Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy To tell or not to tell....DS wants to know IQ

We shared D15's with her this year (actually, it is multiple numbers, since she has been tested 3 times with 3 sometimes widely varying results!). Which was then a good opening to talk about how it is just one indicator on one day on one test. So far it has not caused any problems. I think it actually gave her a self confidence boost that was needed, because she also had a learning disability diagnosed this year. I have no regrets about sharing it, but in our case age 15 was a good age to do it. She was mature enough to handle it. I would not have shared her sister's (D20) with D15 even if I knew it (D20 has never been tested).

I would not tell at that age, primarily because you can't take it back and I can see a lot more potential downside than potential upside.

Also (as has already been mentioned) it's not a perfect measure of anything except how someone performed on one particular test on one particular day. This has value, but I don't think a child should form their view of themselves around it.

I do think it's important to let a child know if they are very intelligent. I imagine that typically this will be mostly confirming the child's own observations, but not always. I also think it's important, at an older age, to discuss the implications of a very high I.Q. vs. a more 'typical' gifted I.Q.

Another issue is that even if the child is a consistent scorer with no particlular weaknessses, a measure of their ability vs. "the world" might not be an accurate gauge of their ability vs. their immediate peers. Which could give a child a very highly inflated sense of their abilities relative to their friends and classmates. My I.Q. was measured once at 142, which would correspond to the 99+ percentile. But in my mediocre HS senior class of about 120, at least 2 other people had SAT scores as high or higher (old SAT).

Kids are going to start to see other test results and will form a picture over time. I know the PSAT and SAT aren't as correlated with intelligence as they used to be, but there's still a correlation and kids (meaning OTHER kids) will start getting the picture in HS, if not earlier. And there will probably be other standardized tests along the way. I think the parents' role is to make sure that picture is accurate and to help the child understand the implications of that picture. But I don't think parents should provide a difficult to interpret number prematurely. I wouldn't trust a 10 year-old not the throw the number out to his/her friends. And that's likely to cause confusion and resentment.

I knew mine when I was younger than your DS. It didn't affect me one way or the other. I always knew I was brighter than the average kid, but in the city I was in (at the time), there were a handful of us that grew up "through the system" together.

We've opted to tell our DDs that they are very smart and that they are particularly good in math (since even in a gifted program there is a "boys are better than girls" bias about math). We haven't given actual numbers because I think that they are too young (8 & 10). I know that DD10 would get hung up on the numbers just based on her personality. I also am concerned about unhealthy comparisons with some of her hyper-competitive classmates.

For me, I never had an IQ test but I do recall getting my Iowa test results in 4th grade (9 years old). Across the board, I tested as "12th grade, 9th month." No one sat down and explained them to me. I just assumed that something was wrong with the test. I had older siblings who were in high school and I knew that I didn't know what they knew. When I tried to joke about it with my other friends, i.e. what a stupid test - I got stunned silence. It was a miserable experience.

If you do tell your DS, I would counsel him not to discuss it with his friends. You might want to do some role playing to demonstrate how most conversations about IQ with his friends are not likely to have good outcomes.

I wish my parents knew mine! My father didn't care as he was from the working class and you worked with your hands, not with your head (so much). My mom was just plain scared of me.

I don't really know whether i would have benefitted from knowing. I now know that I also suffer from ADD which i didn't discover until i was 48. I think that would have been more important to know. I really felt i was lazy or something for not concentrating more. The IQ thing probably would have given me some respect for my abilities; what i really needed was some guidance as to what I could do with that potential.

The point is that i don't think knowing or not is damaging in itself. What is important is that you as a parent use that information to guide and help direct your child in ways that they understand their potential and understand HOW they learn best.

This is so true, even for me.

As for us, I have not told DS6 his, and I don't plan on unless he asks. We focus on the fact that there's a reason he's been grade skipped and what that means for him and the people around him. He's extremely sensitive to people's feelings, so he has yet to use the "I'm smarter than you are" line, and we encourage him not to. I think having him in sports, where he's not #1 has helped him to realize (and his perfectionism) that people are better at some things than others... his just happens to be academics.

If he doesn't know that he's gifted (GT, HG, PG...) and he has noticed his differences, it may help to share that with him (with a caution against telling other kids--"it's a private thing"...). It may help him understand himself if you share it with him and discuss how it affects how he learns and understands the world around him...

*Horror Study Disclaimer*
On a personal note, I grew up not knowing that I was gifted or how gifted I was, and, when I compared myself to everyone else in my class and to my siblings and cousins, I concluded that I was stupid or that I was some sort of abomination (teachers had a hand in that one). I proceeded to try everything possible to make myself "normal," starting at around 10. No one told me about my giftedness (parents or counselors) until I had gone through drug treatment several times as a teenager. There was a lot of anger directed at those who had kept the information from me after I was told and had read about profound giftedness.

Just wanted to chime in here. This is a really good question/discussion.

I suppose for us, we wouldn't need to tell DC definitely until much later and only if there was a reason to.

DC already knows there is a difference, that can't be helped.

I consider that later, it is useful for DC to know that there is a difference, that the other kids can't help being who they are, and that is just how things are. I like what some of the others have said about not stressing on the test because it really is just one number, one test, one day. More important is who the child is, as a person, with a gift, but to do their best, and be understanding of all people.

Also, that because of the difference, there is nothing wrong with DC. "You are normal amongst kids in this range."

I think, I would never actually say the number, because it is misleading. However, I will tell DC about the giftedness, the intensities especially, and understanding one's own perfectionism issues.

I'm not sure how useful this is - but I think it's really important for us parents to know what IQ is before we talk to our kids about it.

IQ is on an ordinal scale, that means that a person with a 150 IQ isn't 'twice as smart' as a person with an IQ of 75. IQ only refers to the frequency of occurance in an average population.

How many of us send our children to schools with average populations? Very few, I would suspect. It's hard to even know what the school population is like, although economics and SAT scores can be made to stand in for estimates.

And just because it might be predicted that there are 2 other kids in your grade that have similar IQs doesn't prevent there from being 5 other kids in your grade or no other kids in your grade. What effect does school choice or homeschooling have on the school population?

Then there is the whole question of FSIQ being an average, and not a terribly useful average for many kids.

I'm also interested if there really is a difference between overall giftedness and early development. I know Ruf is firmly in the early development = giftedness camp, but for every late bloomer that we know as individuals, there is some kid who's IQ score is going to drop a bit, and look more normal when they are compared to that late bloomer. Statistically that just has to happen to some extent. Of course I just move my mental cutoffs downward a bit as the child grow us to compensate, but is there truly such a thing as an 'early bloomer?'

My favorite thing anyone ever told me about my IQ is: High enough that you can learn to do kind of job that interests you.

I would perhaps add to that pile of possible information that a child might be 'high enough' that they feel like they don't belong even in some groups that are specifically designed to meet the needs of gifted kids.

Or 'high enough' that they feel all 'uneven' inside because almost no one is equally advanced in ever single area, so that learning to be kind and patient with themselves and others is very important.

And of course, 'high enough' that we have to give you harder school work so that you have a change to develop your character in ways that lead to success in life, because no one gets to 'coast on their smarts.'

'High enough' that you are going to be much happier if you can figure out your work life to give you chances to solve interesting problems and met interesting people, who get your jokes.

Thanks for giving me this opportunity to think aloud.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

"who gets your jokes"

LOL. Thanks Grinity!