Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Something to Think About

Friends recently adopted a child who was horribly abused and neglected. At the time, the child was diagnosed as mildly retarded with very delayed speech. All the child could do was grunt. The foster parents confirmed the "diagnosis"

I talked to the parents this weekend and they had the child sing to me. This child can speak in complete sentences with both past and future tense in addition to dressing, knowing all the letters, and counting to 20. The child just turned 3.

One year with the right parents made a huge difference.

The other point is that the diagnosis was wrong. This child is clearly a very,very smart kid.

That's remarkable! I hope his resilience continues to shine through his years of suffering.

That is wonderful!

I couldn't agree more that sometimes a diagnosis can be wrong!

Wonderful!!! Yes, I've read similar stories in many books on IQ. In one study they put the child back into the bad environment (many years ago in another country) and the children regressed and lost IQ points.

IQ is a funny thing. It's a slice of a person intelligence on a particular day.

I once took an IQ test after not sleeping for 48 hours..... it's a long story how that came to be, but I won't go into it.

The test showed I was mildly retarded. Then about a year later I took another IQ test with a different tester.... same test.

It found that I had a 135 IQ. I was an adult taking both of these tests.

Honestly- I don't think either test was correct for my average day.

This was when i was still young and spry! now i am old and saggy.....

I just worry that to many people, this sort of thing translates to "If you hothouse the heck out of a kid, you'll have a genius on your hands." I don't think that's true, nor do I think it's fair to the poor kid. (And just to be clear, obviously that's not what you meant here, G3.)

The fact is that "enriched environment" is usually misunderstood by most people to mean "all flash cards, all the time."

Of course environment matters, but I think there are limits. And what matters most in an environment is a safe place for the child to explore and the opportunity to pursue his/her interests. Not school at home!

I dunno. The people I know with ND kids seem to do pretty much everything I did/do with mine...

IQ aside I have to say the times I think by dd's are truly special is when they display their amazing attention spans. My imposter syndrome tendencies are very strong 99% of the time but then I take my kids to a museum, or turn on a highly scientific DVD about evolution and they just soak it up and are totally entertained by something that it is seemingly well beyond their comprehension. When I am in similar situations with other, maybe ND kids but I don't really know how to tell, and they are all over the place. Not interested, bored, fidgety and the differences seem obvious and vast.


Oh and let me add these peers come from highly educated high income, top 1% families. I just don't think you can train attention span. Any experts out there???

Dottie: I'm not sure if this is what you meant or not <I have been kind of skimming the posts today>, but I thought I would throw this out there.

DS's school collects IQ data for all of the kids in 3rd grade. The average IQ in our school district is 116. So for our school system, ND is one standard deviation above the 100 average. So I would say that most of the kids in our school district are tightly packed in the 115-125 IQ range, with a 130 score being defined as gifted. I think this leads to problems for HG+ kids in that a WISC score of 145 doesn't seem to unusual to them. <but that is a whole separate issue!>

I think, when you are born, you have a certain IQ potential. I believe that if you place a child that has a high IQ potential in a non-stimulating environment, then they may not reach their full potential. Or after underachieving for a certain amount of time, the child may surge ahead when given the proper intellectual stimulation. But you can only stimulate that intellectual development up to a certain point that was determined by your genetic or inherited make-up. It is like a gas tank on a car. You can fill up the car with any amount of gas that you can provide. But at some point, the gauge reads "full". Different people are born with different sized tanks.

It does call into question, though, if humans really have an average IQ of 100, or if we have been under-filling our kids during the past century. In previous years, kids did not grow up with the expectation of going to college or focusing on intellectual pursuits when there were farming chores or trade jobs at hand. Maybe the Flynn effect is a realization that kid's intellectual tanks are larger than we have been willing to admit?

Sorry for this rambling post. My brain is so on vacation today. Speaking of the effects of sleep on IQ.... sheeeeeesh!