend to believe (and studies that I have seen overwhelmingly bear this out) that being non-normative is relatively freeing from gender-norms in terms of exploring interests. Who knows, if not for gender norming and cultural pressures, perhaps non-gifted persons would explore more taboo interests more often, too. Instead, we get boys interested mostly in sports and first-person shooter games, and girls who want to cuddle horses and write i's with little hearts over them.

Yet another fascinating thread.

Bostonian, you're making inferences from a subset of the tails of a statistical distribution and ascribing them to the remaining distribution. Mathematically it doesn't hold water.


It's interesting, because the social psychology literature shows that males whose wives are the dominant household breadwinner are now exhibiting the classic socialized "female" behaviours-- remaining at home to care for children, faking orgasm, engaging in heightened preening. It appears that will dominates skill in the household labour allocation decision regardless of gender.

+1 for gender non conforming females here.

I'm really searching for a meaningful comment to add something to this thread.

So far, nothing.