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Hi, everyone!
I'm a GT college student (back in school after swearing off education), who has only recently uncovered her scores from many years ago. It has explained much about my educational mis-experiences, and I hope to learn more about GT, especially as my younger cousins are also GT and experiencing educational difficulties. Any insights or stories about profound giftedness as it relates to education would be much appreciated

Welcome LilMick,
Ya' came to the right place!
What are you studing?
How long was your 'break' from education?
Are you much older than your classmates?
What do you read for fun?

Smiles and Welcomes,
Grinity

Hi LilMick--

I have a question. When do you think you should have been told about your scores? Some people say early, some say never. Do you have siblings--if yes, do they know their scores and is there any comparing (that all makes me very nervous), but it sounds like you find it helpful to know.

Bumping away the spam!

Cym,
I would have liked to know my scores by middle school, maybe earlier, as my academic frustrations began early in elementary school--definitely not at 22. We came from a very poor district, and neither of my schools understood the difference between one of my classmates reading two grade levels ahead and me sneaking in college science and calculus books or choosing classical literature for book reports (in grade school). However, even if I had received the scores earlier, my parents still did not know what the scores meant, as the tester only told them that my school was much higher than what she had seen from other students. Most of my older relatives are also very bright (not very educated, but rising quite high in a field that they had self taught--physics, engineering, business), so I guess that my parents did not think that these scores would mean anything other than that I was a bright child.

As for siblings, I lived with five cousins close in age to me, all of whom are GT, as well. All of them read before school, and most could do simple math. We reasoned that if my oldest cousin read at four and did well being one of the youngest in his class that I would do even better in school as I had taught myself to read at two. Our comparisons usually helped us to push ourselves (especially us three youngest) in learning while we were at home. Our different levels of giftedness only created problems when I took the ACT in middle school and scored higher than the two who had taken it during their junior years of high school, but K and P usually treated me as if I were their age, anyway. We were all each others' best friends (still are), as we could relate to each other better than we could relate with most of our classmates (none of us accelerated through school). Several of them also struggled to fit into a one-size-fits-all education, three dropping out as well. Since we have discovered differences in giftedness, we have come to understand our situation better and have been able to help each other navigate through college and careers.

In the end, knowing my scores may not have allowed me to gain enrichment or acceleration, but it would have helped me to understand my frustrations at school and to understand why I had a much easier time relating to children almost twice my age than to my classmates. Also, it may have helped us cousins to understand our similar mis-adventures in school and some of the differences in our abilities. It also may have helped to reassure the older ones that they were very intelligent, even if W and I outperformed them at younger ages. If we had not all been gifted or if we had not been as close, knowing our scores may have created problems, but it has not been much of an issue.

I hope that this helps! Let me know if you want to know more

LilMick

Thanks, LilMick

Really the only one I consider showing scores to is #2 son who thinks he's not a mathy kid. His younger brother is very math-able and I've tried to separate them so #2 doesn't feel threatened (and tell him there's no competition going on here). But I hate to hear him think he's not talented mathematically, just because lil bro can solve problems instantly. DH is very opposed to discussing scores with any of them, so we'll probably never do it. But I was just curious.

My sisters and I were all tested when we were kids, but when my mom passed away, we went through her stuff and never found any records...probably buried in the mounds of stuff at dad's house.

I guess I am confused about what is seen as the benefit of withholding scores from a person. It seems like keeping them secret somehow creates the sense that they are to be ashamed of. If we go back to the sports analogy, people tend to know if they are good at sports, if they are the fastest runner or the best goalie. They tend to know if they are tall or pretty. There are contests for music and art. All of these give you a sense of what you are good at and where your strengths lie. I guess I don't see why intelligence should be treated differently.

Certainly, we don't want to create kids who are cocky and rude, but I think some of those obnoxious behaviors are more likely to arise in a child who feels insecure or confused. A kid who has an idea of his strengths and weaknesses and some insight into how his brain works may actually be less likely to cause those problems.

I completely agree, acs! Self-knowledge is often the key to security in a child, and secure kids are usually easier to get along with.

Do kids need to know their exact scores? I dunno. They often don't have the context to interpret them. Think about how hard we all have to work to make sense of them. I'm not sure a child needs to do all that.

But I do think that kids can understand being GT in some form at a fairly young age, and can learn quite easily that it's neither something to brag about nor something to be ashamed of. DS7 knows he's GT, he knows that means that he can do some things that other kids his age can't. But he also knows that his GTness no different than his eye color or the length of his legs. It just IS. It isn't something that makes him better or worse than anyone else. It's what he does with himself that matters.

I'm not sure I know when we'll show DS7 his test scores, but I'm not sure we need to until he's grown. Because we talk openly about his strengths and weaknesses in a positive way, I think he knows what he needs to know to understand himself.

I think it's a great question though. I guess my short answer is that we've talked about GTness with DS7 all along; we'll show him his scores when we think he needs to see them and when he can understand them in context.

DS was almost 10 when he was first tested. He was fascinated by statistics and we had a great time looking at the numbers. He learned about standard deviations, percentiles, confidence intervals and test ceilings. As we took the test apart, he learned a bunch of interesting math, but also learned to put all the testing in context--he gets that intelligence is more than just a number--and see that there are a lot of quirks in the test process itself that might make people question a single number. I have never heard of him speak of this to anyone but us.

Oooh! I like that, acs! Testing as a teachable moment!

I think it's key that you really discussed all the ins and outs of testing with him. That's very smart. I think most people tell the kid the score and that's it. Well, what does that number mean?

The way you contextualized it makes ALL the difference, I think. And in that case, why wouldn't you tell the kid the score? What possible reason would there be for holding back? I can't think of a single one! It's very sensible to give him that self-knowledge.

Good on ya'!