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

Each school may have it's own unique attributes and you want to look for a good "fit". Some gifted schools or programs may emphasize strength in math and/or English Language Arts. This post upthread from aeh makes excellent points.

While in general it may be beneficial to think ahead, considering educational strategies to utilize when your child is twice his present age does not seem sound. Attempting to throw a test or in any way misrepresent your child's strengths and weaknesses is not recommended as it may result in a placement which is not a good "fit". In general, any type of duplicity tends not to foster trust.

It is good to know one's own child as this helps understanding him, raising him, and advocating for him.

Thanks again Solaris for your wisdom! A lot of things I learned from you from your posts, and I am very grateful for your generosity.

DS8 tested PG (145+ GAI) and just started his second year at a nearby private gifted school. So far, it's worked out well, he really loves it, and he gets along with his classmates splendidly. (He fits in so well, in fact, that it really makes me wonder if he's MG and not PG, despite his scores.)

His presumed LOG is certainly nothing I have shared with any other families. His teacher last year knows (she was his Davidson nominator), the school knows (as they required the IQ test to begin with), and that is it. It does leave me wondering, though, who else in the school might be PG. There are probably a handful of PG kids there, and I have spoken with one the parent of PG alumni and they were very happy (so I know it happens). But I will likely never know. While it's a little uncomfortable to keep secret, it would be even weirder to discuss it openly.

Peanutsmom, while I'm sure you're disappointed that he wasn't accepted at those GT schools (and yeah, the application process sucks), it's likely that they felt they couldn't provide an adequate education for him. Unfortunately many schools are not equipped to teach highly VS kids, and it's possible that they realize this. The shortcoming isn't your kid; it's their school. And it's likely the school feels this way, too.

I also know that a PG kid can do really well with appropriate acceleration / accommodations in many different types of schools, public or private. It really just depends on what the kid needs and how the schools can meet him where he's at.

I think most private (including gifted) schools prefer kids that are smart (gifted), but not too smart. And fairly even scores (I know our school specifically mentioned that the processing scores should not be too low). That said, I think by high school, your son's performance in school throughout the years will weigh more heavily in admissions than an IQ test, with few exceptions.
Since you are at the moment most worried about summer camps and age restrictions, have you thought enrolling him in camps that challenge his relatively weaker abilities? Perhaps foreign language immersion? We feel very fortunate to be a tri-lingual family - it gives our firstborn, who is not a highly verbal child, a challenge.

Thank you rac for the reco! We enrolled him in sports camps about half of the summer, and he wants to do tech for the other half.. Finding the right tech camp for him is the challenge, since he complains of boredom in most of the camps. I haven't thought of language, but he's raised bilingual. We tried to enroll him to a foreign language afterschool, but we don't speak the language, and we decided to pull him out because they tried to give him a lot of math homework (yes, in a language immersion program) and accelerate him in math with what I think was not a good instruction. We talked to the parents of a child going to a gifted private school in our area, and they told us if the child is over 2 SD to just forget applying. They didn't know our son's scores, so I think they were quite objective and honest.

If you are gifted you are going to be at least 2SD above.

Absolutely. By definition, "gifted" refers to IQ scores approximately 130-132+ which is 2 standard deviations above the norm of 100. This illustration of the IQ normal distribution curve (or bell curve) from iqcomparisonsite website may help visualize this.

Sorry, yes, I forgot. I think they meant to say a child should not fall too far from 130. To be honest I still have a lot to learn from this, and I have yet to see if my DS' test scores will ever translate to extraordinary academic achievement.

Scores will only be matched by achievement if the environment is right for most kids. Some kids can flower in the wilderness but most just become stunted. I can see that a population of 130 to 135 scoring kids would be easier to manage and I think most gifted programmes really want 120ish high achievers. It is hard for those who are an SD above 130 though (or more).

peanutsmom, I wanted to throw in a few more thoughts, as there is a lot about your son that rings familiar, including major VS and an uneven (in our case, just plain weird) profile.

DS12 was a seriously different kid from - literally - the day he was born. Neither I nor anyone else, however, ever ascribed those differences to giftedness. Just an unbelievably high-needs child, with an insatiable need for stimulation, weird developmental stops and leaps, (and of course, lots of bad parenting which was clearly what was making him so high needs :P ). It wasn't until he was tested after grade 2 and I started researching giftedness that I found, for the first time in his crazy intense life, descriptions of baby and child behaviour that I could relate to in any way, shape or form. But definitely nothing in this child would ever prompt anyone to think "prodigy"!

aeh beautifully described the mismatch of the extremely visual-spatial child in the modern classroom. It calls very little on their strengths. My kid is probably a bit of an extreme example, in that he loves conceptual math, quantum physics and programming, but has major challenges in processing speed, attention, executive function, and writing, is not microscopically extrinsically motivated, and is quite uninterested in language arts and social sciences. Basically, his weaknesses are all the stuff teachers love, value, and do easily. His strengths are in areas he's not likely to see before university. Like chay, I believe this child could thrive in post-secondary, but I am honestly not certain if we will get him through middle and high school. With rare exceptions, teachers certainly do not see this child as gifted: they see the struggle to complete a grade-level worksheet, but (in our radically anti-acceleration school system) not the way he excels if you give him math at the right level.

I too thought gifted = high achieving, that school should be easy. I had to learn to let that go in a big hurry for my kids. School success is about how well a particular kid fits into a particular educational environment. If it values and challenges their strengths, and helps them constructively work on their weaknesses, they can excel. If it refuses to allow them to use their strengths, and put all its demands - but little support - only on their weaknesses... well, not so much. We can see DS's ability in many environments, now that we have learned how to find good matches - but elementary school will never be one of them. It's getting both better and worse. Worse, in that while DS's learning issues were not apparent in grade 2 (he could still compensate and accomplish what was being asked of him - albeit with average grades), by last year's demanding grade 6 gifted class, they became a huge problem. But better in that the less he can compensate for and hide his disabilities, the more we're starting to get some ideas what they might actually be.

DS is a math monster, but aside from his love of patterns and symmetry, and innate understanding of basic mathematical relationships and concepts, there was nothing that was really stand out about him. Until I finally broke down a couple of years ago and started teaching him AoPS math at home (because at school he was learning not just to hate math, but also to think he was really bad at it). The best way I can described what happened since is to say that it became clear to me that his brain thinks in math, not English. But before AoPS and a fabulous math camp, he didn't have a language. After, he did. And suddenly he's full of mathematical ideas, theorems and proofs, and suddenly, well, he doesn't sound quite so typical anymore. But he needed a language to allow him to make sense of and articulate the crazy thoughts floating around in his head. That same language has enabled him to pursue physics and programming in very different ways than before, too.

Don't know if these random thoughts help, but that's a bit of our journey so far.