Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy x

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The short answer is yes. A child can be gifted in Math and not in English or vice versa but this usually aligns with a MG child. Then you get into how advanced is a MG child in their area of advancement? Most will do fine with AP classes at their respected grade level.

As for HG+ children, someone correct me if I'm wrong but I understand they are advanced in all areas. They might be stronger in a specific subject because they are more passionate about the subject but overall they are advanced.

I feel this is a difficult question to answer because it's going to come down to the meanings of words and how things are assessed - "gifted", "2e" and "area" for example. You're already drawing a distinction between emotional and behavioural advanced development on the one hand and advanced development in academic areas on the other hand, and I'm not sure how one would do that rigorously; for example, studying literature at a high level requires readiness to engage with it emotionally. These things are inherently linked in complicated ways. Similarly motor skills certainly aren't always advanced along with advanced cognitive skills, but they can easily be limiting factors in what one can achieve, whether on one's own tasks or on achievement testing. There's a tendency to cut areas down and down to exclude everything except "pure mind" and then imagine assessing that but this has its own dangers...

However, maybe one contrast I see in my DS is relevant to mention. He's average (at best) at art - he doesn't have the fine motor skills to do more-than-age-typical work, but also, I have not seen any sign that his motor skills are a limiting factor for him in art; he seems quite happy with what he can do. This is in contrast to his writing, where clearly he wishes to express much more than he can get onto paper, and gets frustrated. To me there's a significant difference between how he is in art and how he is in writing. Suppose for the sake of argument that he'd assess average in both (last year I think that would have been true, although his writing has had a spurt and it might not be true now). Then... hmm, then what? Does that make him an example of the kind you're looking for?

Hmm. Well, I know that we have some HG+ people on this board who admit to struggling with spelling.

I'm not sure if artistic ability fits here, but I expect we have some HG+ people who can't draw or paint.

It's possible that a bit of research into abilities of notable and HG+ historical individuals would find that some were globally gifted and some weren't.

Val

I really wasn't thinking art when I made the blanket statement and some of the people who admit spelling struggles also mention LDs.

I could be off, but I found it hard to believe that all non-LD HG+ are gifted in sports/arts as well as academic areas.

Yeah, but this is exactly what I meant by saying it was going to come down to what we mean by words. Why not art? And what *exactly* do we mean by an LD, anyway? There seems to be a danger of circularity - we define the things we mean down to a set which require the same competencies, and then say, oh look, the same people are good at all of the things in this set.

By that logic, you may as well say that kids need to be with age peers (I think you mean in homogeneous grouping?) because the typical kid isn't gifted.

If your kid isn't typical, then it doesn't matter what would be best for that (non-existent hypothetical) typical child - it matters what would be best for the specific child in question.

My MG big girl is gifted verbally and excels in math and science - both subjects she has a passion for. She *only* reads at a 1st grade level (she's almost 4.5) and doesn't really have a passion for reading yet. She does enjoy spelling and I discovered that she is good at it too.

I don't know what to make of her in regards to reading though.

Maybe I'm learning something here, but is it a general practice to lump art and athletics in with the term gifted? Gifted for this board is above intelligence with ranges from MG to PG. I always have considered this separate from the topic of artistic and/or athletic abilities. I guess I'm saying it is apples and oranges.

I have a boy is very gifted in math, but bit advanced in reading, and even bit delay in speaking

He was struggle learning to speak, did not speak well until he was 3.

He started reading at 3, but only read like year 2 now(will turn 5 end of the year)

But his math skill is in top range, he is learning grade 5 or 6 math concept

He hate drawing, but his music ability amazed his teachers all the time.

Dottie you remind me of an article that I read either here or on Hoagies (or possibly in Ruf) about your son but not of yours students, which said that highly gifted verbal were usually gifted across the board but that math giftedness did not necessarily correlate with verbal giftedness. But I think it referenced PG not MG. I should go find the article, I remember reading it initially because my 4.5 yr old is strongly verbally gifted with a prefernced for science but was showing no interest in math and we never saw the spontaneous evidence of math skills or math interest, like the people here talking about needing to count and categorize everything. But I was finding it so odd that he could be super interested in science with no interest in math. Now I think it was like when he hardly talked while learning to walk - he literally could not focus on 2 developmental stages at once!

DeHe

Cool. I like to read the artical

Many verbal kids catch up with math later on once they get interested in it.

This is the crux of the issue for me. Most schools define "gifted" as high achievement coupled with something else (behavioral characteristics, teacher recommendation, a high-ish score on any one part of a group ability test -- which isn't an IQ test). There are certainly bright kids who achieve highly in one area but not another. Those children might be called gifted by schools, but they aren't gifted in the same sense that we're likely defining it here.

I think it's obvious that one can be prodigiously extremely gifted in a certain area and non-gifted in another. Different centers of the brain perform different functions, and we have examples of people prodigiously gifted in only certain areas. To say that the prodigiously gifted only express their talents in certain areas due to interests is to assume the answer to what we are trying to assess here, based apparently on guesswork.

ETA: Mmm, I guess by a DYS standard of PG or HG+ that is true: you can't have a weakness in any area. I think that is not really what the OP is asking, though. In a general sense I certainly think that one can be profoundly gifted in a certain area. A proper answer to the OP's question requires a broader perspective than that of a parent of a DYS acceptee.

For the record, I also find the notion that great artists are not highly intelligent to be absurd. I certainly think that one can be an artistic genius, and prodigiously artistically gifted. Can one's prodigious artistic talent be scored by the sorts of tests needed to become a DYS scholar? Probably not.

Katelyn's mom I agree with you that those identified as HG + would generally be globally gifted. To get the sort of test numbers you need to be to be identified in the HG+ category you'd need to do extremely well in most categories tested perhaps allowing for one weak area which from what I've read tends to be processing speed for HG+.

I'm guessing the MG are far more likely to have an area of particular strength backed up by being perhaps a bit above average across the board. Dottie or Aimie may be able to provide evidence one way or the other on this one.

Given statistically there must be far more MG than HG+ it makes sense that a school might argue that gifted kids excel in one or two areas because that is what they see most often. I certainly wasn't aware of the levels of giftedness until confronted with my DS's test results and the reading I needed to understand them, which thankfully included finding this board!

Dottie's approach seems perfect because it doesn't get the school offside but allows you to make the case that your child is different because they are globally gifted.

DeHe I would also love to see the article you mention. I'd say my DS is very verbal but not overtly mathy yet he loves science particularly engineering. As Mathboy suggests we've just started pointing out to him the importance of maths to the things he wants to build. Not sure using his dad's first year university engineering text was the way to do that but he seemed to be right into it!

Was this the article?

http://carrefoursagesse.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/the-cognitive-profile-of-the-precocious-student/

You're welcome...now about that blind squirrel...

Interesting chicken and egg q! Is he more gifted in math or just more interested? Goes to the original question, does the focus drive the appearance of skew rather than the fact of it.

And I second the thanks on the article, I hate when you know your saw something somewhere and can't find it!!

my daughter is gifted in dance and language arts. She's above average in math,but not in the gifted range. Certainly she's a stinkypoo in art.lol She's 18 now and she know's she's artfully challenged.

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.

The only reason I even thought DS6.5 was gifted was due to advanced verbal skills at a very young age. The math, which I didn't find out until he was tested for acceleration was actually a shock to me. Now, he still excels in reading/language arts (moreso than he does in math - though he's advanced there too), BUT he clearly loves math and science more.

That's funny. I remember DS6.5 loving patterns at a very young age, and like you, never put that down as a strength for math until after they told me his testing results.

My girls have always shown strength in math -- patterns, puzzles, playing with numbers in sophisticated ways from a very young age. Initially they were not precocious in language arts. In our school, they were not recognized as gifted by their teachers because "gifted girls always show their strength verbally." (Ugh!) DD10 was just a bit of a late bloomer -- her reading took off late first grade, writing in fourth. DD8's reading blossomed in 2nd grade, writing is still a challenge and always may be one since she has 2e issues.

Sounds like my big girl too. Especially patterns - she would see patterns everywhere even in the Chili's Restaurant's bathroom!

People in school districs seem to focus in on academically gifted children and are missing the children that have brains wired so differently they are off the chart at creative divergent thinking but aren't processing information in conventionally ways, through language and writing. So, as a nation we are suffering a creativity crisis. Meaning our nation is at risk of staying a global leader.