Yup. DS6 had a bad math day today, and I found myself thinking, "Is this kid really smart enough for Davidson?"

Never mind that the math problems he WROTE FOR HIMSELF to complete involved finding the lowest common denominator and converting a fraction to a decimal...

Um, take a step back there, Insane-o-mom! His former class of 1st graders are maybe adding one-digit numbers by now. A little perspective, please!

I am a Ruf supporter also. Aside from “Guiding the Gifted Child”, her book has had the greatest impact on my understanding of our children.

I agree there could be additional milestones listed, such as “use of eating utensils” and “neatness while feeding themselves” such as Dottie had mentioned some time back. I think that may be another valid indicator and I’m sure there are plenty more.

As an example of how I use the listings, I know that my daughter used a spoon and fork quite well at a very early age. I am able to remember exactly how old she was when her skill was pointed out to us by numerous people during the week of my brother-in-law’s wedding in the early summer, while I was pregnant with DS. It wasn’t a new skill at the time, but I can definitely state that she could feed herself yogurt, Jell-O and fruit without spilling a drop some time before 21 months old. We lived in many different places when the kids were infants to pre-school age, so it may be easier for me to remember what they did when and where.

IMO, Ruf does differentiate very well between different progressive skills, such as, receptive versus expressive language; rote counting versus letter or number identification; word recognition on signs versus reading beginner books. I personally don’t find the lists at all subjective. My suggestion is to start with level five and work backwards. Find a level where you can answer 75% of the bullets with a "check", and that is a general starting point. From there, read the anecdotes of what other children of that level did at various ages to further tweak the presumed level for your child. I would guess this might help parents of half the GT population narrow down their child’s LOG.

I consider these listings as a means to identify gifted children who do develop certain skills and abilities early, rather than exclude those who have not met the listed milestones by a certain age.

Good point, delbows!

First of all this is so true, I call it establishing a base camp, not measuring the peak of the mountian. Most of us 'don't get out' enough to really understand what normal development looks like. Teacher-ID isn't foolproof, nor is Local testing (ours discribed DS as bright, and perhaps bored, but didn't suggest that his behavior was anything to do with poor educational fit, but was sending us off to look at NVLD, since his profile was spiky), nor is testing with a Gifted experienced testing,although it's much better, and yet these children continue to have special educational needs, that depending on personality, can be visible in various uncomfortable ways if they are not met.

I think the book is quite specific about what qualifies as reading, for example. And although she doesn't directly address 2E, there was that example where she pointed the parents towards addressing vision problems because the reading was so far below the other skills. I wish I had been around that kind of thinking way back when, when DS was crying because he could read at age 3. Everyone else thought that I had lost my mind to be upset that he was upset - of maybe they thought I was 'trying to get attention' - who knows? But I dare any of you to imagine telling your closest friends and relatives that you are worried bacause your 3 year old is upset that he can't read!


I certainly expected my son to be bright, like the rest of my family members, I just didn't understand that being bright was possibly anything but a positive thing even though I remember being bored and feeling like an alien during elementary school. I just assumed that was some stray experience that was a personal failing - which was the way everyone acted.

I think this is a landmark attempt to show the variety of human behavior. I do think a lot of kids who don't show up on the scales are much brighter than their parents would place them. I also think that Ruf is quite clear that the "ESTIMATED Levels III through V are 'fluid.' I take this to mean that if I had homeschooled my level III and gotten him the help he needed with his vision development he could well be doing Level V behaviors by now. I think that that is true, AND I'm ok with that! He has learned valuable life lessons by the path he has taken, and certianly environment can be expected to have some effect on these kids, yes? But it isn't the kind of environment one can really control - if a Level V best friend who was a good social companion happend to move in next door to us when DS was in Kindy, that would have meant more then any other thing I could have done.

The main point is that reading any of the normal milestone development books can lead one to conclude that the authors of those books are misguided, or trying to make us feel good. The people who put the age suggestions on the game boxes - they must be wrong too! Those IQ test? They aren't designed for the tail, and they are too easy anyway! The gifted programs in schools - they are way, way too easy! How about those other parents at the state gifted association - isn't it embarrassing when they brag about their kids, because our kids are doing so much more? Let's face it folks - our brains are in business to tell us that 'everything is fine' and 'no one home but us fish.' I think it's a better choice to say, "Ok, our kids have unusual needs, the rest of the world isn't out to dissapoint us, or cheat us, they just don't see kids who are level III or up every day, or every year, or every 5 years."

What would it take for me to but you in a new mental conception of LOG, today?


Too me it's a relief to read a milestone list that my son doesn't leave in the dust! At least my job of finding a reasonable fit isn't as large as it is for some of you. But I have to deal with the fallout of so many years of misunderstanding, which many of you won't.

So, the links on the web are great for keeping track of these babies. The book is great of analysing the various parts of the early tasks. Overall the behaviors themselve vary amoung children, widely, but if this book seems like it is talking directly to you - well then it's going to be useful!

If you are a linear thinker, and looking for you child to exactly line up, but you child is more like mine, not reading at three, but wanting one more chapter of "the phantom tollboth" - this book isn't going to help, so give it away, or save it for the next kid.

If you are a non-linear thinker, and can read between the lines, then I think it can be useful, and is useful with a spiky child. OK, so we told him about Santa at age 3, but he also knew that his grandparents were lying about there being 'no more' ice cream treats - it's the same type of reasoning. Ok, he's not teaching himself to read, but the book says that there isn't anything magic about reading, it says that figuring out the system of reading is what is remarkable, and my kid is figuring out other complicated systems at this young age (like sexism, and classism) - We grown ups bring many different learning styles to the picture, so different books will 'speak' to us differently.

I'm hoping that there will be prospective studies on early milestones with 1000s of participants, but I don't think they will every be able to give everyone a label that says what their fate will be. There is really only one kind of person, but each person can have different needs. These various kinds of assesment are just a way to find out what you child might need now, and what they might need in the near future. LOL - Reminds me of the talent searches, CTY said: "Take this test and see where your child should start on our afterschool online classes." I called them up and said these are his scores, where should he start? They said, Oh, with scores that high, we really don't know. Why don't you try one and see how it works? Is that the story of my life or what?

((panting, slowly getting off soapbox, hoping there is something there that will make sense))
Love and More Love,
Grinity

I spent some time last night looking over the "data" in the Ruf book and was reminded of my problem areas. Maybe I'm too into the numbers, but with a kid like DS, who seems so "low key" otherwise, it's really all I have. But there is a kid in the level 1 with an LM score of 165, a WISC-III of 139, and near DYS level Explore scores from 3rd grade. I can't make any sense of that. Then there is one kid in the level 5's with scores close to DS (which while certainly high, are not "level 5 high"). And some of the level 4 scores don't impress me as much as that kid in level 1! Very inconsistent....

I have to say "that is interesting" to the posts. I am about as non-linear as you get and I found it difficult to read between the lines.

I get there is that intrinsic element but as Dottie points out, if the scores are all over the map, who defines the difference to put a child in level 5 that has much lower scores than a child in level 3? Her bias on their motivation to learn? And if their learning styles are different, what is quantifiable, if the scores don't do that?

There is a little girl, birthdate 3 weeks before DD3, we met on the evaluation for the gifted preschool at Columbia. DD3 birthdate missed the cutoff by almost a month so they wouldn't take her. They did offer a spot to the other girl but they didn't take it, they put her in Montessori instead. Happen to run into them at the Harvard Club Christmas party. This little girl was extraordinarily smart. Her father gave me their contact and I was thinking I would like to try and set up some play dates and see how that works.

Someone mentioned about when their child played with a peer, the differnce or potential difference in development.

So thank you for submitting the idea.

Ren

I love thinking of this as helping some identify but not being exclusionary, but I think having such a list ultimately can mislead parents rather than help them. If this was my first access to any GT literature, I would have been forced to conclude that my kids weren't GT at any level based on milestones that I believe are largely physical in nature. There is certainly no level at which my kids come close to hitting 50% of the list, let alone more than that. If I'd been exposed to this and decided not to bother asking the school to test because I must be wrong, I might not have learned much that I needed to learn last year in order to advocate for my kids.

Every time this issue gets raised again, I wonder where there is evidence that physical precocity indicates anything about future IQ testing. Like Grinity, I want to see the study! I understand there are links between language development and future IQ but since much of language depends on physical development too, that gets a bit convoluted.

I'd guess you are quite right in the conclusion that this is helpful for some GT parents and that is reflected by the Ruf support on the board, but I'm in the group that finds the whole enterprise perplexing (and even potentially damaging) because it bears no relation to my experience. For me, adding other potential milestones like neatness would only worsen the situation since my DYS still can't keep food reliably on his fork, especially when he's talking excitedly about some concept. I now have a bunch of scores and have done lots of reading and think I have a better sense of where my kids are (up to the limits of ceilings) and it completely inverts in my experience where the slowest developing kid tests the highest and the fastest developing kid tests the lowest. The only reliable indicator in our house was how early reading occurred. I suspect that works so well for us because I have highly verbal kids, but for people with more V-S type kids, other indicators might be more helpful. And even then, since reading emerged with spoken language at roughly the same time, I can't even put a "milestone" number on it. Who knows when the kid could read? I only know when he could communicate well enough to show me he could read, and while that was early enough to scare us, it may not reflect an accurate milestone. Regarding the "instruction" post above by kimck, I agree that exposure clearly matters and everyone's definition of exposure would be so drastically different. DS started reading signs on the way home from a vacation that I can date precisely. Because it was our vacation, we took videos to entertain the kids and let us have a little peace. One of the videos was a cartoon "ABC" type thing that had items labeled with words and lots of discussion about how words sound. As best as I can tell, DS learned to read from watching that video three times. Was it just that I noticed then? Did he already know? Or if we'd been better parents and not brought the video as a babysitter, would he have learned to read 6 months later and hit that milestone on a different Ruf level?

Even looking just at the range of abilities in my MG-PG kids, I can't imagine coming up with a useful checklist. Each kid can do so many things the others cannot do well and vice versa. Like the objective tests, there is just so much lost when the phenomenal diversity contained in one little being gets put into discrete categories. I sympathize with the desire to categorize and am still wishing I could have a 1/1000 or 1/100000 type number for my kids. I've come to believe that no current test gets you objective evidence of one or the other, and subjective checklists don't help me much either. When the objective and subjective evidence seem to conflict (Dottie's example above), then I become hopelessly confused and despair at ever really understanding anything like LOG.

J

Interesting post, J, and I see what you're saying. I've certainly had my moments of despairing over ever understanding LOGs and how they apply to my kids.

But if tests aren't enough and lists don't cut it, then I guess I have to ask what *would* cut it? I mean, should we reject the admittedly imperfect tools we do have because they don't work well for all kids? If these tools work for IDing some kids, then it seems to me we should improve the tools, not reject them, as I feel like you're doing.

Maybe we need a broader list to cover the sorts of things your particular kids ARE doing, which is what the proponents of "eating neatly" are really saying, I think. It's less about how these kids eat or the precise month when they read and more about unusual behavior, right? There are obviously some unusual behaviors that your kids are doing/have done to show you that they're more than MG, or you wouldn't have done any of the research you've done or the advocacy you've pursued. Maybe those milestones aren't on the list, but maybe they should be! Or maybe the list of milestones needs to be written in both the specific (which is what helped me) and the general, to funnel those kids with a more unusual profile to be IDd.

And BTW, I think that if reading emerges with spoken language, you've got a pretty early milestone there! Even if you don't know the exact month it happened, it's clearly unusual. I think the precise date doesn't really matter as long as you know that the behavior emerged unusually early, and I don't think Ruf's lists should have scared you off if you had kids reading THAT early! It seems quite obvious to me that there's a really, really GT kid behind that behavior!

I absolutely wish we had better, more definite ways to ID these kids, but until we do, I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It really is sounding to me that, as delbows indicated, the problem is less with the conception of the checklists and more with the way individuals are applying the lists.

That is a serious problem, but it seems like a more correctable one! Better instructions, a less "This is how it is" tone...but I still think the substance of the lists is valid and useful in SOME form.

K-

Please correct me if I am wrong here because I have not ordered the book yet.

I seem to recall looking at an on-line preview of Exceptionally Gifted Children where Miraca Gross displayed a chart which specifically annotated the age at which each of her study subjects first walked independently. As I said, this was a “look inside” option, so I don’t know the full context but it seemed that the gist of it was that most of her subjects walked independently (much) earlier than usual. I was surprised to see this information because I thought the consensus of experts no longer believe there is any correlation between early walking and IQ.

I don’t believe even Dr. Ruf uses that milestone in her levels.

Data (test scores) are important snap-shots of performance. However, instruction can also enhance performance on these measures, especially multiple choice achievement tests. I think there is more to determining intellectual ability than just a test score or only early milestones.

I have the book and will have to double check that one, but I can't help thinking of DS and how he "learned" to walk. It was almost comical. He was actually afraid of his push walker at 9 months, because he knew it would move before he was ready to move. He used it at about 10/11 months with what in hindsight was his "mathematical precision". He would go back and forth, back and forth, and the turns were hysterical....very calculated. I never saw a kid operate a push walker like that! He waled "independently" though probably dead average at about 12.5 months, but rarely fell.

I agree, we can't toss the baby out with the bath water, but this is surely a hard group to measure! I just worry that those with "power" would lean too heavily on any type of measure, and throw common sense straight out the window (like perhaps my school does now with it's hard 130 line!)

I think it's hard for entire GT families to rely on generalities, because as I've said before, nothing seems unusual to them until they enter the real world. Honestly, I thought my kids were perfectly normal and other kids waaaaaaay behind in many of the things we can now see as "GT flags".

Tough job...I'm glad I'm not the one drawing the lines!