I am reading Ruf's book and find it confusing. There seems to be so much overlap and I am confused how she really defines a level.

Reading, I am thinking that DD3 is a level 3 but then I see her whip through a maze in her activity book and I read that this is a level 4 or level 5 thing. And other things make me think level 4.

I could put check marks all over the place. And when I take into her inquisitiveness, about obscure details, then I put her level 5.

I really didn't record many of the fine details early on-- too sleep deprived through the first 2 years. But I know we noted that her verbal skills were strong and her vocabulary was well over 2000 by 2. And at 14 months she knew rhomboid because there was this weird peg shape puzzle at the playcenter. Probably doesn't know rhomboid now.

So I can check off so many things, but the big identifiers are the non-linear weird things that come out with random frequency, or her strange inquistiveness about the outlying details, but I do not understand how to quantify that on her scale.

Am I just suppose to read and say "that is interesting"?

Ren

I think you'll find some disagreement about Ruf usefulness on this board and I'm thinking that Grinity will tell you something quite different, so I'll leave her to her perspective as she'll tell it better than me.

I don't find the levels useful at all because of the variability in memory, the overlap in levels, and the cultural differences that would determine many of the indicators like Santa Claus suspicions. What does "reading" mean? For us, we pretended it wasn't happening until at least the Cat in the Hat level was being devoured in front of us. I can imagine other parents first labeling reading as a few sight words. Counting -- does that mean just rote being able to repeat the numbers? Or something that requires much more understanding of numbers? And being independent on the computer by age two would seem to have more to do with the willingness of the parents to allow a toddler on a computer than with the ability of the kid! Mine weren't allowed anywhere near my computer.

In addition, I think that many of the early milestones require a level of physical development that has nothing to do with intellectual development. So while early verbal ability does clearly indicate precocious verbal skills, not having any verbal ability doesn't help much because maybe the kid has less developed *language* or maybe the kid has less developed motor facility with the tongue or less coordination. If I looked at two of my kids, they would fail to meet any verbal milestone for level 1 gifted and definitely didn't know many words at age 18 months -- they didn't know any! For level 5, they would need "large receptive vocabularies" by 9 months old -- but that requires indicating with one's body something about having understood a word. My kids couldn't point at that age and couldn't talk either, so they could not meet that milestone any more than they could meet the Level 1. But many of the other milestones that occur later in terms of reading chapter books, they end up level 4 or 5. As I interpret that, I just pick out a bunch of phrases from each list that best describe my kids but that doesn't give me a real "level" as it's just a hodgepodge of various things from not on the list at all to level 5. Maybe other people's kids follow a program a little more straightforwardly, but mine didn't, so I don't find that it helps me much.

While a pile of case studies has great limitations as research, from a mom perspective, I got the most from reading Miraca Gross' study of these kids (Exceptional Children or something like that). For me, I recognized my kids in those kids and established my own understanding of LOG from comparing my kids to those kids. Some of the descriptions seemed a bit ordinary to me and I wondered why the kids were in the book, whereas some of the descriptions made me really, really glad that other parents had faced much harder issues than I faced and their kids were clearly levels beyond mine. After reading a bunch of them, I had a bit more feel for what "exceptional" looked like and what a range it encompassed.

Ok Grinity -- now we need the other side!

J

I second the Miraca Gross book (Exceptionally Gifted Children), and had the same thoughts after reading it. I didn't connect with Ruf's work because my kids ranged from age 8-12 when I first read it, and having them so close together left me very clueless about the first 6 years of parenting!

Knowing virtually nothing about "giftedness", I remember one day (that I recorded!) at about 11 months with #1. Being a big fan of the "What to Expect" books ( ), Inever expected much from DD1. I was surprised when I realized at 11 months that despite very limited verbal skills, she really seemed to understand so much. I gave her command after command (Do this, get that, go there, etc) and she did them all. That was possibly my very first "hmmm".

Flash forward to 5 years later, kids now 6, 4 and 2, and I suddenly had a 2 year old who was just like my 4 year old! Hmmm!

Anyway, back to Ruf....half of the check offs I don't remember, another 1/4 I don't agree with (Santa/etc) and the other 1/4 show up in lists 2-5. I think the best "levelling" comes from comparing to other GT children, as awful as that sounds. And yes, kids will show up in several different lists for different abilities, and at different periods of their lives.

In short, she made a commendable effort in a very difficult area, but I for one just read and said "that is interesting".

I think the preschool skills are really hard to quantify and depend on the child. The levels really have more to do with how quickly a child masters something after being introduced to it. There's an item in the level 3 list that says

"Most spontaneously read with or w/o previous instruction before kindergarten"

Well, what defines instruction? If you are reading to your child for an hour or two a day, isn't that instruction? Or you play phonics games and teach your child the ABC's, isn't that instruction? And how does the child that gets 30 minutes of reading a day compare to the child getting hours? But on the other hand, if your child is raised in a home speaking and reading English, they aren't one day just going to break out and read Spanish regardless of GT level if there is no exposure.

Before kindergarten, my DS maybe would have been labelled a level 1 or 2 based on the Ruf lists as they are. But would now in first grade be labelled level 3 or 4. We did not "hot house" at all. We mostly read at bedtime, but let him explore on his own. But if the Ruf levels had items on visual spatial things like following directions to construct lego sets for 12+ year olds - hey, we'd be level 5! Or ability to grasp and explain conceptual math. Or maybe the ability to ask too many complex questions in less than 24 hours. He could not read at the start of kindergarten, to my knowledge, but I don't ever remember handing him an early reader and him struggling with it. He reads very long and complex chapter books now independantly, that my 5th grade niece wouldn't approach. So, even though we never observed him reading before kindergarten, he clearly has it in him to be an advanced reader.

So I do think the content of the lists is somewhat subjective and perhaps just a guideline that may or may not be accurate for your child! YMMV!

Thank you, after all the forum comments about Ruf's, I thought I should review.

I think the thing that is noticeable is the relative judgement she makes. Like when DD3 was tested recently, the psychologist mentioned she self corrected when it got harder and she wasn't bored. She said that 3 year olds don't self correct and that told her more than the test results.

Like now understanding she is non-linear and what that means and what comes out of her mouth is different than an auditory learner. Though because her father is such a highly gifted auditory learner, she has some of that, the memorization is amazing.

So then I find web pages that relate non-linear is found in the exceptionally and profoundly gifted.

It is not that I want to put a fixed number on it. But it is strange. You think OK, she is bright, am I overemphasizing some event, then that "what did you just say?" moment happens again and you don't want to be caught where you don't provide the right learning environment for her.

Good thing I am starting to work again next week, less time to obsess.

Ren

I know exactly what you mean. I wanted testing to tell me whether I was nuts or whether some abilities were really not typical in this age group. When I got testing, I thought it didn't help at all because there's all kinds of ceiling issues and the tests are so limited and I ended up thinking the tests confirmed that my kids were smart and that was pretty obvious. I didn't learn anything important. And about 2 years from the first time I ever considered these questions, I still wonder if I'm overemphasizing this one issue -- some would call this denial on my part! I think about all the other things that matter in life and wonder whether elementary school decisions should be high on that list when I could think of many things I value equally or more. But then there are those moments when I get shaken up by a new ability or new curiosity or new limitation found in school and I wonder if I should be taking this much more seriously.

No evidence of this today since I'm thinking a lot about these issues and posting too mcuh, but normally work does keep me sane and limits my thinking in circles.

J

Wren - I think that is a perfect example of some that is not on the Ruf's list but is clearly something that is beyond age level! It is also not something that necessarily every parent would notice if their child was doing it.

And I also obsess way too much too since finding out DS is HG. About our 2nd child too. Before I would obsess too, but perhaps about different things. Good luck starting back to work!

"This is interesting" is pretty much what I think about the book. It was the first gt related book I read and as such it did a wonderful job for me. It clearly showed that there were huge difference between gt levels, but it also showed that you couldn't clearly separate the children and say "this one is level x and that's it"

I found the parents comments and the examples the best part of the book. What a relief it was to see that others had kids just like I did. As for the milestones I think you need to take it with a grain of salt. It helps to look at them and see what's considered advanced, but not much beyond that. Yeah kid who started reading at the age 2 is for sure gifted, but he may be as gifted as another one who waits till K to start reading. She also doesn't consider 2E kids. You cannot just leave them out of the picture. The more I read about gt kids the less I believe in her categorizing by milestones even though DS5 wasn't that hard to place there (some 3, mostly level 4)

When I look at my two sons, my younger one would do much better on the milestone list than my older one, but I actually think my older one is more gifted. I may be wrong on that of course.

Like somebody else said it also depends on the definition of many of the milestones. I was so glad I didn't have to fill out the DYS milestone list because I was rather struggling with what some of them really meant. By my definition DS5 started writing words before he started reading, but that would probably look rather silly on the questionary.

Some of her comments were very useful though, such as fast progression from sounding words to chapter books usually meant that the child was gifted.

Like I said nice first read about gt issues, but don't put too much weight on it.

Well, I'll speak up for Ruf, since hers was the book that was most helpful for getting me over my PG-specific GT denial with DS6.

For DS6's whole life, I thought that he was MG, since that was what DH and I were as kids. Sure, he did some pretty amazing stuff with reading and puzzles and patterns, but I just figured all MG kids were like that. Denial, denial, denial...

Then I saw his WJ3 test scores from K and freaked! They were a full standard deviation higher than I expected them to be across the board! I had a moment of "How cool!" and then several days of "OMG!!! What does this mean? Was this a fluke? How can I tell? Help!"

Ruf's book--and especially her approach toward LOGs and her specific examples and lists of traits--helped me to get over my denial and see the reality of my son's abilities. Her lists aren't perfect, certainly, and it would be handy if they were less fluid and reliant on parent memory. But I have yet to see someone build that particular "better mousetrap." Since GT kids are not one-size-fits-all, I'm not sure there *is* any way to be more specific and less fluid. Test scores? With tests not designed to test the tail? (Especially since part of what I was trying to do personally was to figure out if further testing was even warranted!) School IDing? We all know how bad teachers and adminstrators can be at even acknowledging the existence of LOGs! So what else is there?

It seems to me that a list of traits like this is about the only thing that's going to be at all useful for a parent trying to figure this LOG stuff out. Ruf's lists are far from perfect, but they're very helpful for someone who is unable/unwilling/afraid to see just how GT her child is. When I finally sat down with DS6's baby book in front of me instead of just working from memory, it was very clear that he is not a level 3 (as I kept supposing he was), but is at least a level 4, and is a level 5 kid when it comes to the things he loves to do. There was no doubt about it when I took the time to really check.

Certainly Ruf does a better job of establishing the difference between level 1 or 2 and level 5 than between, say, a 3 or 4 and a level 5 kid. But in fairness, that top end is hard for all of us to distinguish. Still, I do think there's a real difference between those levels, and I'm glad she tried to find some way to muddle them apart.

I guess what I'm arguing is that test scores aren't always a good enough tool for us (and are really expensive!), especially at the start of this journey, so what else could we use? Ruf's lists and levels are an imperfect tool, but they validate parental observation, and I think that's laudable. We parents *are* the experts when it comes to our own kids. And hopefully Ruf's work will provide a starting place for the work of others to build upon, perhaps finding some tool for distinguishing PG kids that is less flawed.

Kriston, I think we came to our GT a-ha moments in a similar manner. For me, MG-GT was "status quo". That's what I expected, if not so much in scores necessarily, certainly in "output". Being one of 4 GT sibs, it was just "life as usual". It wasn't until DS messed with the status quo that I got involved in the numerical side of it all, and realized he's pretty much "gifted squared" (top 2% even in the top 2%!)

But initially, he was just different from the rest of us, and only in hindsight did all of the LOG stuff factor in and make sense. Factor in too that I was probably HG+ as a child. In all honestly, my girls didn't strike me as GT, and only when DS surpassed them by so much did I even think in those terms. There are still days that I see them as "slow" and him as "expected".