Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy gifted sibling

My older son is gifted, WISC 140. He's hearing impaired, which we didn't know when we tested him, so I don't know if his IQT tested lower than how he would be if he weren't hearing impaired.
We are getting his younger brother tested, partly to learn more about him, partly since it will open up doors for our local gifted program. He's 6. He doesn't seem gifted like his brother; I don't mean that unkindly, LOL!
Have people found that, that one kid is gifted and the other isn't? Or am I seeing some birth order effect, that the oldest is bossier, more of a leader, seems smarter, etc?

I'm curious to see what everyone has to say on this topic! I have 5 children and my oldest (10 and a boy) has been the only one identified as gifted so far. He scored 140 on the wisc also. He also has adhd.

I have read that siblings' IQs are within 10 points of each other. My little one is very sweet and seems totally normal. My older one is a bit edgy, uses big words, and likes to be the expert (even when he has no idea what he is talking about!).
Once in awhile, the little one seems very bright- he has memorized each word of several 50 page star wars books. Other times, he will say "I goed" instead of "I went." He's 6.

This is a very interesting thread. Even though I shouldn't compare, I find myself constantly baffled by the difference between DD7 and DS3. My DD hit all of her 'milestones' so early that it didn't even make sense to read any of the early years info, books, etc. My DS3 is a whole different ballgame. I'm assuming that my DS3 is developmentally 'typical' but it's so hard trying to figure it out when my only point of reference is DD. On the flip side my DS3 is so much more emotionally mature than DD7!!!! I don't think that he has ever experienced a true 'tantrum' and seems to have deep emotional insight and a sensitivity for others that DD is just starting to understand. The other bonus is that he is never so consumed in his own thoughts that he can always remember where I put the car keys!

I don't remember the exact statistic, but from what I remember is that this is true about 2/3rd of the time. If I remember correctly the study was done with a very small number of people.

There also may or may not be numbers to predict that spouse will be similar in IQ. Dr. Ruf says it's because 'We feel comfortable with people who get our jokes.'

If you take these to ideas together, it can be predicted that most gifted folks feel like their kids are 'nothing special' because the kids are similar to their memories of their siblings, cousins, and their friend's kids. When Kindy starts there is a huge 'cognitive dissonance' between how we say our kid as normal, and how real normal really is. That happened to me for sure. I remember my younger brother learning to read at age 3 when I was age 6. So on one hand I was freaked out when my son's teacher pointed out that he learned to recognize his letter sounds at age 2 and she was clearly sending me the message that this was unusual, but then DS didn't seem to be able to put the letters together and read until age 5-6, which compared to my brother seemed very unimpressive. In retrospect I think that DS's eye tracking was developing on the slow side of age-normal. DS even asked me around age 10 why I tried teaching him to read by showing him letters, and why didn't I just say the letters aloud? He accused me of being a visual learner and projecting - LOL! ((Everyone's a critic!!))


Birth Order and Personality make if very difficult for parents to be able to detect giftedness in later born children if the first born is noticeably gifted. Dottie and I talked it over, and we say: 'Test One-Test them all!'

I've also read a study that shows that parents are better at Identifying gifted kids than teachers. As a group, this is like saying that an SUV has better gas mileage than a Hummer. We parents still aren't perfect at gifted ID. If my son hadn't had behavior problems in the regular classroom, I would never have pursued IQ testing and would have been able to go on thinking he didn't have special educational needs. I might have encouraged him take the SATs for CTY summer camp if it had been publicized at his school, but it wasn't. In retrospect, I've very grateful for those behaviors which were so humiliating for me back then.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

All three of my kids present very differently and all three test as gifted. With my girls who are both HG+, one is twice exceptional, the other is not. With my son who has had only school GT testing, well, he's a boy. He missed that teacher-pleasing gene that the girls seem to have. I'm thankful for the friend who gave me the "test them all" advice. If we hadn't, DD9 probably wouldn't have been identified as gifted and wouldn't have received any support for her dyslexia until much later.

FYI, the reading aspects of the Ruf levels have not corresponded well to my kids. I guess they would be considered late-bloomers since two of them did not learn to read until they were 5, my dyslexic DD read at 6. My girls were both stronger on math and non-verbal measures. I don't have complete data on DS yet.

I'm interested in this thread as well. We had DS9 tested at age 7 because we were trying to see how "out there" he was, and whether or not it was likely that the current school could accommodate him.

We have less motivation to test our current DS7 because the school is already trying to initiate change at our request. So, we'll probably wait until he's taken the standardized tests in 3rd grade, which may qualify him for talent searches and we'll start then. So, it's likely we'll not know whether he's gifted and how gifted until then.

DS7 is obviously bright, but not the voracious learner that DS9 was (from birth, it seemed), so he's not so obvious at this point. I wish we could find a cheaper way to get him tested, though, because I frequently worry that we're so focused on DS9's academics that maybe DS7 doesn't end up getting what he needs.

Check local Universities that train educational psychologists. You may get a very good deal.

GRR my computer is giving me a hard time!!

Grinity, how would personality make it difficult for parents to detect giftedness? Just curious, I have 5 kids and only my firstborn male has been identified.

I'm not Grinity, but I can answer this, at least partially.

Some kids are shy or passive and don't like to ask for things or push adults, instead waiting for things to be offered, so while they may be capable of of learning very quickly, and may have absorbed a great deal, they may not demonstrate it spontaneously, and may not ask for more.

Some kids like to fit in and are wary of behaving in ways that make them stand out from their peers, and may not show what they know, even to parents, because it is important to them to be seen as fitting in and not drawing attention to their differences.

Some kids may have "behavior problems" or "attitude problems" that are actually boredom problems, but because they appear to be uninterested in "learning" (because they mastered the material on their own long before) and perform poorly in class (because they are bored and/or insulted by being asked to do such simple material), giftedness is not suspected. A child whose response to this kind of boredom and frustration is to mouth off or be a class clown is often a gifted child but is often not identified as such.

Hidden learning disabilities can also complicate the identification of gifted children by making it more difficult for them to demonstrate what they are truly capable of.

These are just a few of the ways that personality and other issues can interfere with the easy identification of giftedness.