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I'm glad to hear that other parents here have children who drive them crazy with endless questions, incessant talking and constant moving -- and not because you guys are all exhausted like me, but just so I know that I am not alone!

Sometimes I do not know how DD5's jaw muscles are not completely worn out by the end of the day. She talks non-stop and her mind is going full blast all the time. I admit that I turn on TV programs just to get her to slow down for a bit so that I can get my sanity back.

Thankfully, DD-almost-3 is more laid back, however she can talk just as much as her bigger sister. At this point, Big Sis tends to monopolize the talking time and playing, but once she goes to school full-time next year and DD-almost-3 is home alone with me all day, I'm afraid I may go completely insane with the incessant talking again. Yikes!

I guess some people would say we were hothouse parents with DD5 who pretty much demanded that we go over letters and numbers and writing with her when she was a toddler. She really did demand it and it was the only way to make her content -- she used to make me write her name out over and over and over again while she studied me intently. I don't talk about her with hardly anyone here in the "real world" where I live because nobody really gets it. DD5 is high-energy -- especially mentally. I just say, lovingly, that she's crazy because that's how I feel about all of this most days. The darn child wears me out!

DD-almost-3 is a bit more stealthy when it comes to learning. She doesn't demand the constant "teaching moments" like DD5 did at that age, but DD-almost-3 seems to pick up on things all the same without the repetition. I'm not sure what that means in terms of her LOG. I don't think she fits well in the Ruf levels because she seems to hold back -- but she's pretty young yet, so I'm hoping once she enters pre-K next year for a couple of afternoons a week that she'll start come into her own more (out of her big sister's shadow, which is pretty big despite her petite size).

Do you think it's safe to say that a child that requires full-grade acceleration is at least HG?

Just wanted to add our stats to the group data. DD9 is what I consider HG-HG+. She has lots of testing to back up the HG+ but doesn't have the drive that I associate with a PG kid. She's mostly happy fitting in with kids a few years older than her and not calling any attention to the fact that school work is much too easy for her. She's more the stealthy type who randomly suprises us with what she knows, what she notices, and the deep connections she's made.

DS7 has tested at more moderately gifted, but I'd actually put him closer to low-end HG based on what we see at school and on a day-to-day basis. He has the drive to learn and thinks learning is great fun and likes to talk about all the fun stuff he knows. He has always picked things up very easily and, because he's a 3rd child, has always been around higher-level learning opportunities and older kids, so he's had built-in enrichment at home.

Probably in part because we don't have the highest-level school district, both kids have benefitted from early admittance, subject accelerations, and grade accelerations. And both still need a bit more. The difference between my DD and my DS, though, is that my DD learns at such a pace and with such minimal repetition that we may need to continue to adjust her academic course every couple of years, whereas my DS would probably be good moving up another year in academics and staying there.

I'd agree that personality plays a lot into how the child behaves and what s/he needs. My oldest didn't handle repetition or boredom well at all when she was younger. She responded by working slower, crying, becoming anxious and depressed to the point that we were worried enough to homeschool her for a while. I couldn't take a six year old telling me she wished she had never been born. It scared me. I think that her unusual direction and drive makes her stand out even more than her ability scores would predict. She was getting somewhat lazy in 4th grade and procrastinating terribly but her work ethic picked back up post-skip. I'm seeing quite a bit of procrastination again in her "easy" subjects but overall she's a motivated kid who is not only willing to work hard, she wants the challenge.

My little one was sort of an early admit although not technically. We just played the cards well to get her in when we did. Our state allows each district to set its own K cut-off although no one has a cut off later than Oct. 1 b/c the state only funds kids in K who are five by 10/1. The three local districts have cut-offs of June 15, Sept. 15, and October 1. The Oct. 1 district was also a Sept. 15 one up until the year dd10 started. They moved their cut-off out that year so we enrolled her there to get her in and then moved her to the 9/15 district (where she didn't make the cut-off but they let her start 1st the next year b/c she had already completed public K elsewhere). She got in at the 10/1 district by mere days. It is very common here to hold out kids whose bds fall in the summer so she's btwn a few months to 18 months younger than her grade peers.

For dd10, wherever she falls in terms of giftedness, she has a hard time with being the youngest and by far the smallest kid in 5th grade. She is also one who tunes out and daydreams if the work isn't engaging. She is never a problem for the school, doesn't fall apart outwardly, and doesn't seek challenge herself if it isn't presented. Her personality isn't conducive to further acceleration beyond the subject acceleration she is doing in math. Add the ADD & anxiety issues in, and I'm thinking her current placement is about all I'd ask for.

CFK, that's what I always thought of as PG -- just super-crazy smart in a way that's extremely rare.

So I have a hard time thinking my child as PG, and I have a hard time thinking there are that many children represented on this thread as being PG, or super-crazy smart, like understanding astrophysics at age 9.

I guess sometimes it's a matter of personal perception -- what one person thinks is HG, another thinks is PG. Seems like the lines can be pretty blurred, even in terms of IQ scores (I'm no expert on IQ testing as I haven't even ventured down that road at this time, so correct me if I'm wrong).

I think of DD5 as being HG-HG+ -- she's wicked smart to me and has a crazy drive to learn and be mentally engaged, even if that mental engagement means some good hard-core creative playing instead of pure academics. The private school she attends for Pre-K said they've never had a child like her (they currently pull her out for reading but also recognize her math is accelerated, too... not to mention her leadership abilities). When you wrap up all of her personality traits into this tight little bundle, you get my DD5. My aunt sums it up perfectly: "She's a dandy!"

Agreed. I don't care what my DD's test results say... she is not a PG child!! Most days, she doesn't even look HG. I think the definitions of level of giftedness should always take into account a child's inner drive and abilities, not just potential.

It takes a while, Kathleen'smum, to get over the gifted denail - and things will get better bit by bit as you do. Be gentle with yourself.

I find the quote above interesting. As if you think that a 'normal' HG+/PG kid would find regular school with agemates simply a joy. I can promise you that even without the ADHD, or perfectionism, a HG+/PG kid in a normal classroom would be climbing the walls one way or the other. It's really only the HG+/PG kids with the most compliant personalities and strongest inner fortitude that can handle average agemate classrooms.

Where do you think that perfectionism comes from? If you took a normal 10 year old, and but him in a classroom full of 6 year olds, with teachers who excelled at dealing with 6 year olds, rule appropriate to 6 year olds and books and school work appropriate to 6 year olds - how would you expect that child to act? A few dear souls would probably be totally fine, but most 10 year olds would be a mess pretty quickly. Now say, what if that 10 year old had the maturity of a normal 6 year old. What sized mess would you expect then?
So it's time for my brain to sing the clean up song from my son's preschool:
((clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere, clean up clean up, everybody do your share))
Love and More Love,
Grinity

Umm, see what I said about gifted denial taking years to clear up entirely?

I kind of agree with CFK here - Davidson PG just isn't the PG of my imagination. I'm ok with 'Davidson PG=HG' but then I look at the IQ tests themselves, and I agree with Bob Davidson, the tests just can't measure degrees of difference anymore right around the DYS cut offs.

So do we only want to say that PG should be reserved for kids who demonstrate good work ethic and drive? What about kids who demonstrate PG level drive in non-traditional areas? My son was level 60 World of Warcraft at age 11, while limited to 30 minutes a day. At the time I wished he would pour his drive into something worthwhile. I told this to some grad students who were working on designing educational computer games that would actually attract kids, and their mouths hung open. Now that my son is 14, and voluntarily gave up WoW as a time waster, I can appreciate his accomplishment a bit more. It shows a lot of drive. What a relief that he is finally harnessing that horse up to a better wagon! But it took years of him outgrowing the worst of his ansynchrony and us sending him away for school half way across the country!!!!

So, no, I don't identify my son as PG at family reunions, (but I don't identify him as gifted either) but I do think that CFK is free to place her LOG distinctions where she wants them, and DYS are free to place their LOG distinctions where it makes sense to them. Most folks can't even decide if gifteness actually exists, let along the gradations of LOG.

The main thing is that there is no "if X, then Y" sort of way to use a catagory to legislate what sort of accomidations any individual child needs. It does seem ironic to me that the kids who are most likely to be offered gradeskips are the ones that need so much more than that.

((shrugs))
Grinity

Ooooh. I like that. I've been trying to think of a way to say that. HG..PG..UP

I find that flattering somehow! Hi to you LC's-DS7