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Talking about our DS ... it really depends on which day you ask me. He's definitely different, but he's also definitely atypically gifted. HG? PG? Don't know. Depends on how you measure it. IQ? HG. Achievement? PG in his subject area... maybe even more.

This is an interesting discussion though because I do think about it from time to time as well.

JB

I agree that Davidson's minimum level requirements are not PG ,but that does not mean they are not serving PG kids. It appears to me they are serving HG and PG kids. I agree that being accepted into DYS does not mean that you have a PG kid.
I don't see a point to refer to my son with any label (in public) because most people have no clue what I am talking about (which is understandable). I did refer to him as gifted but stopped using that term because there is a big range of giftedness and I feel that it is not accurate enough and it resulted in misunderstandings.

Reasonable and to the point! E Mama - you are welcome to post here anytime!
Grinity

Possibly the difference in our heart of hearts is "profoundly gifted and talented." I read something online, maybe some social science idea, that languages allow our brains to grasp cultural concepts. I think it was when I googled Conlangs, Esperanto, & Lojban. Correlate that with something else I read online about handwriting balancing the hemispheres of the brain and "the mind remembers what the hand does" and it's possible that talent cultivated in a craft by a profoundly gifted person shapes their mind into "profoundly gifted and talented.". Their craft or talent (someone give me the word I'm looking for here) gives them a way to structure profound concepts. The consensus I read online is that gifted (log) is not defined by achievement or production. But that doesn't disprove that achieving some kind of production work might flesh out the profoundly gifted brain by nature, nurture, environment, adaptation...something. Go Mozart! It's your birthday.
My first impression of Dr. Ruff's levels is that her studies are the infancy of a new breed of giftedness identity that introduces the idea that giftedness effects development of personality characteristics during a person's growth and development not limited to cognitive abilities. I would compare her work to almost a public awareness campaign that adults need to really look at a kid as a whole child. Then again I would call Carol Dweck's entity theory work an assessment of the spectrum of perfectionism, in a way.

Did I say possibly? I did remember to say "maybe", right? My 2c. ATM

If I'm reading your post right, I was thinking something similar. Drive and production seem to fall more under the heading of talent to me. Gifted falls more under the heading of potential. A child who has them both is likely better off and there are some talented children who are not gifted who may do better in terms of output than gifted children with crippling anxiety, perfectionism, or other reasons to not reach that potential.

For me its like trying to undersatnd a book by seeing a page or a chapter. The descriptions of LOG dont always fit. DS8 is great at math but ask him to write something and its very different. He can read at a high level, but chosses not to. I try not to dwell on the definitions anymore. I believe the Davidson's net is wide enough to capture most that may be missed by not seeing the whole book. No absolutes but maybe just the best fit you can find. The numbers of 1/1000, 1/10,000 or more still bother me. But how may 1/10,000 students are missed and never tested or adjusted for. In all its still just a best guess.

Re the "I also have his brother"...this is very helpful to me and confirms some doubts. I realize very often that having an only child is like a double-edged sword (can't think of any other simile at the moment sorry). On the one hand, I don't have another child to compare to to know what's close to normal or HG or PG etc. At the same time, I fall into the trap of thinking he could be HG/ PG too for the same reason too.

We haven't IQ tested but plan to soon because one, we now have an opportunity to do so for very cheap, and two, each year is becoming more and more challenging for me to quench his thirst for advanced math and some areas of science. I am honestly not sure how to proceed and am hoping for some accommodations at our community college in a couple of years if I can cobble up a portfolio with SAT and any other score that shows an obvious need for the acceleration. DS is 8 and currently accelerated by at least 5 years for math. It's not going to take him much longer to exceed what his father and I can offer within our current means. And he understands most astrophysics concepts presented to adult audiences at talks given to the public albeit we haven't tried a university-lecture style astrophysics course yet. However, as others have posted about drive and LOGs, he isn't as driven as 2 other boys we know who are at a similar level academically. He really isn't driven at all unless it's regarding that one intense passion of the moment. He is happy to just spend the whole day analyzing math patterns and listening to cute songs for kids on the radio or online.

No one who meets him for the first time would ever guess he's working at the level he is. Unless he starts to talk and then they may step back and have this perplexed look on their faces but it's usually me who's at the receiving end of his incessant talking.

I've loved this thread as I have never really felt sure where dd fits. She has test scores above 99.9%, and if I am honest I am yet to really see her intellectually challenged by anything (her motor skills are good for her age, but not particularly advanced).

DD is a kid who (like most of those on this board I assume) if she's interested, grasps something straight away. But she's rarely interested in any one thing for long and has never had that single minded fascination with a particular topic that I associate with gifted kids. But... as a matter of principle I have tracked down as many HG+ kids as I can in our city so dd knows some 'like minds' and in a way that is not quantifiable dd is still on a completely different level. There are kids who are much more focussed on academics, who need it and love it in a way dd does not (and a couple who would fit the descriptions others here have provided for PG) and who would 'know' more than her about particular topics. However this for her is not a lack capability, but interest (though even that is all relative, I don't know how many ND 5yo kids' first request on waking is that their parents get their microscope off the shelf so they can use it to look at their breakfast).

Yet despite this lack of interest, I truly see how different dd is when I go in to her classroom. She has skipped kindergarten into a 1/2 composite and just knows things that we haven't taught her that the grade two kids still don't understand despite having had years at school (when she's had only just over two months and is 5 1/3yo)

But dd has a deep understanding of herself, other people and existential issues, the extent of which I sense I don't yet fully understand as she's not yet able to process or articulate it herself. The only way I can think to describe it for now is as a 'knowing'. All of which probably sounds completely ridiculous and new age-y, which I am not, but I don't know how else to describe it. I would say that this is where she demonstrates her PGness in a way that I haven't seen in the few much more obviously 'PG' kids I have met.

I do agree with the previous posts that talked about personality being a factor, but I also think there is a parental factor involved as well. I am more philosophical than academic and dh is more creative than academic and so to a certain extent dd reflects what she is exposed to at home. The couple of stereotypically PG kids I have met have very academic parents who know and talk about academic concepts and theories as part of their daily life. Where as we tend to talk about life and people in a way that is possibly unusual. Neither of which I think is more valuable than the other, just different.

I don�t know how I feel about Gardener�s multiple intelligences as a theory but I do think (as has been discussed so often on this board), that there is more to giftedness and intelligence than academic drive and achievement. When using academic drive and achievement as a measure, dd is HG, when using some other measure that I can�t define, she's something more than that.

Wow-- Yes, yes, yes.

This is DD, as well. There's just this "old soul" aspect of her that is so socially intelligent-- truly prodigiously so-- and has been seemingly from birth.

Even in the typical disagreements with other children, she just has this level of self-possession and grasp of the social motivators and weaknesses of other people.... it's just freakish.

She deliberately chose NOT to one-up another child who was actively taunting her on the playground once when she was about four. When I asked her why she was just taking this child's (untrue) taunts and not telling her that she knew how to ________ and ________, DD quietly just said to me that "Saying that wouldn't make things better. {child} would only have felt worse about herself, and then she'd have been even angrier. It didn't make any of it TRUE just because she was saying it. Besides, she needed to make herself feel better today, and this was the only way she knew how."

Not kidding about that. I was so blown away in that moment. Truly stunned. Most adults would have needed a week or so to come to all of those conclusions. My 4yo DD did it instantaneously while another child was mocking her and trying to humiliate her in front of a peer group.

I know that this is innate in her case, though, because she certainly doesn't get that from DH or I directly.

I have some social smarts like that, but DH doesn't... and we're much more the academician types, hashing out concept and theory for math and science concepts, exploring meaning in literature and art, etc.

Wow and yes, yes, yes too. DS8 is another one who won't respond to taunts and would rationalize why the other kid was doing it. We have an incredibly old soul at home but one who is also incredibly young for age in certain aspects if that makes sense. Or maybe because he's just so freakin' sensitive to everything. What won't I give to meet you all IRL?