Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What drives your interest in gifted issues?

I'm also from a highly gifted, high achievement family. Found this forum when DD8 was 2, because it was already clear she was not typical. It all felt so huge. It was like having a plane crash into your house, and not being allowed to talk about it because that would be impolite.

DD is homeschooled now. She's extremely strong-willed, and no school situation was ever going to work for her, so I'm glad I figured that out fairly early.

I'm now mostly a lurker here because our situation is cruising along nicely. (The academics are jostling along, she has time to follow her own interests, and she has a good friend group of smart kids who are mostly older than her.) I might have gotten her tested just in order to access DYS and find more peers, but since things are good I don't see a need to.

In the past when I was more involved with this board I did a lot of answering questions and clarifying misunderstandings about brains, since that's my field.

One of the nice things about this forum for me is hearing about kids that are *smarter* than my DD, or who have different strengths. I also just really like hearing people's personal stories.

I grew up in a family of gifted learners (my brothers and I) and educators (mom, aunts, uncles, and me for a short stint). My first child (now 5) seems to just be on a different tier and has been astounding us since he was tiny. I found this forum to ask a few questions, but mostly to learn from others' experiences and to read about other amazing kids. I am fascinated by the human brain and how we learn, and I am constantly digging to better understand my children and how I can best support their development.

DH was young for his grade and then skipped and in some sort of gifted program (no idea what the criteria were at the time or what he actually scored/did to gain entry). I cruised along in school and was in a high achieving program in high school. Years ago I would have never said I was "gifted" but the more I read and discover about my kids the more I have to admit it probably isn't just DH's gene's to blame

I ended up finding this board a few months after we tested DS back in 2013. We've since tested DD and retested DS to get a better handle on his 2E challenges. This board has been an amazing resource along the way. We aren't in the U.S. so DYS isn't an option but at least we have this board. Having a place where our challenges are "normal" has been amazing. We have a very quiet more local board but parents there are either 1. not dealing with what we're dealing with and/or 2. just worried about which private school they should pick in a city hundreds of miles away. This board is much more relevant and interesting to me.

This whole path has also dragged me into becoming an advocate at our district level. Prior to this, I would have run away at the thought of navigating the political minefield that gifted advocacy can be but my passion/frustration has managed to outweigh all of that. I will also add that another motivator is that both DH and I have numerous friends and family that highlight the challenges that can accompany gifted (underachievement, imposter syndrome, drop-outs, suicide, substance abuse, mental health challenges, etc). This has become bigger than my 2 kids for me. I'm now trying to fix the system for all of them which most days seem rather daunting. I love hearing about the schools, teachers, districts, etc out there that are doing good things - it gives me hope. While the less than positive stories help remind me that I'm not alone.

THANK YOU!!!!

This is a great thread. It's so interesting to get a better sense of people's stories.

I was never tested because I grew up in a very small town where no one ever thought about this stuff, but was probably at least a MG kiddo. I literally never knew that school was supposed to present a challenge until I got to university. And even then, I only had to start studying (albeit a little hard at times) to get excellent marks, including in law school.

It only dawned on me that this might be somewhat outside the norm when I started reading up on giftedness in relation to DS7 when he was 3 years old. And even then, I started out researching mostly about his big emotions. I thought he might be a "spirited child", but it seemed like something different than that. Once I figured out that he seemed to fit the GT characteristics, I turned to this forum mostly because of his intensity, and posting on here and receiving comfort and suggestions has been a godsend for me.

So far, he seems to be doing ok with a bit of enrichment in school. And his EQ has mostly caught up to his big feelings, so he's turning into a pretty incredibly kid. Both boys (he and DS5, who has been an easy kid) are probably going to need more than they're currently getting at school (I posted about that last week). But for now, we're catching our collective breath and enjoying this nice groove.

This is an interesting thread madeinuk, thanks:).

I was a voracious reader as a child and seemed a bit mature for my age but don't necessarily consider myself to be particularly gifted. I have IQ scores from DH from the 6th grade where he topped out an IQ test, so can't really deny his giftedness;). I am also a school psychologist so there is a professional interest in assessment and how we define intelligence in a general sense.

DD is a DYS. I suspected something was a little off when my two year old could explain the extinction of dinosaurs using appropriate terminology, but frankly tried to ignore it. After three school years and three teachers that really wanted us to have an evaluation done to assess her level of giftedness we did. When I received the results I was floored. I did evaluations as a big part of my career and had never seen test scores like my daughters. I was very overwhelmed (still am at times) and needed to connect with parents who were ahead of me in this process. Hopefully, at this point I can contribute a little something to the parents with younger children who are navigating this as well.

I don't know that any of us planned this exactly, but there are not many placed to discuss your elementary age child's existential crisis, so I am grateful for this group;)!

This forum has been the easiest way for me to locate like-minded parents with children facing similar constellations of needs. Because we're located outside the U.S. and aren't eligible to participate in the DYS program, this has been the next-best resource for our family in supporting my DS' growth.

My son hasn't been tested, mostly because he's young and has had his needs met to date primarily through homeschooling. Should the need arise, we'll go the testing route. At this point, I'm comfortable sticking my neck out and saying that he's some flavor of GT and following his development. From an early age, his developmental milestones met or exceeded those of both parents, both of whom were ID'd gifted as children.

"Giftedness" was never really an explicit part of my identity as a child or youth. At that time, access to related information for families was limited, schools were more open to grade-skipping, and my parents were chiefly focused on meeting needs as they arose rather than anticipating needs down the line. Within our family, I was operating within the norm, and so my concept of unusual needs was culture-bound. It was taken for granted that most of the children in our extended family were accelerated, often multiple grades, and went on to intellectually stimulating careers. My parents advocated effectively to ensure I was in a supportive environment, and life went on.

An interest in the concept of giftedness has only really come onto my radar as a parent to a bright little man. I can't openly talk about his early milestones IRL because they sound preposterous, and I would come across as a horrible braggart if I were open about his interests, so I turned to the internet to find some more resources after his pediatrician made some pretty stark comments at his well-baby visits.

It became apparent pretty early in DS' life that the educational system in our country is unsupportive of accelerated learning, and supports that once existed to enable more individualized learning in a standard classroom have gone the way of the do-do bird. The culture around education has become defensive and unduly focused on secondary goals of equality and feelings to such an extent that actual LEARNING has been de-prioritized. I was appalled that, when reviewing the websites of all the K-8 schools in the largest school district in our country, less than 8% identified academic excellence as a top-3 goal. This applies to all students, not just the gifted, but the gifted feel the weight of the change most acutely (and they are the group most related to my personal family situation). Ironically, it's in this culture of celebrating differences that my country is most rabid in its efforts to stamp out actual differences under the misguided banner of "tolerance". Embracing difference does not equate to enforcing sameness.

So, fundamentally, what drives my interest in gifted issues is an interest in my son's education and, more generally, a conviction that all children deserve to learn in school and achieve their potential. Anything less is a disservice to the student and society.

I came here after we had DS tested at a young age... we started to see some warning signs in preschool of a mismatch of his environment/peers and his own development especially since he misses the school cutoff for K by one day. We expected to hear that he is very bright so we were stunned at the results but it did explain his increasing resistance even at his young age to going to his daycare and his comments. He is such a chameleon that we still are puzzled by exactly what we are dealing with and whether he is challenged enough or not.

GT (and 2E) runs in DH's family for sure, and most likely same in mine, and while I have my results from my childhood, they are all skewed by my disability and its challenges that depressed some of the early scores (which was in one of the reports saved) so it is not clear even in the last test round before I aged out of special ed, whether the lingering impact was still reflected (it is not really something that one can fully outgrow or fully gain back the lost years).

We have not tested DD yet (a large concern is that she can be extremely difficult to work with if she decides not to cooperate - which was something I was notorious for as a kid too with reports saved that stated the same about me) and although she is quite different from DS, people seem to see DD as being gifted (and tell us that) while DS seems like another average boy to most people.

It is coming here that helped me to see that GT is not the stereotype of prodigies but quite a range of abilities/interests and very individual (and yes, I was friends with someone who I now believe is PG/EG - definitely way higher than mine - so my viewpoint of what would be average IQ may be affected by running around with her for so many years and not realizing that our conversations may not have been age typical).

Wow - I am really enjoying this thread - thanks madeinuk! The short answer is that I have two 2E kids (DS 12 and DD10), and I have found that the expertise and advice on this forum for identifying, understanding and supporting their needs is better - more accurate, specific, relevant, and concrete - than any other source on 2E I have found, bar none. I can't convey my gratitude to all of you enough. We couldn't have made it this far without you.

The long answer - - - well, I'll try not to go on too long, but I suspect you all know that's not my strong suit . I went to school in a time and place where gifted identification and programming didn't exist, and for whatever reasons (parents? school? not quite sure) acceleration was never an option. While it was always a kind of unspoken obvious that I was gifted, it didn't really mean anything. I was the teacher stereotype and thought "gifted" just meant school was really easy and boring and I got straight As while sitting in the corner reading a book and exerting not the slightest effort ever. (I hated school and wanted to get out as fast as I could. I found a way to compress 5 years of high school into three, thus starting university at 16 despite everyone's efforts to keep me in an age-appropriate grade. Then almost flunked out of university as I hadn't the faintest notion how to study or work hard. I am very motivated to give my kids a better school experience - and work ethic - than I had).

Then DS came along. Extremely high needs, outlier in every possible way, from literally the day he was born. I used to joke that he read all the baby books in the womb, chortled evilly and tossed them over the cliff. Nothing worked for him the way it worked for other parents around me. I lived with a constant barrage of advice that if I simply stopped making him so high needs, he would be like all the other kids. As others have noted, it was exhausting and isolating.

It wasn't until he was 8 and the school told me to test him for giftedness that I started researching, and realized that actually, I knew nothing whatsoever of gifted. And I started, for the first time in my life, to find descriptions of kids and child development that actually related to my experiences with DS. It never, ever, occurred to me that gifted had anything to do with it. But I then realized that those 8 extraordinarily difficult years, and even that insane babyhood, were actually described as common experiences - among HG kids. However, DS tested (barely) MG, and I lurked and researched and felt like a fake, because all the experiences I could relate to were for kids who were dramatically greater outliers than mine.

Fast forward two years, and DS10 and younger sister DD8 are now both struggling in school, anxiety ridden and back to the psych to explore writing problems for DS and reading for DD. Psych re-does the WISC, and DS is now scoring HG with enough discrepancy to suspect that may well be an underestimate and misses his actual main strength, math. No explanation for writing problems. DD is diagnosed MG (which fits in her case), dyslexic and ADHD (also visual processing deficits). That's when I started a massive research binge, and actually signed up to the forum and started reading regularly while seeking advice on remediation and support for DD. And got amazing advice and support. (To DD's original list I would now add probably dysgraphic, and deficits in math.) Still trying to understand what DS's challenges are - but most of what I have learned/ suspect came from this board. (Definitely extreme ADHD inattentive, and fine motor issues; probably expressive language deficits; retrieval issues affecting both language and things like math facts/ rote calculation; haven't ruled out ASD).


Having a safe place to talk about my kids have been a life-saver. For many years, there was absolutely no one in real life I could discuss my kids with, even family. And being surrounded by people who think you created your kid's challenges, rather than that you are trying to parent in ways that respond to their challenges, is very hard. I sometimes think having an extended family probably full of MG folk makes it even harder to deal with an outlier like DS, who really seems to live in a different universe than the rest of us - they all think they know gifted, that their experience is applicable to him, and that he could be like all the rest of us if only I stopped treating him like he was different. This forum gave me the confidence to advocate for what the child in front of me was showing me he needed, regardless of what everyone else said he was supposed to need.

We've spent a ton of time and money trying to identify, support and remediate our kids' challenges. For DD especially, simply being properly taught how to read changed her life in such profound ways. I am acutely aware that most families could not afford the time or the specialists we consulted, and out city is full of kids like mine that are still in misery, dying inside, getting further and further destroyed by a school system the isn't teaching them in ways they can learn. So now I also work with our local LD and gifted associations, and our school board, to try and change things, so that all kids like mine actually get the same kinds of opportunities that I could provide to my own. (Not working yet, but I'm still trying.)

The other big discovery has been DH's own - in retrospect obvious - experiences as a 2E kid. I struggle to understand my kids' challenges because learning was always too easy for me. Not his life at all. DD's diagnoses led us to realize DH too is almost certainly dyslexic, dysgraphic and ADHD - but he spent his life being berated for laziness and underachievement. Every report card he ever got says "not trying hard enough". And then friends began crawling out of the woodwork, sneaking me off into corners to admit their dark secrets they've been embarrassed and hiding all their lives - that they can't spell, that reading is painful, that they couldn't learn their times-tables to save their lives. So I talk LD everywhere I go, long and loud and matter-of-factly. And I hope that just maybe, possibly, perhaps, a few more kids will learn that they are perfectly capable of learning, if only they are taught the way they learn. And grow up without the misery and fear of getting caught that plagues their parents. And to help their parents see that silence and stigma won't help their kids, and that we can talk openly about LD and do something about it.

OK, total soapbox. Went on forever. Apologies. Love you all for putting up with my rants!

I ended up here after we had our middle kid tested for 2e issues about seven years ago. DH is classic 2e as well so we were watching for it. DD had DYS level IQ scores but was really struggling with the basics at school due to dyslexia and dysgraphia. We didn't apply for DYS at the time because I was more concerned with getting her to learn how to read and write This place was a safe place to talk about her issues without people judging her (Why is your kid in the GT program when she is barely reading??? because the school psychologist told us to . . .) DD is now in high school and subsequent recent testing on the WISC V confirmed earlier testing. If I get around to it, might finally fill out the DYS application.

We also have two other kids but have never had IQ testing on either of them. The oldest was in GT programming for elementary and middle school. She is a super high achiever with lots of GT traits. Comments from several of her GT teachers lead me to believe that she may be HG but our own perspective is pretty warped. She is a lot like me at that age and I'm guessing that I am MG. Youngest is in a GT program. He's got the family math gene, not sure about the rest of it. His teacher who has all of my kids thinks that he is just as capable as his siblings but "he's a boy."

Isn't this mentality the case with our school boards, too? Seen one gifted child, seen them all? The parents clearly "made" the child's "problems".

It's maddening.


Good for you! (You're wonderfully quotable today.)

For all our country's pomp and circumstance around tolerance, our educators are some of the least informed, most intolerant participants in the 2E discussion. The impetus for reform will have to come from within the 2E community, and I'm delighted you're using your voice to support the needs of those who can't fight for themselves. Much respect.