Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums "Children even out in reading by 3rd grade..."

I recently bought a big box of Judy Blume & Beverly Cleary classics to add to our library. Needless to say, even though I have no problem talking to DS5 (and even DD3) about age appropriate sex ed, the copy of "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret." was removed from the box and put away for a MUCH later time for both DS & DD!

Interesting... it was around 3rd or 4th grade where I became uninterested in reading at all.

I remember reading Flowers in the Attic in 4th or 5th grade for a book report. I could never understand why the other kids would pick out really short uninteresting books. Looking back on it I can't figure out why my parents let me read it at that age, but they hadn't read it and didn't know about it. I had access to it because I had an older brother in my house that was reading it. I also remember my teacher not being very happy that I picked that book and suggesting other ones.

Same here shellymos! My adult self thinks my third grade past child had no business reading that book at that time!! LOL!


I also have it on good authority that some HG(+) girls can go underground as early as five years old! Now that's scary!

Love this post! I was an avid reader from the start - I have a knack for staying up all night to complete a book that I love - and I remember all through Highschool when we had our list of 8 summer reading books...I had the books all read by the 2 week after summer started and many I would read and re-read because I just enjoy reading.....

Seablue what is strange is that we just heard that exact same quote by my DS6's elementary school reading specialist just lasy week. He is homeschooled, but goes in for speech and OT at the local public school...I have been having a really difficult time figuring out my son's reading level because he prefers to read for information instead of pleasure and it would just be nice to know so that i can help pick books out at the library or help him out of he's got something that is a little over his head. The reading resource teacher helped me last week and she determined he is reading at a 5-6th grade level (5th independ., 6th with some help with vocab)....I told her that is why I have resorted to homeschooling...and asked just what would you do exactly with this kindergartner that is reading on this level- how would you help differentiate instruction for him when others are just learning their alphabet letters and she came back with -all kids will even out in reading by 3rd grade. Which didn't answer my question and made me that much happier that we are homeschooling him!

Yes, Belle, I find this whole topic illuminating re: schooling. It's scary, really. I don't want my DD to tread water whilst others catch up. No way. I think that's what I had to do, way back when.

BTW, only two books were banned from me growing up: Flowers in the Attic and Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret. Of course I learned about the juicy stuff from my friends, but I still have not read them. I kind of wanted a copy of Are You There for my 40th birthday lol

I do think this is true for Non-Gifted kids who have been in school since 2 and compared to Non-Gifted kids who have not been in school. But for gifted kids this does not apply.
They are years ahead of their peers and doesn't stop at 3rd grade!

If you have ever taken a statistics course, this all makes sense. Our kids are the outliers. There are also outliers who will never read at their level or at all. This is why most college students have to take stats now.

I teach math to middle schoolers and I have to keep a perspective about this. Most of them struggle, unlike my daughter who is several years ahead in math and learns new concepts quickly.

Yep I have taken advanced stats and know about outliers. I am actually a programmer in a market research company. You know what is very interesting is thatour kids are so similiar in many ways not just learning, they also have similar personality traits, perfectionism, inflexibility, highly empotional, sensory issues etc. It is almost as if they have the same "disorder" but a "beneficial" disorder.

I do not think stats tell the whole story.

We track coders work at my firm and I can tell you that some programmers code is perfect. Others is not. And even when the perfect coders work on it, it still has issues. Chaos vs order.

I think there are step functions or thresholds when it comes to quality of work and creativity that stats cannot measure. And the types of tests we choose to use fit in with our bias to measure things a certain way using statistics.

While other people may have the same IQ as a Feynman or a Von Neumann, they in no way have the same level of creativity or infectious effect on others.

I am not the smartest person in the room much of the time, but what I can do is start asking questions and defuse the panic or get people moving.

We do not know yet what "scientific charisma" or "creativity" is nor do we know how to measure it.

There is something deeper going on in many minds and we have to be careful not to destroy our awareness of the subtler and more important properties of intellect to focus on something easily measured.