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I certainly didn't mean to imply artists are not intelligent. Being an artist myself, I know many artists that are highly intelligent. What I was arguing is art is not a requirement for HG+. You can have PG people who are highly TALENTED in the arts just as you can have artists of many levels of intellect including the lower part of the scale. Would you argue that these individuals below the IQ of 100 aren't artists? Of course not. And this logic goes for athletes as well.

And as for scoring on tests for DYS scholars ... again: apples and oranges.

So true Cricket2 and something that I recently came to realize. I was taking "Gifted" at face value and accepting that it correlates with my understanding of the term. I suspect my local school district is guilty of this and is why there are so many gifted students in our district.

I wrote "highly intelligent". You and others here are placing artistic talent, which after all is a set of properties of the mind, apart from giftedness. I still think it's absurd-- one can be an artistic genius just like one can be a math genius, and it takes a highly-functioning mind to be a great artist. It's just not the sort of intelligence that shows up in scores on tests needed to be a DYS scholar, for instance. This has much to do with the fact that such ability is traditionally harder to isolate with tests, and nothing to do with any actual non-intellectual nature of great artistic ability.

CFK- we have matching boys. Mine is "globally gifted" based on testing, lacks some visual-spatial skills but is far more interested in math and science. His tested abilities in verbal and language are higher by quite a bit. In some types of math, this makes him even better at math, in others it creates a bit of a struggle. He can whiz through a word problem like nothing- it's the combination of all of his strengths. But give him something visual and he's stumped.

While he is a DYS, he's also not really showing any signs of natural prodigious talent. Unless you count his ability to play hours of video games without getting out of his seat a prodigious talent!

DC20 is verbally pg, E2, and struggles with mathematics. He is also very talented athletically, not a bit artistically.

DC16 is mg, above average in every area, and also a talented athlete and artist.

I was globally pg, as well as talented in sports, music, and art.
However, most of the hg+ people I know are not globally gifted (strengths in math/science or humanities).

It has been fascinating to watch D15 show gifted traits in more areas as she gets older. Her verbal gifts are profound and obvious to every who has met her for pretty much her whole life, and showed up early in her academic work. She has been a slightly above average math student... but she took the PSAT last week with one weekend of prep time with a SAT book ahead of time, and told me she thinks she may have gotten all of the math problems right. Last year she took drawing. After years of daily or every other day art in school with just average results(liberal arts K-12 school), her drawing talents blossomed last year, and she did astonishing work. And this is a kid who has recently been diagnosed as 2e with a non-verbal learning disability -- who would think she would be good at drawing and now math??

It has been a lesson to me not to pigeonhole my expectations for her based on what I think her areas of strength are. Although her gifts in one area showed up early, I am learning again and again not to underestimate her in any area. Especially as her brain matures. I am glad we have keep on feeding all areas of academics and many extracurricular activities. I wish we could differentiate her education more to allow acceleration as she is ready for it in each subject, of course. Maybe someday all our schools will work that way for everyone...

This is a lesson that we all should learn. And I mean 'we' in the most universal way.

Absolutely! I 1000% agree - and I think its so important we as parents don't do it because other people will be so tempted to. Although it is a struggle (at least for my DS at 4.5) when they are so good at something to get them to do something which is a struggle at first.

DeHe

I was talking to the hubby about this article over breakfast and he asked how could they trust the results were raw lack of ability in the case of the non-verbal math kids from the research project since some school districts teach for the SAT because higher scores make them look better. I guess it's the same chicken or the egg question about a kids interest enabling their area of ability. But it's the slightly different question of a better education guiding their interests. Did the globally gifted kids get hold of a more engaging teacher that was passionate about their own subject? Did the math only kids get dull English teachers, boring and oblivious to their own many mistakes?

That's exactly where I am with my big girl. She also is gifted verbally and very likely highly gifted. She loves and excels in math and science. It's nice to know someone else has the same "type" of child.