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.