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!

And if we learned something from the doctor's office, instead of some strangers on a public internet forum, we would have a little more credibility in convincing our spouses of our suspicions too...

(I'm very much kidding, because this forum is truly where I found all the information and support I was looking for.)

I love this forum, but it's true that the credibility of a pedigreed source is nice. My parents were wary about homeschooling, but they did back off a bit when they heard that our pediatrician recommended it! (And he's not a kook or a wacko, even! <sarcasm, sarcasm>)