Link to site with survey: http://parentsofgiftedchildren.com/

Thank you, Cathy. That was actually somewhat cathartic!

This is interesting.

I'm on another board and just today had a post "supposedly" by Leftfield Pictures (of Pawn Star, etc. fame) put up and then hastily deleted (?) asking the members if they wanted to answer a casting call for a show about raising gifted kids. The production company name is legitimate, but I don't know if the post was.

My knee-jerk reaction was one of horror. Can you imagine a tv show similar to "Toddlers and Tiaras" about parents who "think" their kids are gifted and/or hothouse?

I hope this is a legitimate research project and the information gleaned will be beneficial to children!

(Not saying it isn't, just cautious.)

Being in Australia I am fairly confident of the legitimacy but confess I did not contact the university to verify before filling it out.

It's legit: or at least, there is a PhD student of that name studying parenting gifted children under the supervision of a supervisor of that name at the university where the survey info says they are. I mean, conceivably someone took advantage of that fact to post a bogus survey under their names, but that seems unlikely to say the least :-)

Thanks for looking into that. I wonder if anyone has contacted her directly to ask?

Hi, she's a member of another forum I am on (I don't know her personally, but she seems to exist!)

I started the survey but then it went on for pages about my mental and emotional health and I thought it did not have that much to do with gifted children. I think she was looking to see how stressed we were on raising our gifted children and I wasn't interested in going there.

Ren

That's clearly her research topic yes: it's about the experience of *parenting* gifted kids, not about about the kids. I thought the advance information was clear enough about this, and I found it interesting to complete (not least because I currently feel very positive and well-supported in parenting DS and it was pleasant to bring this to the front of my mind!) but yes, people who don't want to talk about how they feel parenting a giftie should steer clear.

I took the survey, and found the questions re: my mental health pretty extreme. Even though I would have responded to the survey differently last year, when I was very stressed and upset re: unsuccessful advocacy, it seemed to me the questions were geared more toward finding out if people suffered from clinical depression.

I was happy to discover while filling out the survey that we're in a very good place since switching our son to a school for HG kids, which is finally a good fit.

There was that show in the UK about gifted kids...
I got curious and watched a few clips on youtube the other day. There is one child on there, a little 2 year old who supposedly has an IQ of 200 or so. I thought IQ couldn't be reliably tested at that age?

Anyway, the mum on there was crying (which made the child cry), because her daughter didn't get into some elite gifted school. She was on the show because she had called a newspaper when her daughter scored well enough on an IQ test to make her one of the youngest members of Mensa.

She seemed rather pushy to me. She was bragging about how her daughter would look at all the objects around the room when named at 4 months old. I thought, "Well, that isn't very unusual." I'm sure most of us have children who did that and we aren't calling our local newspapers about it.

I wouldn't mind talking about what it's like to parent my DS, but to ask personal questions about my own mental health is crossing the line.

How "skewed" will this become if most who answer have mental problems?

That obviously depends on just how skewed the sample who answer is! But I'm a bit perplexed at people having this reaction. Maybe you're getting the wrong impression of what it's asking? It's not asking whether you think you're Napoleon (presumably because the researcher didn't expect that question to produce interesting results :-) but it does, among other things, ask about some things which are common symptoms of anxiety or depression. I think it might also be looking more generally at overexcitabilities and 2e issues in us. The survey is anonymous, more anonymous than this site, yet lots of people talk about problems of anxiety or depression, overexcitabilities and 2e issues in their children here. Why are some people upset at the very idea of being asked about this kind of thing? Can you explain? (And, if you think this will be a common enough reaction to skew the sample, it would be a kindness also to explain to the researcher.)

The mental health questions asked in the questionnaire are a standard set of questions asked here in Australia to assess people's mental health status. I participate in another parenting study that asks those questions every time they provide a questionnaire. The very same questions are used as part of a standard check up of mothers following the birth of a child and I believe they're the same questions used by doctors to determine whether or not someone needs assistance for depression or anxiety - so they're not just questions the researcher has put together, they're a standard set of question used here. I assume she has included them because people's mental health is relevant to studying people's experience of parenting a gifted child. Or she's wanting to control for people with a particular mental health profile? (I don't know enough about survey preparation to know if that's likely, but just a thought).

I agree with Colinsmum that the survey is much more anonymous than here. I too am curious about what is causing concerns. Certainly I can understand people feeling worried about being judged on their mental health status - but no identification, no judgement.

Why I stopped taking the survey, was the mental and emotional questions seemed to go on and on and it started to annoy me. If there was one page, OK but it just seemed to go on and I kept putting disagree. If you want to keep me interested, make the survey work so appeal to those who do not feel depressed.

Perhaps if she organized it differently. And I can understand if these are questions asked after you just have a child. You are lacking sleep, you are overwhelmed with the schedule. So one page of questions would have worked and then move on...

Ren

I didn't think the survey was that long or intrusive. Those were pretty standard mental health questions, and seemed reasonable given the topic. I think that having gifted children can be taxing, and can cause emotional stress.

But since this is a survey, you can't prove causation. And, I read this to be exploratory.

I started it too but when it asked income and all that personal information, it wouldn't let you skip it, I stopped. I know it may matter for her norms, but still. It was online. I did another survey and was asked at the end if I would allow being contacted for future questions and I said yes. I was then contacted personally by the person doing the study to further interview. She ended up writing a paper on the results, along with other people. It was nice, and I didn't have to provide anything like that. Just my view, but I rather not disclose that online.

Hi all,

First of all, I do actually exist. If anyone would like to see the clearance email that I have from my Human Research Ethics Committee I am more than happy to forward this information to you.

Secondly, as a poster said, the mental health measures are fairly standard. Basically, I would not be allowed by Ethics to ask you about anything without a measure of your current mental health. Also, it is coming out that some parents are actually manifesting mental health problems. Whether these are caused by raising a gifted child or not I can't say - but it's certainly something that's never been looked at before. It's not to show that 'we' as a group are mentally unstable. I'm actually finding the complete opposite for the majority of parents which is an important message for clinicians who use these standardised measures.

Bh14 - it should let you say unsure or prefer not to answer, or skip completely with most of the demographic information. The only required question is which country you come from. I had thought that the first few pages let you give as little information as you wanted and I'm sorry that this wasn't the case. I'll go and check on it now.

It's fairly standard research design to ask about demographic questions. Also, the population of parents of gifted children has not been looked at in a methodologically sound way. Because I have the demographic information I am able to say that my sample is probably not representative as it's mostly white, middle income, stable relationship with an average of just over 2 kids. As a researcher, that's important info.

I am not looking at 2E's or giftedness in the respondent. I am looking at how the experience of raising a gifted child might make you feel and whether or not negative interactions with others or with educators might be mainfesting itself in a clinically relevant way.

As Drewa4545 has said, this is exploratory so it's a bit like walking through a jungle to see what's there. Without these questions and measures I wouldn't know who, or what, I was talking about.

Thank you to those that have chosen to take part in the study. You'll be pleased to know that it looks like we're a mentally healthy bunch who are coping with the extra demands that parenting these exceptional children places on us (generally) and the stories that people are sharing are a great mixture of wonderfully positive stories mixed in with those from people that are obviously having a tough time getting their children's needs met.

Regards

Natalie

Just for clarification, the only question on the demographics page that is required is the country of the respondent. None of the others are mandatory. If that was the case for you Bh14, I'm not sure what was happening.

Regards

Natalie

Natalie,

Thanks so much for your clarification. I think many of us on this board are in the US, and we're not used to seeing so many of those mental health questions in surveys, especially in relation to education of our kids. I'm so glad to hear that we're a fairly stable bunch though! I think it's fabulous that you are taking an interest in this subject, and I look forward to hearing about your final results.

No probs at all. It has been difficult to get folks to understand that I'm interested in the parents - not the kids. There's plenty of fantastic researchers who are looking into the education and well being of our kids - but nobody has looked at us. If this was just about the education of the kids I wouldn't have asked about the parents well being because it wouldn't have been relevant. But some parents are doing it very tough - they feel like they're reinventing the wheel, they're isolated, and feel disbelieved by the educators around them. To me, that's a powerful message as well. Not all of us are getting our children's needs met.

Cheers ... Nat

It is a powerful message but in the age of limited funds for education, our children are the priveleged.

I am been slowly and steadily trying to get a second grade spot in an accelerated school that she has qualified for twice but spots are given by lottery. And siblings, even with an IQ 30 points lower, get first grabs. It is frustrating and I am schmoozing but at the same time, I can look at my amazing kid and feel so blessed and lucky. In this age of commuters, there are so many programs that enhance our children's ability to accelerate their learning.

Consider how many not unhappy people got turned off the survey because there were so many questions about their mental health and then how many people who are feeling stressed and wanted to share, since unhappy people do need to share to get it out and will that skew your results?

Ren