Ok, help please! I found this site & have been reading lots online but still feel very uneducated about DS5. I'm having trouble getting past the feeling that they switched test results because I just don't see the same kid that showed on the school reports. And I don't know what to do with him.

Yes, he's a great reader & picks up new ideas quickly but then he'll do stuff like throw a fit and is frozen when I ask him to write 3 sentences the other day. I tried to tell him, just pick up the pencil and write a word. He just wouldn't/couldn't & got very upset. Despite writing pages w/his teacher all year. Today he whipped out 2 sentences no problem and spelled quesadilla. I don't get the flip flops and acting like he can't do stuff I know he can.

He's happiest playing video games or anything electronic, likes typical kid shows, can read way above grade level but happy w/simpler books, etc. He picked out some Star Wars (which he loves) books on a higher reading level but then doesn't want them & likes Dr. Suess.

He's not "into" anything exceptional for his age as far as I know. His scores would qualify to apply for DYS but I don't know that I'd answer anything about his activities or abilities that confirms those type of results.

I could handle knowing he's a bright kid but being told he has all this potential, I don't know what to do. How do you balance being a typical kid stuff w/making sure they're challenged? I fear we've been starving him educationally and now he's just content without pushing himself for more. DH & I are pretty much underachievers so part of my fear is for him not to fall into that. But he is still really young too. Does this make any sense?? I think I have a lot of issues.

I think a lot of our kids are just like you describe. My son who is 12 just spent a weekend at a wildlife ecology conference aimed at an adult audience at a lodge by a lake. He attended every session, took notes, asked questions and behaved like an adult. But at breaks he would go out to the lake and play and next thing you know he'd fallen in and he was soaked! He was late for meals because he was building a sand castle, he kept tracking sand into the lodge, and kept leaving things he needed in the room, in the car, or in the lodge. Some of his brain is like 20, some of it is 12, and some days I would swear he is more like 3. You have to take care of each part of their brains--the 20, the 12, and the 3 all need to be fed, nurtured,allowed to grow!

Try reading about asynchronous development and you will see that what you describe is quite common.

Just to back acs, I'd say the same thing: DS7 is HG+ and a DYS kid, but he's very much a kid. He loves riding his bike and playing with Legos and Transformers. He's a sticky mess when he eats a popsicle or an ice cream cone. His writing looks like any other 7yos (hopefully not worse than that, though sometimes I think it's chicken-scratching!). But he's more curious about things other kids just don't even know anything about. He understands things that kids his age aren't even aware of. He needs to learn and the think like other kids need to eat, and that hunger to learn means he has easily jumped several years ahead of where other kids are in school.

Asynchronous development is, indeed, the name for it.

I'd just add that I suspect there's another term for what you're going through that we use around here: gifted denial! As one of the poster children for GT denial, I can tell you that the more you know, the more you'll realize that not every HG+ child is composing sonnets before they can walk or curing cancer in the basement at age 4 or something nutty like that. Most are just really quick studies and/or have really intense passions. DS7 was into cars. Well, that's common for 2yo boys, right? But not all 2yos memorize the Consumer Reports car edition while they sit on the potty! That was unusual! Not all 2yos then retain and use that knowledge to ID every car they see, make and model, every time they walk through a parking lot or ride in the car. That was unusual!

If you're like me, then probably many of the people you see every day are GT, too--even if you don't realize it!--so that throws off your sense of what ND (normal development) is. After I found out DS7's test scores, I took a good look at his playgroup and realized that at least half the kids were probably MG, and that really messed up my sense of what normal was. The ones who weren't MG were average kids, probably even on the bright side of average--and here I had assumed (in a kindly way, of course) that they were a bit slow! Oops!

It is possible to test a bit high, but I think it's a lot less likely than testing low. Any number of things can make a kid test low, but you need ideal conditions to test high. So if you were to test again, you might get a different number, since any test is just one performance on one day under one specific set of circumstances.

So if you honestly think the scores were in error, you could test again. But I'd bet on a case of good ol' GT denial!

I'd recommend that you hang out here and see what people say. Read about GT kids. If you see your child in what you find, then it should help get you past your GT denial. But it does take time. I speak from personal experience!

Hi Steph,
Have you looked at Hoagies (http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/)? It is a great place to start your journey in gifted education. If you have never been there I recommend starting with following link.
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/gifted_101.htm

Like your son when my dd was five she was able to read at a higher level than the books she preferred to read. I came to the conclusion that part of the reason was visual. The lower level books have more interesting pictures in them and even very gifted five year olds like pictures. I found some wonderful books at a higher reading level with beautiful pictures in them which were a nice bridge into normal chapter books. A great series of visually stimulating chapter books is the Geronimo Stilton series. The author uses fun, colorful fonts and lots of pictures. The series is popular with boys and girls.

Regarding writing, that issue gets complicated because it involves a motor skill. Many gifted children do not like to write because of the physical aspect. Their hands cannot keep up with their brains. My dd's composition improved dramatically once she learned to type.

Summer

Welcome Steph!

Sounds like we both have issues! I felt the same moments of "uh-oh" when we got confirmation from testing that we were in HG land, but as time goes on, I feel less pressure now about "all this potential" and more concern about developing the whole kid and the emotional/social stuff than making sure the kids are fully challenged. While I agree challenge is important, I'm not sure when it needs to start and 5 is still very young. We haven't had sustained challenge in school yet, so we've looked for challenge outside school in order to develop work ethic and the sense of trying and persevering in order to succeed at something. They do music and sports in order to learn to work and we've gotten a lot from that in terms of character development.

In terms of reading, I provide for their interests and don't worry much about whether they are making progress or reading at their level. I figure kids like this will progress naturally and without much instruction just by the doing. When one kid was in K, he never chose fiction books and only read science facts or sports facts (I suspect that the emotional capacity to appreciate the subtleties in fiction lagged behind the reading ability significantly so if he chose books at a high enough level, he would get lost in the emotional issues involved). It was ridiculous how narrow his focus was and how many random and irrelevant facts about sports he knew! But he loved to read and we let him read the things he wanted. Two years later, he's become much more interested in fiction books. I think he's happier having these be his choices rather than something we wanted for him. More importantly for us, he still loves to read. I love Dr. Seuss so it wouldn't bother me if my kid was focused on that even if he could read higher level stuff -- the messages in Seuss rule and the language plays are so fun. Wish I could be reading Seuss instead of what I'm supposed to be reading for work right now!

I think it's hard to find a balance between challenge and freedom to be a kid. We try to provide exposure -- trips to museums, library trips, science museums, science kits, access to lots of books -- but we've never taught the kids or tried to get them to reach their potential. I've never been interested in their achievement because they are young and I think they should be playing freely as much as possible. We tend to kick them off the computer and make them go outside to play. I don't homeschool and thus don't ever feel like I *should* be teaching them anything academic. Anything "academic" we do is purely for fun and only because they want to -- we let them opt out whenever they want. What's nice about that is completely avoiding power struggles or resistance because of our interest in getting them to do something. No question that they could do more with more input from parents, but that doesn't bother us. I wonder at times whether we're starving them intellectually. I wonder if the balance we have works, but it's what we think best for now. I *love* the board interaction and PMs I've had with many others pursuing other paths because it challenges us to rethink what we do and re-evaluate our perspective.

There's a fun, short piece from Terry Tao on educating the gifted at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifted-education/. His advice on praising effort echoes Carol Dweck, who is full of good advice on helping kids achieve by focusing on effort and struggle rather than native talent. I love her stuff as advice for HG parents especially.

Hi Steph

Are you sure your not speaking about our DS5, one minute he is 5 maybe even 3-4, the next he is 7-9. It's a bumpy road. As far as I know you cannot test higher then what you are, (Unless you took the test before). You can test lower based upon conditions. I like te term GT Denial, it sort of fits. Th hard part is when you see other childern that are MG, we keep looking for the chid prodigy. Our DS5 can do math fairly well, easy to measure. He's not able to just tell me quickly what 8 x 9 is, but he can figure it out on his own (8x10=80 less 8 for 72). But he does not just know the answer, or do exponents, or mentally add 4 to 6 didgit numbers. We sometimes expect to see extroadnary, TV game show type of stuff. Each child is also different in streangths. One day I was helping him with mental math (lets say 498 - 235, he had a hard time with changing the 498 to 500, then removing the 2 later). It took him a while to understand this, I was thinking, he schould be able to understand quickly the concept. To me this was easy math, my expectations are way off when I look at what they are doing in K. It is taking us time to know when to help him, and when to give him space. We don't push him he mostly pulls us. It's a balance that as a parent you will proably always second guess.

To chime in (someone current in the middle of the process) I agree completely. And I like how Edwin puts it: our DS5 mostly "pulls us." And there are plenty of time when DW and I are thinking "DS is just a little smart." But when we see him interact with a child that is not quite three years older than him (his current best friend) and DS correct's his friend's reading, then I think we get that reset. And a day later will get some sort of terrible-2s fit. It's a good way to remind us that the boy is still just 5.

JB

DS5 is the same way. He reads higher level books here and there, but he wants lots of pictures, he prefers bigger font, ... I learn to let it go and let him read whatever he wants to. Right now he is in his room reading Geronimo Stilton book and having great time. Yes, he could read more difficult books, but he is having fun and that's important as well.

I've recently found some good higher lexile books for DD5 that are LARGE PRINT! I never occured to search those out, but DD5 pulled one of the shelf. She will read books without pictures, it seems she doesn't like it if the print is too small.

Interesting. Good find!

Do you think that's just a preference of hers, something she'll outgrow, or could she need to have her eyes checked?

K- (who is still procrastinating and REALLY needs to get AWK!!!)