Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research PG? Husband is a skeptic, I am on the fence

I'm also a scientist and I love data :), but I also know that data can be manipulated in many different directions to tell a story, and that there are quite a few different definitions of what "profoundly" means when applied to intellectually gifted children

I'm confused about one thing in this discussion... the OP has a child with a specific GAI number. It seems to be the OP that this discussion is directed toward - is the concern that that specific # isn't high enough to be considered PG, or is the concern that GAI isn't a reliable indicator of PG (vs FSIQ)?

If the concern is the latter, I'd suggest spending some time with high GAI kids with disabilities that impact their ability to score high on PSI and WM. I wouldn't discount a 2e parent's opinion re level of giftedness simply because they are relying on GAI vs FSIQ.

Please know I'm not intending to be disrespectful in asking, I just don't understand what the origin of this discussion is with respect to the OP here in this post.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I'm not referring to the OP at all. Another poster on this thread. I don't care if everyone thinks their kid is PG; I do care if they call them PG. Being assessed by a professional is very different from a parent seeing their child's amazing abilities and thinking 'hmmm I shall call you PG'. I see a lot of kids' results and I know that kids with 130 can appear more advanced academically than those with 145 IQs.

Anyway, farewell.

I think it is odd to make claims without proof but I don't really care that much if people do except for some allergies when it can increase the risk to those with true allergies (luckily not my kids). This is party a NZ thing though where the only thing you are allowed to brag about or excel in is sport. I agree this isn't helping the OP much. Moving on.

I do care, because making a claim about being "PG" when it isn't true can lead to all kinds of problems. For example, if people are fabricating giftedness, their posts can't be trusted. Yet we can't know who's making it up, and so parents here may be believing advice based on experiences that never happened. This could tend to harm their children rather than help them.

Also, if a false claim of giftedness is made in real life, it can make teachers cynical when an actual HG+ kid comes along. How many of us have had to convince teachers that our kids really are gifted in the face of a belief that parents make it up? That belief isn't formed in a vacuum.


OP, my last message (bottom of page 4) was an attempt to address your concerns and the other concerns brought up on this thread. I hope it helps.

(And if anyone here is fabricating giftedness, please stop that.)

OP here. Thanks all for the discussions, I am really reading these with keen interest. Dusty I am so sorry you were bowing out of the thread I have come to appreciate your insights as well..

I am confused about PG vs. high performance kids and the intersection of the two. I always thought, that PG kids would squarely fall inside the high performance bucket and so we thought our DS is not one of them. It seems that we have a PG kid if his score is an indicator, his FSIQ says he is just normally gifted (wide discrepancy between VS score and other scores, the rest are in the gifted range but not that kind of standard deviation), but Psychologist said that his GAI is a low estimate because he hit the VS ceiling for WISC V and WAIS and there was no extended norm to consult for his scoring.. But we don't see crazy performance at school so far, albeit he is in a school that doesn't believe in acceleration and we are too busy with a young one who seems to have SPD also (sigh) and in the thick of it with her issues and so don't have enough time for older bro We are shy of the label, I guess, and also are still in disbelief because at school he is just ordinarily bright.. And then we see what kind of crazy things he keeps doing with blocks at home and him accelerating himself in tech programs in the summer, and we think.. maybe? Are there PG kids who are just late bloomer? It might also make performance benchmarking a bit harder here because we are in an area with many high performance kids, while we were at play based preschool I was aware that some classmates were doing math worksheets at home while he immersed himself in his sandpit. But what good do we get from benchmarking, if he is happy at school, but then maybe we should watch out if things might change in the future.

I appreciate hearing about what other kids do, and if there are kids who look more normal at school who tested PG and how the kids look like when they are older.. Also appreciating the insights about what the test is meant to do and the validity and/or impact to long term outcome. A lot of people in my social circle are discrediting the test, saying they are meaningless for children and are just measuring test taking skills. But our psychologist said at that kind of SD it is real, because the problems are difficult. I never sat an IQ test so I cannot verify that.

Val, I am appreciating your comment as well, it is what we feel. We don't put him in the pedestal, he doesn't know it was an IQ test nor does he know the scores. So far parenting as usual for us, but we probably should buckle the seat belt for the possibilities in the future that something might break.

As I posted the link to the Pearson source which explains/interprets the meaning of the GAI, I will field that question. This resource provides reliable information which may help answer the OP's question and assist both parents in aligning their views.

I respect that opinions may differ as to how much Processing Speed and Working Memory may impact intelligence, learning, achievement. However I believe that a parent asking for advice, and presenting a GAI score ought to have access to information about the meaning of GAI scores, therefore I provided that from an authoritative source.

Introducing this resource was in response to the OP's question in the subject of this thread: "PG? Husband is a skeptic, I am on the fence" and the later post regarding the GAI score.

I think it's fair to say that there a good number of us parents (me included) who were surprised that our kid scored in the PG range on an intelligence test. I think there are a few factors at work. One may be that we really don't know what "typical" scoring kids look like (we mostly only have our own kids to reference). Another may be that we might be led to believe (through popular culture) that it should always be incredibly obvious that our child is high achieving from a very early age (in reality, it may or may not be).

Dusty, I'm sorry that you feel that this forum has gone downhill over the last year. It saddens me that you are disappointed that Davidson now lets the "riffraff" (such as myself) in to programs like the Young Scholars. I think there's plenty of room in the tent. It's great to see that they are able to expand their services to a broader group of folks.

It is my understanding that the issue is not so much fabricating giftedness as overstating, exaggerating, embellishing, or otherwise claiming the ultimate heights of level-of-giftedness (LOG): "Profoundly Gifted (PG)".

I think a lot of what early school rewards is memorizing, following directions and speed. We aren't much further along this adventure so I can't comment too much on what is to come but DH and I used to joke that DS might actually do ok in post secondary if he doesn't flunk out of elementary (this actually did improve last year and DS actually did well for the first time but I still think we're one bad teacher away from returning to disaster...). For kids with higher GAI's and lower FSIQ's this is more about their weaknesses rather than their strengths. Meanwhile I'm sure there are kids out there with more even scores (or with fast processing, working memory but lower VS, etc) that blow DS away in a classroom setting.

Schools aren't necessarily going to shine the spotlight on his strengths 1) we live in a culture that doesn't look for or reward that stuff 2) he's doing stuff that is probably pretty easy for him and 3) he's surrounded by kids that are probably all somewhere to the right of average and teachers tend to lump all levels of "smart" into one bucket.

All kids are unique. I have two kids with pretty similar profiles and yet they are VERY different when it comes to school and the glimpses of gifted that one can see. DD gets comments from teachers and fits more of the high achieving stereotype. DS is 2e so teachers are obsessed about his challenges while everyone else that has ever had more than a 10 minute conversation with him usually makes some sort of comment - he oozes gifted out of every pore but struggles with completing grade level worksheets.

I do love reading about all of the kids here and appreciate those that have shared so much over the years. I find it fascinating and love hearing about the amazing things that go on inside their heads. I have no idea where our adventures will lead us. The biggest thing I've learned is to just go with it and don't plan too far ahead because whenever I think I have a plan, they usually change and the plan goes out the window.

Agreed. This observation may be helpful to the OP.

Dusty did not resort to name-calling such as "riffraff" in his/her post. Nor did s/he call anyone out personally. Therefore your putting words in his/her mouth is inappropriate and inflammatory. This is sometimes called a "straw man".