I had an interesting experience over the weekend while at breakfast with two friends. Both are teachers who stopped teaching full time when they had children, just in the last couple of years. One has her Masters degree and worked with Special Ed students and the other was a regular classroom teacher in a very affluent school district. Neither one of them knows much about Graham or, more specifically, what he’s doing these days intellectually. I tend not to talk much about it among my friends with school age children. The discussion they were having is the reason why.

Talk turned to obnoxious parents they have encountered over the years and both agreed that the worst were parents who “insisted that their children were brilliant”. Apparently, both had frequently run into the “hot housing” parents we previously debated and both my friends described parents who absolutely insisted that their children were “special”. Both teachers described withholding opinion, but seeing testing results that proved that these kids were bright but not GT. Both friends described a process where those kids were ahead due to involved parents but usually by 3rd grade, were merely considered “bright” as their classmates had caught up to them academically.

I was very interested in this discussion. Was this my kid? Am I over-involved? Is his early reading and aptitude at numbers just an advancement that will level out in elementary school? The public district we currently live in does nothing in the way of gifted ID until 3rd grade. I was really thinking that we may need to find a district that looks at things a bit differently as I have a 2.9 year old kid who is reading. What the heck am I supposed to do with him in the next 2 years?

But both my friends, who I do respect a lot, were pretty insistent that parents shouldn’t attempt to tell a teacher, especially at the beginning of the school year, about their child, but should let the teacher draw their own conclusions.

Overall, I was really disturbed by the conversation. They both thought grade skip was a really bad idea and both very much thought that boys (especially those with summer birthdays like my son) should be held until age 6 before starting Kindergarten.

I am perfectly willing to be an advocate for my child. But this conversation brought home the need, I think, to have Graham independently tested before school, at age 5. Otherwise, I really get the impression that sort of blowing off parents who ask about issues related to their kid and GT is the norm. I really think until I have numbers in my hand, I run the risk of being mocked as one of “those” parents behind my back. It was really very uncomfortable for me.

I've had the same sort of experience with friends who are teachers.

Whoever "those" parents are, they are apparently doing a tremendous disservice to HG+ kids! (Assuming "those" parents actually exist and are not merely urban legend...I wonder sometimes, having met loads of parents of GT kids, but never having met a single identifiable hothousing parent IRL...)

It drives home to me the urgent need for education of teachers about GT kids. It wouldn't take much out of an education class to introduce the idea that kids might have different learning needs. And you have to figure that over the course of a 30-year teaching career, most teachers are going to run across at least one HG+ child (though probably not much more than one) and quite a lot of MG-GT kids. It would be nice if they could at least recognize them if they saw them...

*sigh*

I think you are right to seek independent testing. If nothing else, you will stop second-guessing yourself Knowing that I am not wrong about my kids has helped me be a better advocate.

It is true that teachers don't take kindly to parents telling them that their kids are brilliant at the beginning of the year. Whether or not it is fair of them to react that way is another question, but knowing that can help you plan your advocacy strategy.

We enrolled our DS in K and did not start advocacy for a grade skip for several months. The reason is that even if you have scores, the teachers will want to see proof in the form of performance. So I made sure that DS did every boring scrap of homework that he received. I asked the teacher to assess his reading level. I didn't say, "DS is reading at X grade level." I knew where he was but I wanted her to find out for herself.

Ignore them on the redshirting issue. And the gradeskipping issue. I'm sure you've done more research on the topic recently than either of them.

Cathy

Here's what I often see about "those" parents. There ARE kids that test in the 115-130 range. These kids are VERY bright, and will generally top their class for the duration. But these kids don't test GT, particularly in schools using harsh cutoffs.

I see teachers assuming most of these "pushy" parents land in THIS range, rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt, or....*gasp*...actually testing the child! But 4/5 times, they are right, the child really is not GT.

But like Kriston, I rarely come across kids who aren't at least bright, and worthy of some level of differentiation.

What I have seen though, is kids who might be ADHD with parents latching on to a hopeful GT label instead. In their defense, they are often told their child's concerns could be explained by giftedness. I'm thinking of a specific child with this one. I saw the scores....VERY average, except in PSI. The scores there were typical for an ADHD child, and I believe the child is borderline at least. The child is not gifted. But for me, that's 1 child out of about 30+ (local) others, that all tested at least in the 120 range on at least one key index.

Another situation is when the child tests say with VCI of 119, but full scale of 104. Another specific child....VERY bright, very verbal and NOT 104 average, even if "not gifted". But that's the full scale stamped on his paperwork, so to the school, he IS "one of those", *sigh*.

Catherine, I'm sorry you've had such discomfort. Been there, done that! But in time, what I've seen work is thoughtful comments that don't dwell on the subject. I've actually seen progress with one of the moms (teacher) from an after school activity. She started out very negative toward grade skipping, but I think I've won her over to "special cases", .

You are learning to have a dual nature, which is needed to survive. You'll find safe places like this, to share to your heart's content, and learn how to keep the conversation elsewhere with others.

Oh, and Catherine....I didn't share the above to suggest your child might be one of those scenarios! I'm trying to look at it from another perspective. You do have your "work" cut out for you, but you also have time. I'm glad you found a place like this so early into it. Welcome!!!

Sounds like a very interesting conversation!

I think this is great info for you to have because it took me a little longer (I very meekly told the school I thought my kid might not by typical and waited about a year to get pushy) to figure out that "all parents think their kids are gifted" and testing helps. We didn't get testing until late into K, but it definitely allowed me to advocate more effectively afterwards. To be honest, I don't think most schools will take outside testing seriously. Our school did their own IQ testing and still didn't take it seriously! The only thing that got their attention for us was testing above level on their own curriculum. That finally convinced them that we weren't "those" parents, but in a heap of trouble.

I believe there are many hothousing parents in some districts and many parents pushing for their kids to be identified as gifted. I've heard comments from school personnel in the last two years about kids being tested repeatedly who aren't close to the GT cutoff and parents incensed that their kids can't have the dinky GT pullout available! Teachers experience those parents and they are more prevalent than parents with kids with IQ >145, so of course, a teacher's first response is likely "yeah yeah" to parents thinking their kids are brilliant. I think many kids with two-three years of quality preschool start K "ahead" and even out by third grade. But again, that hardly applies to the GT crowd. Wherever my kids were at the beginning of K compared to the crowd, the gap just widens at a horrifying rate. As hard as I thought K placement was, it's much worse only a few years later.

Regarding starting early, again I suspect that teachers have a global perspective and believe many boys would do better held back and they may be right. But that doesn't mean *your boy* would do better held back. Because of experience with the norm, teachers think in terms of the norm, but that doesn't apply to you and your son. It doesn't sound like he's anywhere near the norm.

I think your friends can be right and you can be too! They are describing the most common situation and you are in an uncommon situation where their experience no longer holds. Once we had scores last year, I figured out that my kids' teachers were unlikely to *ever* see another kid like them teaching 20 kids a year for 30 years. That helped me understand their perspective much better -- this was new territory for both of us. They were telling me what worked for them with other kids -- but those kids weren't like my kids. Getting testing can help you feel less worried that you are just hot-housing, but it may take the school a while to adjust to having a new situation too. I felt like testing allowed me to own being one of those parents, someplace I couldn't have imagined before my kids started school, but a place that became rapidly necessary once the mismatch was apparent. Even though with numbers, I still risk being mocked as one of those parents, I'm absolutely certain I need to advocate for my kids and any good teacher we've encountered agreed with us once they knew my kids! I'd try not to worry about this stuff too soon and just have fun until you have to deal with schools in the future. You are so well prepared to advocate once you have a school age kiddo.

Hi Catherine,

How awful. So sorry.

(Part I)

The idea that other kids "catch up" to gifted students eventually is a major fallacy in education circles. While I expect that some catching up does occur, it's because the bright kids are HELD BACK, not because the others start to go faster. Bright kids don't run out of cognitive steam when they're 7.

A way to respond to this statement is to say that a child can't run down a road if someone puts a fence in his way. Teachers and school systems can be experts at erecting fences. My 5 year old's kindergarten teacher told me that "silent E is damaging at this age" when I asked if she could help him with his reading! Talk about erecting a fence. No wonder everyone else "catches up"!

> I was very interested in this discussion.
> Was this my kid?
> Am I over-involved?
> I have a 2.9 year old kid who is reading.

You are not being over-involved. You are responding to something your child wants to do, that he enjoys, and that is good for him. My 3 year old daughter loves reading lessons. She also loves making sand castles, and she's NOT missing out on childhood because she's learning how to read at 3.

A toddler can't learn to read because some "obnoxious" parent forced him to. It just doesn't work that way. If a kid isn't ready to read, he isn't ready, and you might as well try to teach your cat to read. At least she'll sit on your lap and purr the whole time.


-----------

(Part II)

The US educational establishment has some deeply wrong-headed ideas, and you came up against them during that breakfast.

The two worst offenders are 1) everyone must move at the same pace with age-mates and 2) gifted programs are "elitist". This is garbage.

These ideas are products of a philosophy of phony egalitarianism that's rampant in US education right now. The basic idea is that doing everything at the same time is good and accelerated programs for top learners are bad.

Many of these ideas come out of teacher education programs, which spend too much time on ideas like "diversity" and "promoting equity," whatever that means.

Take a close look at the syllabi for the courses for an M.Ed. at Stanford (see link below). For example, the titles of the math/science courses look good, but if you read the syallabi, you'll see that a lot of focus on how students feel about math and science and what it means to be a *teacher*. Where is the content here? This stuff strikes me as glossy yet lacking substance.

http://suse-step.stanford.edu/elementary/curriculum.htm

I'm writing about this to help you see where your friends and other teachers are coming from. It might help you when you have conferences with teachers.

Unfortunately, (certified) teachers have had these ideas drummed into them and many accept them without question. Far too many are taught that "socialization", whatever that means, is more important than mathematics and science and reading. There's a lack of understanding that socializing happens on the playground, not during math class.

I think most Americans are unaware of how abysmal our teaching training programs are and how much damage they do. I don't want to sound like I'm an angry raving fruitcake here. I just think it's time for this stuff to be debated openly.

Cheers,

Val

I have two teacher friends who have gifted children and one of them believes in holding kids back, even gifted kids, to give them an extra year of childhood. This is common practice here, especially kids with spring or summer birthdays like my son. My other teacher friend told me that this is the real reason the Kindergarten teacher recommended holding back my son for "not coloring in the lines" when he started Kindergarten at age 5 already reading at about a 5th grade level. He read his first book at age 2 1/2 and on the first day of Kindergarten, when the teacher handed me a note with instructions on what to do with the school supplies we had brought, I handed it to my son and had him read it out loud and follow the instructions, proving that he could read and comprehend something that he had not read before. I didn't think I needed test scores before he started school because his vocabulary and reading ability were obviously at a high level. It didn't make any difference.

I can't understand why some teachers feel that it is right to hold kids back from learning. It seems very wrong to me.

Another teacher at our public school, who thought my son was probably highly gifted, recommended that I homeschool when I asked for her advice, so that it what I have been doing since he finished Kindergarten and he just turned 10.

At our small town public school they don't allow gifted kids to learn above grade level and then they assign a lot of homework so that kids don't have time to really learn much outside of school, so if I had kept my son in public school it might have looked like the other kids caught up with him academically, but then again, maybe not. My husband's older highly gifted son from a previous marriage was similar in some ways to our son and he was academically advanced even though he was kept at grade level. He just refused to do the busy work the school assigned and spent a lot of time reading things he was interested in and also a lot of time on the computer. Even though he could make the highest scores on tests, he got bad grades, and eventually dropped out of school. He never learned to work hard and dropped out of college.

I am sure there are teachers who have talked about me. I have had to learn to not worry about what other people think and focus on what is best for my child.

Hi Kriston,

You are soooo right. And unfortunately, too much of what you're saying goes against the grain in US education circles.

Unfortunately, too many school systems accept that idea that a bright kid is doing fine because she's at the top of her class. And because the teachers don't see a lot of very bright kids, they can continue to believe that they don't exist.

Kind of along those lines, I've stopped keeping quiet about what my kids can do. I don't brag or even make a point of bringing up the subject, but I also don't hide what they can do. If the topic comes up, I'm honest. I guess I just think that, just like gifted athletes, bright kids need to be allowed to be themselves everywhere, not just once a week in pullout classes!

Gifted children: like to play hide and seek, love cartoons, can do algebra in second grade. It's all good!

Val

Val wrote:

"The idea that other kids "catch up" to gifted students eventually is a major fallacy in education circles. While I expect that some catching up does occur, it's because the bright kids are HELD BACK, not because the others start to go faster. Bright kids don't run out of cognitive steam when they're 7."

Exactly what I was thinking. I think this is true even of the bright kids. The kids who start out ahead b/c they are bright, are held back until the others catch up. I think for GT kids this can also occur - the love of learning is beat out of them and they begin to look like everyone else. I read a post once that said something like "I sent my very bright kid to PS and got back an average kid."

My Aunt who is a teacher said the ONE thing she hates most about her job (not poor pay) is having to tell all the parents that their children are not gifted. I've heard this from my other teacher friends as well. I just keep my mouth shut.

I too wonder if my son will even out by 3rd grade from not being challenged in school. The other kids are catching up skill-wise but I still think there are pace issues for DS. Getting all the testing done just seems to take so long and I wonder about getting achievement testing done now given he's not made much progress this year in school. I doubt achievement testing now would accurately reflect him.

I agree with the talented/not gifted students starting out ahead because they were brighter to begin with. Good point.

I address the pacing problem by being an unabashed hothouser. My eldest works on mathemathics with me for ~2-3 hours per week. We got halfway through grade 5 math a while back and skipped ahead to algebra. We fill in the gaps as we go. I do reading lessons with my kindergartner (plus paleontology) and my three year old.

It's amazing how far you can get with a little bit of focused instruction --- and they stay challenged.

Val

I think we've commiserated before about the current education fad of "equal but not fair," Val. I'll spare everyone my getting on that same soapbox since you detailed the problem so eloquently. But suffice it to say, I am 100% in agreement with you. And I think that educational policy stinks!

I like that you're speaking up about what your kids can do. Standing up to the pressure from schools and other parents to keep quiet and not make waves is not easy. You are a brave woman, and I think you're doing one of the only things we parents really can do to try to change the status quo: refuse to be quiet.

I'm still whispering. Lately I've been rethinking that policy. I like your way better.

I believe the best advocacy is having a clear picture about what you'd like the end result to be. Sometimes we have problems with this because we're not trained educators so we look to them for advice, but I think when it comes down to it, educators or not, we know what's best for our kids. Whining and complaining is ineffective. Having documentation, solutions in hand, etc. helps. Some things take time to change.

I read that Colorado's governor signed a bill allowing high ability 4 yrs olds to go to K and high ability 5 yrs olds to go to 1st grade. That's so wonderful! It makes me wonder how many cases had to come up to make it happen.

I think the other tactic I'm beginning to embrace is--just do it (thanks, Nike). I want DS 11 and DS 9 to take Alg 2 next year. The school has really put time & energy into trying to get this going, but I doubt it's going to happen. So I plan to just do it, whether it's at the college, online, whatever.

Hi, my kids are 6 and 8 now but I remember sitting in groups of parents outside preschool activities, listening to them talk about their kids. Every single 3 year old was reading it seemed. They'd look at their kid holding a book and roll their eyes and say "I wonder what they'll do in kindergarten", as if the child was already past K work. Meanwhile, I had a 3 year old that was actually reading the words of books, and I didn't want to upset these women so I avoided having dd look at any books, lest she read the words out loud. Then, when dd was 4, I overheard a friend of a women who tests for early K entrance. She was talking about how the women had been testing kids for 2 weeks and hadn't found anybody appropriate. They never do. They just go through the motions for the parents. And the person doing it HATED that part of her job. It made me wonder if she was really looking or just looking for reasons to say no. It all made me too scared to have dd tested.

There are some things that aren't talked about in polite company. That your child is too smart for school seems to be OK to say, unless it's actually true...

I wish that there would be a real dialogue on this. The parents who believe their children are ahead actually believe it. It's because it isn't talked about enough for them to know how their child falls in the mix. Same with me as a parent of a very bright little girl. At 3, I didn't know where she fell in the mix, and most teachers don't see enough kids to know this either. If they gave out a developmental pamphlet like they do for screening for delays, it would probably make everyone's jobs easier.

We could make one.

See new message, about to be posted.

Val

Ooooh! I have a feeling I'm going to like this...

Oh I had to laugh at the "unless it's actually true." Yep.

I remember hearing some say "oh my child's reading has really taken off" etc. Then come to find out, the child is reading the family members' names or a picture book which has been read nightly to him for the past 4years. When I hear comments like that, I just nod. Now I also ask "So what is your child reading" just to gauge where the child is at. The other is "My child knows all her ABCs at 2yrs old." Well then the child starts singing the ABC song. I didn't mention that my 19month old didn't know the ABC song but knows all the sounds the letters make and that C says both /s/ and /c/.

It really is difficult to have an open dialogue about this. I had a very frank discussion about this with a friend. I failed to de-gift the living room of my gifted books (currently reading "Re-forming Gifted Education" when she came over. She very shyly asked if I had DS tested and what clued me in to get him tested in the first place. We talked for the 2hrs lol. Her DS is entering K. She was told by the preK teacher that in all her 30yrs of teaching, she had never seen a child as advanced as he and is really pushing her NOT to send him to our public school. I have another friend who is very open about her son's ability so very quickly I knew she was someone i could talk to. My other best friend in town - not so much - I don't say a whole lot.

I hate the line "let's wait until 3rd grade b/c they all even out." I think that is partly as to not miss the late-bloomers. But why make the very high ability kids wait for instruction at their level so you don't miss the late bloomers? Why sacrifice one for the other? Why not assess yearly and give each child what he/she needs?

I have a good friend, a kindergarten teacher, who gave me the same advice. I tried following her advice and found it wasted too much time. It can take a teacher a whole semester to realize that a child is advanced, especially if there is nothing in the curriculum or in the classroom to allow the child to demonstrate his/her ability. If you have an HG+ child, it is important to realize that most teachers have never had a child at that level of giftedness so they have little or no experience from which to work. At this point, I try to get a teacher conference as early as possible in the year to talk to my dd's teacher and regularly offer suggestions for differentiation.

I can't thank you all enough for your perspectives on this. I have taken away so much food for thought from your responses...

Val, I admire your unabashed advocacy of your child. And you are so right. I need to give myself a free pass to do the math (yesterday he wanted me to write out 1 billion on the chalkboard so he could see what 1 and 9 zeros looked like) and reading stuff with Graham at home because he LOVES it, and as long as he does, I'll keep doing enrichment stuff at home. I have a feeling he's going to need it!

Cym, your comment on knowing what you want the end result to be is so dead on. Right now I feel like I am in the "gathering" stage. Gathering as much information, anecdotal evidence, etc. before Graham hits school. I have no idea what the end result for him should look like and I suppose that will become much clearer the older he gets. But I am looking to friends/relatives who are teachers for advice right now, and opinions are varied.

And Master of None's comments about the polite conversations are soooo true. I feel awkward talking about the full extent of Graham's abilities and so I tend not to. I have found just a couple of mothers in my circle of acquaintances who get it either because of their own children or their work roles, and it always feels like such a relief to talk openly about him.

Dottie, maybe Graham is one of those kids...bright but not truly GT. I suspect not, but testing in a couple of years will probably help clarify things. I hear what you are saying and I have absolutely no doubt that my 2 friends were not exaggerating their experience or their frustration at dealing with these types of parents.

But as gratified and so many of you wrote...a lot of teachers rarely if ever encounter a truly HG kid. So my friends' experience is the norm. I do believe that they can be right about students/parents in general and we (my husband and I) can be right about Graham. That helped.

Thanks.

The way I've put it before is that I can't blame others if they think I'm nuts, since I so often think it myself. HG is really really "out there" and even though we've got these kids around all the time, making them look pretty normal to us, no one else has that. It's not surprising that ours come across as somewhat unbelievable -- they really are tremendously unlikely!

I wanted to add one other thing about the polite conversation... maybe two... lol.... I generally don't talk about DS locally because I don't want him to be "open for discussion". Once you've raised the topic, it sort of becomes public property, and I don't want that. Gossip, however, gets the word around. I happen to be best friends with the one of the best gossipers in town, so I can "feed" the mill with what I want out there, without having to do the talking myself. It's a subtle difference, but it means that I can be perfectly civil to people that I know would be more than happy to argue about our schooling choices if I gave them an opening, and they don't bring it up because it would be admitting to knowing something they heard "under the table". But at the same time anyone who really needs a sympathetic ear knows where to find me. Yay for small towns....

Oh, Dottie, I know a child just like that ... he's still young but his mother keeps pulling the "overexcitabilities" card. I'm pulling the "naughty" card! I've watched this child/mother online for three years, and ... well, if this kid's GT I'll eat my pants. Really. So I know what you're saying here. Not that this is the situation the OP is in, but it's something that teachers could be thinking of.


Hear hear! This is one of those things that drives me nuts, and *so* many people seem to buy into it. I was just in a heated discussion on one of my other boards about evening out ... ugh. If the HG+ child entering K reading and multiplying started new instruction at that level instead of "learning" to count and spell cat, where would they be in three more years? Probably not third-grade level like the rest of the kids. If they actually received real instruction, probably higher than fifth grade, even.



Oh, how true *that* is. I've given up talking about anything KG is doing with friends who have children. It's not worth it. I love my single friends, though, because they don't feel the need to be competitive about it!



That's what I did. Didn't work. The K teacher never approached us, though ds was reading chapter books and doing math that was clearly above level -- if nothing else, she'd have had to know that he was adding double digits in his head because he does it *all* the time on random things. I wish we'd have had some test results in hand and approached the school before school had even started. Ah well ...

CatherineD -- I agree, hothouse away while he's young and enjoying it! Nothing wrong with following his interests. He sounds like a bright little cookie.

That conversation must have been awkward in the extreme -- but it's very telling and seems to be pretty indicative of the attitude toward "gifted" kids, whether they truly are HG+ or not. It's a giant bummer for the kids who really *are*!

Hmm. I suppose that 1:1000 or even 1:500 people are extremely rare in individual environments, but if you look at the population as a whole, there are a lot of them (~300,000 of the 1:1000 group in the United States alone).

From where I sit, that's a LOT of people, and schools of education should be addressing this group, not allowing their graduates to pretend they don't exist. These programs devote time to the severely disabled, who are the other side of the 1:1000 groups, right?

Val

Pud's 1st grade teacher had the extra 30 hours of gifted education training and it doesn't seem to have mattered for squat. She still doesn't get him. Although, as I think I posted elsewhere, in his 5th six week report card she wrote "Pud is doing above grade level math" and gave him "+"s, the highest you can get instead of the check marks she had been giving him. Wow, it took her 30 weeks of school to figure this out????

Stepping off high horse and going to bed.

Well I do think they "should" but I don't know that they will. If you consider that any one teacher with 25 kids in a class could teach for 40 years straight and end up with, on average, one 1:1000 kid... while at the same time having probably a kid every other year that the parents said was gifted.... First it's potentially a good long time between the Education degree and the eventual sighting of the one kid, and second she has people coming in regularly to tell her that their kid really is the one and time and again he isn't. Not that he isn't gifted, but that he isn't 1:1000. And she gets 24-25 kids every year who are all within a good solid middle band of average, reinforcing her image of what the range of possibilities is for that age of kid.

I'm not sure that we can really make a straight comparison between the 1:1000 at the top of the bell curve and the 1:1000 at the bottom just for the reason that the severely disabled kid will never be able to "pass" as average, where the HG kid very well might (and nevermind that he might be 2E, or might have other complications that affect how he presents himself). So now you have a teacher who might find one kid in her whole career, but with the twist that the one kid might not want to be found, or might look very different from any one model of "what HG kids look like" that the teacher might have been taught 20 years ago.

So I guess what I think would be reasonable is if schools of education taught our future teachers that HG/HG+ is a possibility, just as a bunch of other things are possibilities, but I don't actually hold out much hope that it will change things in general. Some teachers (no matter what they're taught at college) will be wonderful, adaptable and accepting. Some just won't. And as much as I'd like them to be required to accept that their model doesn't include my kid, it is the fact that he is unusual that makes it an issue to begin with... kwim? If they saw kids like him all the time they wouldn't be able to pretend they don't exist.

There is such a phamphlet - see Is my child Gifted?
at http://www.sengifted.org/articles_publications.shtml

It think if we all start bringing these around to the local pediatricians we could save a lot of heartache.

What do you think?
Grinity

I think it's a good start, but I kind of hate the lists like the one listed in that brochure. I would have read that as my child was a preschooler and thought, yeah he's a little ahead. But he's with a full time parent all day and he's generally ND. And I would have bristled at the "G" word, having no previous knowledge or understanding of giftedness. Or it would be easy for a parent of a ND to read that list and think their child was extremely curious and inquisitive and be on the ND spectrum. I also know a number of kids that were reading before kindy (who attended a Montessori full time) that are really not more than perhaps MG.

Every pediatrician we've had has commented casually on both our kid's precociousness. Maybe it should have been a heads up that the dr. couldn't get a word in edgewise with the questions that were flying every time we were at the doctor's office. I wish they'd be qualified to do a little screening to give you a heads up on where you sit. It'd probably be helpful for kids on all ends of the spectrum and might head off problems of all kinds before school starts.

Our school district does a kindergarten screening starting at age 3. It seems like this would have been a good time to do a level 1 screen for giftedness too. Although, every kindergartener is screened which is nice. (that doesn't mean they do anything about it however)

I think my pediatrician did a *great* job of warning me without making me feel like DS7 was a freak or something, as can happen in that sort of situation if the doctor isn't pretty tactful.

After DS7, then 15 months, pointed out his cranium and his ulna (since if they can learn arm and leg, they can learn the medical names, too, right?), the pediatrician said, "You know he's more than a little bright, right?" It opened the door to a conversation about giftedness and meeting DS7's needs in a positive way. I think the doctor was probably a former GT kid himself, and having met his kids, I suspect he knows GT kids from personal experience. Also, another ped in the practice had two kids who graduated from high school early, so they're all pretty comfortable with GTness. It's made everything easier!

Interestingly, at that same 15-month visit, the doctor was the first person to gently suggest that we might consider homeschooling DS7. I know I looked at him like he had three heads at the time! LOL! I reminded him of the conversation when we saw him this year, and thanked him for being supportive. He was just glad that everything was working out.

I'm not sure all pediatricians are as comfortable with and positive about GTness (let alone homeschooling!) as mine is. But if they were, I'd support your idea, kimck. Pediatricians probably interact with more different kids on a daily basis than just about anyone else. (Even teachers only see the same 25 kids every day for a year!) If any non-GT-expert might have the breadth of experience to spot a potentially GT kid in minutes, it's probably a ped!

In an ideal world, a pediatrician would have this kind of background and information before leaving medical school. It conceivable that many docs would be at least MG, but it's also conceivable that many would have never been identified as such (like myself!). It seems like it should addressed right along side with identifying possible autistic tendencies, speech delays, growth problems, etc. IMHO.

In my same dream world, teachers would also have this information in their arsenal before getting a teaching license. Ah ... it's fun to dream!

I remember my DS went for his two year old well child visit. The doctor asked how many words he was saying. I replied that he was very verbal and the he could read. She didn't bat an eye and rephrased the question as, "Can he say X number of words?" LOL, she did get him eventually, but at that point must have thought I was addled.

Pediatricians do have it rough. They are one of the lowest paid physicians plus they have to be available at odd times and know everything about children, medical as well as behavioral. It's hard to find one who is up to the task.
In just a few minutes, they have to size up a kid at their check up, and decide in which direction to counsel. But ours does it. He identified DS selective mutism at 12 months! And he identified DD giftedness at 18 months. He didn't call it that. He just said it was atypical. Then as she grew, he has counseled in his understated non labelling way.

I do think pediatricians are a good first line for identifying giftedness. They know a lot of kids and they know what kids are doing in the local schools. Maybe a unit in pediatrician school on school issues including giftedness? Or some CEUs? Do they already have that? That would help pediatricians know what they are looking at, but counseling parents to understand where their child falls in the mix, that's another story. I still think a pamphlet would go a long way (and not the current SENG pamphlet for reasons stated in the pamphlet thread). Something to address the isolation and confusion parents feel.

I'm guessing that many pediatricians are gifted (I think I heard that most specialists in the medical field have IQ >130). But whether they know it or not probably depends on how old they are and their elem. school's recognition of giftedness. We have a fabulous pediatrician - we found out later that there is a waiting list for him because everyone wants him, and they eyed us suspiciously because we got him (i don't know how!). Anyway, he noticed and commented on our son's early grasp of things, saying e.g., "my kids were early at that too." But when I asked if there were any resources/advice for gifted toddlers/preschoolers, he said there's nothing until school. Looking at the Seng pamphlet probably wouldn't have helped me much. What really helped me was finding this forum while searching the internet for answers about what i should do with my little one. Perhaps a list of websites and short descriptions on the SENG pamphlet would be helpful. (e.g.,. Support for parents of highly gifted kids: www.giftedissues.gt-cybersource.org/BB really would have helped!)

I think it is all complex about testing and levels.

I think it is hard to define "how gifted" for a parent. I think we know our kids are bright, but how gifted is tough. I knew DD was smart but when we did the test-screening for the gifted preschool, I did not expect the results we got. Maybe I wanted to down-play expectations in case...

But I also wonder if this is some aberation because of my helicopter parenting style and by 7th grade she will be MG or ND.

I do believe the DNA line up has to be there, but like a plant, there has to be some nuturing. And like Ruf (am I quoting Ruf?) said: it is not static, the child can shift levels.

Ren

I agree that the different levels of giftedness add to the complexity, but I think that it would be extremely helpful for pediatricians to give parents a little heads up that hey your kid might be more than a little different. Pediatricians are usually the first professionals to see our kids. Having so much experience with kids, one would think they would be a good first place to inform families a little about giftedness. But since very few schools for teachers even teach about giftedness, it seems like this public awareness issue is going to be an uphill road! But i'm willing to bring a few SENG pamphlets to my peds as a start, even if they're not perfect. Maybe i can insert my own addenda about HG+...

Ren, quoting Ruf?! What is the world coming to?

I just wish I could start a dialogue with our ped about giftedness. I'm not really sure how to bring it up, especially since the kids are present at the appointment...

I agree with you, but I'm not sure most ped office visits give enough time to notice such things. We always had the "that's not normal" quote from the nurses, not the peds who didn't spend as much time and focused on the typical development questions.

I've done a decent amount of time training in pediatrics for what I do and I think it would be ridiculously difficult to draw any conclusions from an office visit. Kids just develop really differently (and asynchronously) without that necessarily meaning anything. A pediatric neurologist friend of mine had a photo of herself as a child playing with a crystal ball in her office. She'd taped above it the statement "no, even then, X could not see the future." Parents concerned about development (and I imagine this goes for both delay and advance) want some statement of where a kid is and how that will play out later, but even with great testing and super specialists evaluating, there is no crystal ball. This drove me crazy as the mother of a delayed kiddo. As a professional, I came to understand that there really isn't any way to know from early abilities and disabilities if those will continue to be on the extremes or even out. Usually, in the early years, only time will tell. We hear on the lists all the time about kids with fast physical development who end up to be GT. Because of my job, I've seen many kids who had some brain damage visible on imaging and walked at 8-9 months, had early pincer grasp, etc., but would likely show up to have higher order processing problems eventually. Fast physical development doesn't necessarily indicate any GT component later.

It would be interesting to see studies looking at early language development and reading to see if that predicts anything about future IQ, but I've never seen anything convincing. (Are there kids who develop language super fast and end up with normal IQs?) My personal experience makes me skeptical of predicting development since my DYS had many delays. We saw pediatric neurology, development specialists, and many peds who told me repeatedly that he wasn't "normal." He qualified for cognitive therapy as an infant (which cracks me up today, but wasn't funny then!), PT, OT, and ST. Now that he's older, I'm quite sure he's not normal, but not quite in the way I imagined then . . . . which is just as well, cause I didn't want the SENG pamphlet before I had to stop my denial and deal with the schools. Until then, I had more fun not knowing.

My DD developed spoken language faster than DS. Her FSIQ is lower than his and I think that's accurate. Language is a huge area of strength for her, though. DS read earlier than DD. On the other hand, I was a late talker--didn't talk until I was three. My IQ is in the HG range. So personal experience makes me skeptical, too.

Good points, G3. I guess it wouldn't have mattered to me who gave me info -- the doc, the nurses, or even the wall of pamphlets in the room! I just wanted to be given some resource other than "wait until he's school aged." But I suppose the couple years of worrying that my child was going to be bored when he got old enough to be in school isn't really a horrible problem.

I guess when my then just turned 3-year-old was getting angry because he had to use the "baby" eye chart instead of the one with letters, I would have liked someone to point me to a resource to show I wasn't crazy in thinking we might have future educational concerns. We did get lots of comments from folks in the peds office and the ped allergist office about "kids don't usually do this/know this yet," so they were noticing unusual behavior. What was missing was a little follow-up of information. (granted, my kid is one of those who had more visible early verbal/reading skills - if his signs of giftedness didn't show up until later, the peds office wouldn't have noticed anything, and neither would I for that matter.)

I think even just getting confirmation from the pediatrician that you're not crazy and that it's smart to be thinking about future educational issues is nice.

For me, knowing that 4+ years earlier my kid's doctor had noted that we might wind up homeschooling certainly made it easier to think that our choice was probably a good one in our situation. It sort of gave me permission to think outside the box that is standardized education. And I think that for parents of HG+ kids, the biggest thing we have in common is the need to think outside the box--in any of the possible ways to do that, including HSing, grade-skipping, subject advancement, private GT schools, etc.--if we want to serve our kids' needs!