<p>momrath- it isn't so much that I have observed gifted kids "giftedness" * wearing off* but that as time goes by, other kids, whose strengths may have been slow to shine, gain visibility and they have more incommon with peers academically than appeared 5 years previous.</p>
<p>EK, I realize there are late bloomers and I think many kids with LDs struggle for a long time and therefore appear to catch up later. But I also have to say that despite many teachers saying that they don't test for giftedness before third grade because many kids catch up with the clearly gifted younger ones, that wasn't true at all for our oldest. We are still waiting for the other kids to catch up. In a classes of 750 at the high school there are perhaps 5 to 10 kids who are at any where near his level. Even in the AP science classes he knows more of the subject coming in than any of his classmates.</p>
<p>Someone else talked about their kid becoming surprisingly social in college. I think this happens to many geeky kids - they just don't have enough peers in an average high school.</p>
<p>Yes I did point out that some kids are amazingly brillant and that is evident from an early age
Our D had the opportunity to attend private schools designed for gifted kids though graduation from college -
So she probably had as much support as anyone could have,and perhaps it is that I am comparing her to other gifted kids, rather than kids who arent as interested/supported in intellectual challenges( and while she was indentified as having an IQ of 160 , by the time she got to high school- where the work is much more complex- she was only on the honor roll in 9th grade- and college was another thing altogether- she did graduate though :) )</p>
<p>One thing I think people forget- is at a school like Reed for example, where a higher percentage of grads go on to earn Phds than many other schools, while some kids love the opportunities, other kids might do equally as well being able to be in a class where they are the top 20% rather than finding that they are now in the bottom 30%</p>
<p>My very best friend is a psychiatrist who specializes in treating gifted adolescents. He's given me an enormous advice about D2, and the one thing he always says is that the truly gifted in any area are vastly different from the norm and their placement should be very, very personal. His practice is a large and thriving one (sadly) because he feels that there are certain prejudices and some real ignorance that come into play when the educational establishment and the NYC community as a whole deal with those kids and their families.</p>
<p>well zoosermom I wonder if his viewpoint is atad skewed just as mine may be skewed because the gifted kids that I know had a great time in school and were very successful in college .</p>
<p>I don't doubt that huge school systems fall short when dealing with gifted students but I have seen that to be true for any group of students whether it be ESL students, special education students, gifted...lowincome, even average bright kids from well off neighborhoods.
In some areas, school districts seem to be better at providing work for adults, than educating students :(</p>
<p>"well zoosermom I wonder if his viewpoint is atad skewed "</p>
<p>Of course it's skewed, LOL. That was the whole point. He spends all of his professional life dealing with the wreckage of gifted kids whose lives veer off track for one reason or another.</p>
<p>I think you make some excellent points, EK. In fact, as a parent of "moderately gifted" kids (mid-130's on one testing), looking back I think much of the hype surrounding the education of "gifted" kids is just that--hype; boomer parents finding another way to obsess about their kids. When I grew up kids were not labeled as gifted. There were kids who were super-smart, and everyone knew it, they got A's in everything, and that was that. They went on to somehow find challenges in college. We had only a few honors courses, one or two AP courses, and somehow these kids survived. In contrast, my kids were in a pull-out program, which was supposed to enable them to "interact" with their "gifted peers" and which was, in hindsight, a total waste of time. I think the real purpose of the pull-out is to enable the regular teachers not to have to bother to differentiate the curriculum for the fast-learners. It really provided nothing for the kids that they couldn't do at home (mind-games, a little in-depth research, etc.) on their own. All it really accomplished was to label the kids so that they had a harder time fitting in with normally bright kids, with whom they had much in common, of course. Kids with iq's of 160 are a different matter, I suppose: I couldn't comment on their situations.</p>
<p>I just read an interesting comment in an Op-Ed that said that people generally have difficulty in communicating with others whose IQs are more than 15 points in either direction from theirs. Not sure I believe that, but it does tie into what my friend says that the truly gifted, at the top of the IQ scale, are very different from the norm. Actually, what he says is that they can be as different from the average person as someone with Down Syndrome is in the other direction.</p>
<p>In my neck of the woods the term is "Highly Capable" rather than gifted. I like it since focuses on what one can do not on some "essence of giftedness". there are both cognitive and achievement tests required. However, parents do game the system by waiting a year or two before having their child begin first grade so that they will test better, take tests repeatedly, and hire tutors for the tests. </p>
<p>As has been noted earlier, in my day there was no such thing. Everyone started together, every once in awhile a kid would be advanced a grade. And it was seeing the experience of those kids that led me to be proponent of separate highly capable programs. The kids were teased, picked on, left out of sports activities, made to feel different, and had few friends. As a kid we moved frequently, I saw this at EVERY school I attended. Teachers were no help, principals were no help, and counselors were invisible. A group of us in HS finally got tired of all this and we went out of our way to reach out and befriend these kids where we could. At one point the school, for some unknown reason, had us all take IQ tests. We could make an appointment with a counselor and discuss the results. Interestingly, there were several "C" students among my friends who had IQ's in excess of 130. (These students were gathered together and given wasted potential lectures, which continued until the end oh HS.) In retrospect, I have always wondered if these kids simply wanted to fit in, not unreasonable given the regnant social environment.</p>
<p>An iq in excess of 120 is the top 10th %ile. According to that op-ed, a person with an iq of 135 wouldn't be able to "communicate" with 90% of the population! If that were true, people with iq's of 135 wouldn't be able to be successful in any fields (law, business, etc.) that require interacting with the vast majority of people!</p>
<p>I don't think it meant "can't" communicate in the literal sense.</p>
<p>Where we live, in the heart of Silicon Valley, there is probably a higher concentration of "gifted" people than anywhere else in the world. I mean of course considering the many square miles we cover, vs. say three office spaces in MIT facilities LOL. Bill Joy, Whitford Duffie, mootmom :).</p>
<p>So, that makes it kind of different for us. Kids with IQs of 150 and 160 are not unusual. Socially they have a crowd. Intellectually they have peers and mentors. And what happens then, in that environment, is that you stop looking at the kids' issues as being related to their "giftedness". In this environment, you can coast along with good enough schooling. To need enrichment in this environment, I have come to believe, would require either a true genius kid, i.e. IQ of over 160, or a parent or kid who for some reason wants to move more quickly than even the common path in the Valley. And these are almost universally the kids who like math above and beyond all else.</p>
<p>Reading these posts I come to understand how different we are here from the rest of the country, excepting I assume the areas around Harvard, and Route 128 etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Actually, what he says is that they can be as different from the average person as someone with Down Syndrome is in the other direction.
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</p>
<p>This is the logical error of assuming IQ scores are interval scores, which they are not. (They are ordinal scores, and are validated only with procedures that work for ordinal scores.) </p>
<p>This statement also assumes that it is insuperably difficult to communicate with a person who has Down syndrome. My dad, who is surely gifted by the usual IQ-based definition, had a second cousin with Down syndrome, and had quite a few conversations with him growing up. </p>
<p>I used to think as the quoted text suggests, having read some author who said such a thing. In later years, living in a non-Western culture, I was exposed to a different idea: if someone is truly intelligent, that person ought to be best at interacting with all other people. I now think of "social range," the capacity of a person to deal with persons different from himself, and I now make it my goal in the education of gifted young people that I do to broaden the social range of the learners in my care. </p>
<p>"
There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales. (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)</p>
<p>"
There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales. (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)</p>
<p>"There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." </p>
<p>Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin., p. 25</p>
<p>I would agree that Downs affects people differently, some are quite able to learn and to participate in society.
One girl I know- who doesn't have downs, but apraxia and impulse control as well as other developmental issues, is currently ( she is 18 & in 11th grade) in self contained classes at school, but she attended the same k-2 school as my younger D, and although my younger D is now taking AP classes and doing well, this girl learned to read, much earlier than she did.</p>
<p>While this young lady will not likely be going on to college, she is still IMO intelligent, and it is certainly possible to have philosophical discussions with her.
I also used to know much more about testing than I do now. ( IQ testing anyway.)</p>
<p>Just to give more backstory- older D was a premie- IQ testing was a part of her follow up care, as she was participating in an ongoing study at the university of washington. ( where her tester- had a great deal of interest in gifted children- & in fact started teh early entrance program at the UW for students who skipped high school)</p>
<p>The test that indentified her as having an IQ of 160, was actually stopped, after it had gone on for hours, (rather than ending because she was missing questions), because the purpose of the study was to determine the percentage of high risk children who were developing normally, not to necesarily accurately determine their IQ. ( This test also was given the day before she broke out with chicken pox- the only sign had been throwing up in the parking lot)
I bring this up- not to show that she is a "genius" although she is certainly quite bright, but to add that if she hadn't ever had an IQ test, I- even as her mother- would not think she stood out from other kids once she reached middle school age- not in our area anyway- where many have BAs and even grad degrees.</p>
<p>She always was also young for her age socially, which was why I was happy we were able to find schools that supported her academically as well as giving her an opportunity to grow socially at her own pace.</p>
<p>I also wasn't worried that taking a year off from academics, with her gap year, was going to throw a monkey wrench into her academic pace, when she returned to her studies. There are many ways to learn- in and out of a classroom, even for highly capable kids.</p>
<p>So while her academic IQ was highly gifted- it also indicated that she had learning differences- she could have one score that was off the charts so to speak, but another that was way below her age.
That was one difficulty with the district gifted program, they were not really looking for gifted kids, who may have uneven skills, but for students who were two years above grade level in every area.</p>
<p>I know that there are kids who * are at least * two grades above in every area. One of her best friends since 2nd grade,for example- didn't have the learning differences that D does, and was able to show such acheivements as getting a 1400 on the SAT, ( in 6th grade).
She eventually went on to skip high school and graduated several years before D did & has been working in Azerbijan, teaching school for the past few years. ( so I agree, that gap opportunities are much more interesting for those kids post college- than post high school)
I have no idea what her IQ is- but I assume it is pretty up there-
but her parents are also quite academic, as are many of the parents with kids in the gifted programs. So how much talent is actually genetic, and how much is environment?</p>
<p>I have also seen kids, like my younger daughter ( who I think has as much academic potential as her sister- ) really start to shine once they have great teachers who challenge them.
In middle school- she did well in some areas, less well in others- but some of the curriculum didn't challenge her at all, and she got pretty average grades. In high school, her classes have been much more interesting, and attending school with some of the brightest kids in the district, hasn't been discouraging, on the contrary, she has risen up to benefit from having highly involved peers and teachers.</p>
<p>So I probably have gotten off from teh OP- but my point is that
not all "gifted" kids are identified young & also some kids who * were* indentified young, are not that distiquishable from their peers in a GOOD, school setting when older.</p>
<p>To go back to her testing- we knew that while her averaged IQ was amazingly high- it also indicated learning challenges with the subsections that were much lower. However- kids who are really bright and have learning challenges, may be able to cover for themselves, just by their intellect for years.</p>
<p>Our daughter didn't start to show difficulties till the end of high school, as the work got progressively more intense, and she didn't necessarily have the skills to adapt.
( She did learn them though)
She had one friend in high school, who thrived on the pressure of waiting till the last minute & since he was brillant, he got away with it in high school. ( He went to Carleton & got a chem degree- I assume that he eventually had to learn to pace himself).
Gifted kids are able to do that- but eventually if they don't have the skills it will bite them in the butt.
So an "average" student, who may not be as intellectually gifted, might actually outperform them, if they have better organization and studying skills.
So I don't see looking for post high school challenges for gifted students, as any different than trying to find appropriate settings for any student.</p>
<p>But if the student really wants to be someplace where the campus atmosphere is more academic, even out of the classroom- that isn't limited to "gifted" kids, but would be a criteria to have on your list and would probably be more apparent during a visit, than trying to read between the lines in the glossy brochures</p>
<p>Readers of this posting should continue to read my GT posting- so much overlap. Regarding the topic issue- what to recommend to the entering HS student. Let's all give our 2 cents worth to give OP as many ideas as possible, (s)he can sort them out and choose what works. I'm a concrete thinker, sometimes that is wanted instead of the abstract or more general.</p>
<p>To the student: Take as many and as advanced courses as possible, ie no study halls. Do the extra curriculars you want to, not what looks good on the record. Do not sacrifice free time or sleep to do the above. Do think about taking AP tests without taking the course and substituting AP for regular classes. Do not take what's written in the school course catalog as etched in stone; get the school to make exceptions when you (and parents) feel it can work. Note the word "sacrifice", being super busy may suit you, others need more down time; same with sleep- it's your personal traits, not a matter of how smart or gifted you are that determine this. Don't be afraid to "go for it" and then back off, you'll never discover how much you can do unless you try it. Hopefully you'll have already done this in middle school, if not, don't worry. Try to fit physical and musical activities into your schedule; they can be great stress relievers. Consider summer courses through GT searches and other college offerings- to meet and be with kids like you and to explore things not available in the school year. Think ahead, rough out a 4 year plan and revise it each year. Don't be afraid to skip classes, convince the school to let you do it.</p>
<p>To the parent: Guide your child, but remember it is their life and they need to do the work planning it. Your job is to make them aware of thinking outside the box, options they may not think of, especially since they will believe what they are told by the system. You may be surprised at what they sign up for when they come to you for a needed parent signature, and the substitutions they come up with when the proposed schedule can't work (son and guidance counselor got to know each other early on...). By the time your child is a senior they will know what does and doesn't work for them and can use this knowledge to zero in on colleges that suit them, not for prestige or other poor reasons. HS grades are not the only factor they should use- straight A's do not always mean the top student, look at the performance relative to the difficulty of the course and other factors. Boys in particular may not bother to do the work if they're bored. Some trial and error is required but in the end, if they try stretching themselves they will be able to end up with the best fit colleges for them. </p>
<p>The above encompasses my son's and many others' experiences- I don't know of anyone who did everything. Hope it helps.</p>
<p>You want us to post on topic?</p>
<p>Okay. Here's what I would advise. You know your child. Your school knows the curriculum. Work with them, but encourage flexibility. Our high school was a breath of fresh air compared to the middle school. While freshman English and history aren't tracked (at least not officially, I had my doubts with my oldest), almost every other course is negotiable.</p>
<p>Recognize however that even if there were an ideal set of courses, due to scheduling conflicts your child may have to compromise. Our son did science out of the traditional order and did a CTY fast paced chemistry course one summer because of scheduling problems. Look beyond the school if necessary. CTY, EPGY and local colleges are all possible ways to beef up a high school curriculum. AP courses are good, but your child doesn't need to take every one out there. That said, my kid likes the fact that the kids in AP courses generally come to class prepared. </p>
<p>Encourage your child to try several ECs as a freshman, but to cut back and go deeper if necessary. All the elite colleges say that two or three commitments is enough. </p>
<p>Consider the summers. Volunteer or paid work. Enrichment courses. All of these can be valuable experiences depending of family needs and kid interests. I do think every kid should do some community service somewhere at some point.</p>
<p>Take it one year at a time. Let the child lead, but stay informed about what colleges are looking for. If your high school has a college night type of event, start attending early.</p>
<p>I can't say for sure as I wasn't all that involved in planning my education at the time, but I think one of the things that really helped down the line was for my parents to start talking to the district very early on (early in elementary school in my case). Thanks to administrations and teachers being incredibly cooperative, they were able to get me started down the right path from the very beginning. And then when I moved to other schools, they had a starting point to say "he's done x, y, and z, so he needs to do a, b, and c now" and probably get a better chance of cooperation.</p>
<p>Like I said, a lot of this is speculative, as my parents handled everything back then. But alerting administration to needs early on can't be a bad idea.</p>
<p>Hi, Sly Si, your current college's daily newspaper just interviewed me and my son again today about the online</a> high school. One question I got was whether the program makes my son more or less inclined to apply to your college, and I replied that it has been on his list of colleges to apply to for a few years already.</p>
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<p>I see that flexibility is something to look for in a high school (especially) or college program, and I'm wondering, in view of the advice quoted above, how to recognize flexibility when a school has it. What questions should a parent shopping for schools ask to determine how flexible a school is? What can a parent do constructively to encourage flexibility in a school program?</p>
<p>Ask the school--what does this school do with kids who are interested & able to take advanced classes in math & science (for example) while taking at-grade-level courses for other subjects? How well has this worked for other kids at this school? Can I speak with other parents whose kids have tried this? What other options are available for my student for enrichment?</p>