Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Head size?

DS7 has always had a huge head...... when he was younger he was very thin and I used to think he looked like a bobble head

I was reading the thread about when did you know..... someone mentioned head size.

Anyone else have big head kids?

Over here! DS has one. LOL. I always have trouble buying regular tops for him because he would have a hard time wearing them over his head. I resorted to buying top with V-neck or with buttons (like Polo tops). Now, at 8, we have no problem with tops.

I have to hop over to read that post u have mentioned! So interesting...

My DS has quite a big head! LOL. We also struggle with tops. When we struggle to get his t-shirt off, DP says 'you've got such a big head' (jokingly!) and DS always says 'yeah thats because i have a big brain!!'. Modesty is not a strong point however much i try....

Add me to the big head baby club. DD8 had a huge baby head. I have heard that big heads are related to PG, but I think it's pretty much anecdotal.....

lol... I don't really think head size is related to gt..... it's just funny how many gt kids have giant heads

we had to cut shirts to get him out a few times.....

right after he was born the Doctor said,"Look at the head on him!" and then tested him for inseffilaitse (Brain swelling)

told me all this and said, "I am happy to report that he just has a giant head."

Since my DS5's head has always measured 98%ile, I'll chime in...
The studies attempting to correlate IQ with head size have been mixed. Most of the data is old and suffers from bias of some kind. There was a study in 2003 correlating rapid gains in head circumference during the first year of life (i.e. going from 25-50%ile to 80%ile plus)with development of autism.

Interestingly, Einstein's brain weighed no more than an average man his size. This may be because he died at a rather advanced age (in his 70's I believe), and we know that there is a normal amount of shrinkage of the brain with age. BUT - Einstein had two notable differences - his biparietal diameter (measurement of the brain from one parietal lobe to the other) was significantly larger than average. The parietal lobe typically contains "association areas" where the brain makes sense and analyzes primary sensory inputs (vision, hearing, etc). So, perhaps Einstein was able to make more "associations" than the average person. Also, his brain had significantly more folds in it, which, phylogenetically is correlated with intelligence - humans have more folds in their brains than, say, great apes.

Here's the problem with Cranial Capasity - folks started measuring in the late 1800 with an eye toward proving that Europeans and their Decendents were 'better' and 'more intelligent' than folks from the rest of the world. So it's hard to even peek at that early stuff.

I googled around to find some 'science' and quickly found a linke to David Duke's Website ((shivers))

My best guess is that there is a tiny little correlation between baby head circumference and IQ within any particular group or gender. (Males who are destined to be 6 feet tall tend to have larger heads than females who's parents are both 5 feet tall, yes?)

One of the things that is sad, but must be faced, is that some of the US elite back about 100 years

(think 1870s, the Guilded age, Andrew Carnegie)

was 'into' eugenics, and wanted to 'improve' humanity by encouraging the smart successful ones to breed, and some went as far as to try to discourage the 'less desirable ones' from breeding (think of our Dear Margret Sanger - who did a lot of good, but we would be appauled, I think, to listen to her at the dinner table.) And some went farther....((double shiver))

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

I read a book recently that pointed to the connection between the eugenics movement in England and the US and the theology of Nazi Germany. ((tripple shiver))

Anyway - lots of the money to fund early work on IQ came from those optomistic and naive times. So when you mention IQ to a teacher and he or she looks at you coldly, as if you are trying to commit a perverted crime of some kind, you are feeling the cold wind of those earlier times - even if the teacher themselves isn't consiously aware of the history.

It would be much more comfortable to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' and decalare that every child is gifted, than to have to take on that whole history and carefully pick through what we need to benifit from and what we need to stand up against. That's what I did, and it worked ok, until my son got to school age and I saw the suffering he had to face at such a young age. That was enough to motivate me to get out tweesers and start thinking about this ugly tangle -

Here's what I have figured out so far:

I believe that IQ test are measuring something real.

The best measure of 'if a child needs advanced work at school' is to set up the system so that every child get a chance to do the advance work and see how they do. Until we get there, IQs will be useful.

I believe that the IQ tests do underestimate, since they are a snapshot, but that it's quite rare that they overestimate.

I have met many people with amazing and delighful gifts that aren't measured by IQ tests. This is to be expected, since humans are so complex.

I don't support forced sterilization.

I believe that schools should be set up to teach all the children, not just the 99%.

I believe that personal freedom is more important that 'improving the species.' We get to pick who we mate with, ok? AND how many children we have.

I do believe that gifted people will often feel most complete when they spend at least some of their social time with other gifted people.

I believe that every child IS a gift, and that no one can know what the potential of any individual child is until they grow up and see what they will do with their lives.

I believe that the choices a young person makes has more to do with their success in life than their 'potential.'

I don't think it's useful to tell a certian group of children that 'the future depends on them' and not tell the rest of the kids the same thing. We had enough of that crazy talk during the Cold War, eh?

I believe that it the job of the parents - and the culture - to teach character.

For now, if parents need to also take on the job of overseeing education of their own child, then they must do so.

One way that children build character (not the only way) is by challenging themselves (or having the enviornment set up so that they are challenged) to learn material that is personally challenging.

Enough Ranting for now - Yes my Best GirlFriend called DS 'Charile Brown' when he was a toddler due to his headsize.

And BTW - I do come from a family of large headed people, not strickly correlated for IQ on a one to one basis, and I'm only 'large' not 'extra large' like my mom, DH, DS, and my mom's dad. Perhaps I was attracted to my DH, or at least not appauled by his circumference, because I was accustomed to it. ((shrug)) Who knows?

Grinity

I support everything you said, except that one.
We have friends with a mentally handicapped daughter who is now 35. She has lived in a group home for about 10 years now. They had her sterilized before allowing her to move into the home. (She wanted independence from her parents but couldn't live on her own.) She has a limited capacity to develop a long-term relationship, but she has full capacity to give and receive physical expressions of love. She does not have the capacity to care for the results of that ultimate expression of that physical love.

Then there are the women who I'd like to forcibly sterilize because they recklessly produce children with unknown men and with no means to support the child. Grrrrrr

Well, I luv both of ya, but I wouldn't touch that with an infinity foot pole!


Thanks for the hearty morning laugh, that was just awesome!

Grinity's thoughts here are like mine, I could never express them so eloquently, though.

The head size argument was also historically used as a reason to discriminate aganst women, since women in general have smaller heads than men. So obviously we're not as smart, right?

<sarcasm>

I have always understood brain folds to be the pertinent point to intelligence, not brain volume, just as Grinity suggests.

FWIW, my kids have relatively normal heads. Their whole bodies are on the big size--DS7 has always been 95th+ %ile for height and as a baby was always 95th %ile for weight. (Now he's a stringbean!) DS4 was never quite as big, but still always above the 75th %ile for height and also a heavy baby (who also leaned up as he got older). I think their heads were always in the 75th %ile or smaller.

So proportionally speaking, they probably have smallish heads, since their heads were always not-as-much-bigger-than-average as the rest of their bodies.