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What area of giftedness are we discussing in this thread? Academic, athletic, artistic, social/emotional? All of the above?
As, prior to today, I cannot have been said to have been discussing them at all in this thread, I will beg off your question, generally.
For me, each and all of those bear discussion, with the clear acknowledgment that for one of these, only, there are comparatively well developed 'gifted' programs, with ancillary staff, facilities, budget, and opportunity for school sponsored interaction with ability-peers who are also agemates.
moderator edit: uncalled for comment I am not stage parent. I have three kids, one gifted. He's skipped a grade and still makes straight As. His IQ is 151. He's in the sixth grade and reads at the 12th Grade level and does math at the 9th grade level. He also plays baseball, draws his own comic strips, hikes, canoes, and anything else you care to name. He's about as well-rounded as they get.
What's more, I refuse to tell him that he's a gifted child. He already has self-discipline, a strong work ethic, and respect for others. It's pretty arrogant of you to assume that he doesn't.
I was told when I was in the gifted program, when I was still in HS, that my IQ was 158 OHHHHH...do I win? Seriously though being told your gifted or have a high IQ doesn't mean crap. I am intelligent but I was also emotionally messed up in HS, it took me three years to get my associates because of it. ^_~
Let's share stories about gifted children. No need to worry about it, share away! Good and bad, cute and the ugly! Let's here it!! School experiences, social experiences, all of it.
I've got 3 on my hands. I thought I was doing alright...but now see some issues that backfired.
My oldest started college at 16. I let her move to a 4 year school 3 hours down the road and thus uprooted the entire family. Let her move into the dorms at age 17....BIG MISTAKE. Althought my rental home was 4 blocks away. She got mixed up in the wrong crowd, grades fell. She drank and smoked and died her hair black.
My middle child started college at 15. I let her move into the dorms with her sister - the only way I'd let the oldest go. They shared a dorm but had private rooms with a few other girls.
She became a recluse barely talking to me and she developed a nasty attitude towards me and her younger sister. Her grades, too, fell. She was on the Dean's and President's list at her other college but that went to a few Fs with a mix of Bs and Cs.
My youngest moved up a grade then another. She finished 8th grade and began 9th and has completed 2 classes. She is 13.
UPDATE:
We moved back to the south where things are more conservative.... and my oldest goes to the community college, stopped the bad crowd...but does wear clothing I don't approve of. She's 18 now.
My middle daughter attends the same community college and is going into the military. She's 17 now.
My youngest...she is to start the 10th grade...but she pleaded to be placed in the 8th grade.
I let her.
So, gifted...may be. But for me I didn't have the money (I'm a single mom w/ no child support or any support for that matter), the resources, or the know how to have gifted children.
I don't want my youngest to get mixed up in stuff so back to the 8th grade she is. The middle school didn't even say anything about her school records showing she already completed the 8th grade. yep, back in the south!
I've got 3 on my hands. I thought I was doing alright...but now see some issues that backfired.
It sounds very painful to have gone through.
This is one of the problems with the most common approach to dealing with a group of students. As I said elsewhere, there is no one size fits all solution.
One does not know, prior to a kid's going into the dorms, what they will be like when they come out. (I know a lot of people who are sure - and some of them end up right and some end up wrong, but I really doubt that even those who were right were right other than circumstance, for all that I wish it were otherwise.)
I've known college students who started in the dorms at 16 and 17 and done fine. I've known college students who started in the dorms at 18 and 19 and whose parents had experiences similar to yours.
Conversely, I've known (fewer) early college entrants who struggled mightily, and plenty who went at the ordinary ages and struggled not at all.
I wish you and yours luck as you all go down the road - especially to your youngster going into the military.
My son is 6. He is currently doing simple division. He has no problem spelling words that my 10th grade daughter (with a 3.5GPA) has trouble with. His vocabulary is comparable to that of most HS students I know. He reads his dictionary at breakfast. He plays Fur Elise on the piano (at least the first part).
2 years ago (yes, at 4), he saw something in a catalog that he REALLY wanted, so he spent 2 YEARS saving every penny he could find to get $20.00 to buy it, counting his money a couple times every week.
America's Test Kitchen and Emeril Live are two of his favorite TV shows (but he's still a kid - he loves Avatar, too). Yesterday, he informed us that he wanted to be a chef like Emeril.
As far as I'm concerned, if your child isn't reading at Level 17 on the Slosson/FROG scale by age 5, or playing Shostakovitsch on the violin or piano your child cannot possibly be "gifted."
Funny - I google "Slosson/FROG" and get this post as the first result.
Cbags....clearly you are ignorant. I never pushed my kid. He was showing me the signs well before I knew about it and the teachers had to practically shake me to make me believe it. I had nothing to compare him to and I didn't really care if he was the smartest or not. I thought what I was seeing was like every child. Then, after having behavior stife we put him into Montessori at a young age of 4. He was reading within two weeks and he was equipped to read when he was 3. We just didn't know it. There are many days I wish my kid was average because it is a heck of a lot easier that way. Having a gifted child is almost like having a special needs child just at the other end of the spectrum. Clearly, you haven't lived this.
I have a gifted child who is currently 8. I actually find it intimidating because I sometimes don't know how to handle things or how to meet his needs. He was actually behind in a few developmental milestones as a toddler and needed speech, so giftedness was not something we were watching for. He was also behind in reading at first until it clicked near the end of first grade.
He is ahead in some math concepts for his age, but he doesn't even have all this times tables memorized. And he was always curious about things as most kids are, so we'd try and answer as best as possible. We read him the same sorts of picture books as his siblings and watched the basic PBS stuff as a baby and the pokemon type things now, plus he watches the geeky sci-fi type shows we watch. But it's not like we drilled him or had lessons or anything like that.
It was first brought up to us when he was in kindergarden and the class participated in the Reading Rainbow 'write a book' thing they do. Since most the kids didn't write at that point, they would kind of dictate a story to the teacher to write and draw a picture. The teacher called us because while most of the kids told stories about adventures or space or princesses and stuff like that, apparently our son wanted to write this story about a boy from Zambia who was in horrid conditions and wanted to cross Africa and build a boat to sneak into the United States. It was very detailed about passing immigration police and cultural wars and some other stuff that had us going when she told us about it.
Now he reads books that are more complicated than his friends read, especially about space, goes on and on about things like how political boundries affect biodiversity and is interested in how believeable the tech is or physics is on shows like Star Trek. He doesn't know it's called physics, but he tries to figure out things like speed of light reaching various planets and how it'd relate to the speed of the ship or stuff like that. It's all very weird for me. Google and the library have become my best friends!
I feel confused on how to help him without singling him out over his siblings, but we try. Also, he gets upset sometimes if we or the teacher don't understand the idea he's trying to express to us. A few days ago, he was trying to figure out something about how the angles would work when a ship enters the atomsphere while decelerating speed while the earth is still rotating and what the numbers would be. He'll sketch it out and get the data (like rotation of the earth speed, shuttle speed, the constant-which he calls the 'how it always is number') and then expect us to help him develop the equasion he needs. He's not satisifed with just looking for the answer in a book; he has to know the math behind how they got the answer and gets upset when we or the teacher can't explain it.
Well, that was very long, but I'm glad I know I'm not alone in the struggles with it. It's definately not all fun and roses, especially when they are advanced in areas you just don't understand yourself.
Ok, ok, lets stop disputing IQ numbers. Gifted is a kid with an IQ of 130 or above. As with below average and average IQ numbers, there are a variety of numbers. Check this out. The 5 levels of IQ: http://www.dirhody.com/discanner/levels.htm
Anyway, to put it into my own words:
Level One: Superior to Moderately Gifted. Child will score 90-98th percentile on standardized tests. Terms to use, many qualify for gifted programs, and most gifted kids fall into this category. They will generally start Kindergarten with end of year skills mastered.
Level Two: Moderately to highly gifted or very advanced on IQ tests. Will test at 98-99the percentile, will have one to three of these students per regular class, will qualify for gifted programs and will master kindergarten one to two years ahead.
Level Three: Highly or exceptionally gifted or very advanced on IQ tests. You’ll find they still test 98-99th percentile and you will find one or two of these per grade level. Master kindergarten my ages 3 or 4, question santa and the tooth fairy somewhere between 3 and 5, most read on their own with or without help before kindergarten, can ready simple chapter books by 5 or 6 and will know to use numbers for all operations before kindergarten.
Level four: exceptionally and profoundly gifted 99th percentile with one or two students two grade levels, mastered most kindergarten skills by 3, questions santa between 3 and 4 is mostly 2nd and 3rd grade equivalency before kindergarten and high school grade equivalency by 4th or 5th grade and is somewhat philosophical by kindergarten.
Level five: Highly intellectual exceptionally gifted to profoundly gifted or highly advanced on iq tests. You’ll find one in every 250,000. Most have kindergarten skills by age two or sooner, are somewhat philosophical by age 4 or 5, without anyone teaching them, understand fairly complex math and have high school equivalencies by 7 or 8 years old.
NOT EVERY GIFTED KID IS A PRODIGY, and it IS unrealistic to expect this, but to down play the skills they have, come on, they can't help it anymore than they can if they were born with blue eyes and blonde hair. It’s a bit WWII Nazi Germany to think that children should be cut from the same cookie cutter and stuffed into the same box, and anyone claiming otherwise is doing an injustice.
This is like saying, because I claim to be ambidextrous, it probably isn't so because MOST people are not, besides, everyone can use both their hands. For everyone they type equally don't they? I am still different and I was born this way. I can't help it. There are just some things I can do better lefthanded (anything that requires markmanship from Wii games to pool, darts and target practice) and some I do better with my right, such as writting. While rare, there are ambidextrous individuals out there who all vary in which skills they do better with on either side while other are more equal with both. It doesn't change the fact we are different and born this way.
Gifted has nothing to do with memorization so everyone who talks about their 3 yo knowing all the capitals of the states or whatever--it does not mean they are gifted. Memorizing fats has nothing to do with being gifted.
Gifted is when the child can REASON way way beyond his years.
Oops. I don’t think you do your homework. Gifted kids are physically, intellectually, emotionally on different age levels. While one “exceptional” child can out reason you and you have no where to go with it by age two, another may not have the interest to do this but would rather tell you “Look at my playdo Mom!” You say “Great job, tell me about it,” when you’re really thinking “It’s a circle of yellow dough and you pressed the edge of the cup into it so there’s a circle around the edge. Woopie.” Then he says, “It’s a moat.” Well my son likes to express himself with big words but is even bigger on making up words when he doesn’t have any. “What’s a moat?” “It’s a circle you dig around a castle and fill up with water.” And off he runs to finish the project. Was he going to build that castle? I’m sure eventually it was his plan but I knew my kid and I killed it for him when I said, “There will be no pouring of water into moats in my kitchen. We‘ll do that in the sand box when it gets warmer.” *sad face* Sure enough, he had a dozen “moats” on the table awaiting water and no more dough for the castles.
You are right however, memorization has nothing to do with it. You can hold flash cards in front of you kids face until they’ve made it to ‘college knowledge’ by age three but they probably do not understand a single word they are saying. What’s makes exceptional kids exceptional is that they don’t memorize it. They pick up a book at age three, or even younger, read the material, and then proceed to embarrass you in front of friends when they correct you in from of them. “Where’s that book! I’m hiding it! Don’t you know that people will think I’m making you memorize stuff! Sheesh, what’s your problem? If you’re smart enough to read, you should be smart enough to know when to keep your mouth shut! Gifted, talented..nope…I‘d say you’re stupid cause you‘re grounded til kindergarten for interrupting my not so intelligent conversation and "acted" gifted, which, if you haven't read by now, means that you acted like you were better than somebody else. Don‘t you know who I am? You can't have that attitude with me! Now off to bed with you and don't forget to put away Scrabble on the way!”
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Seriously though being told your gifted or have a high IQ doesn't mean crap. I am intelligent but I was also emotionally messed up in HS, it took me three years to get my associates because of it. ^_~
when she told us about it. 
