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Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama
See, this is why I guess I just can't be on any gifted listservs or groups - it is apparently impossible to hold both beliefs to be true - that one's child is gifted, and that all children are gifted.
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It really depends on how you're defining the word "gifted." If by "gifted" you simply mean "special," or "unique," then certainly it's possible to hold both of those beliefs. If, on the other hand, you're using the word "gifted" to describe a certain intellectual configuration, then yes, it is impossible to believe that "all children are gifted."
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| Mine might be able to read at three, do math in her head, have a great memory, and discuss death with you, but it doesn't deny the "gifts" of any other child regarding their unique capabilities, and I do think all children have them, regardless of IQ testing, which I personally think is a bunch of hoo-ha. |
Again, you're confusing "special" with "gifted."
By saying our children are gifted, noone here is implying, indirectly or otherwise, that other children are not special. We are not denying that other children have gifts, only that their minds are configured in the same way as those of
gifted children.
As to IQ testing, you'll find that many (most?) of the parents who post here about their children have not had any formal IQ testing done, and aren't planning to do so. I would argue that it's not entirely "a bunch of hoo-ha," but my questions to you on that issue were never addressed, so I won't bother rehashing them here.
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| I also don't compare mine to others in order to find her gifts more unique or better than someone else's. |
Again, nobody here is doing that; we're simply trying to accomodate our own children to the best of our abilities. Once again, you are confusing "gifted" with "special."
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| So I guess I'll unsub and stay away, as there is obviously an Official Line that everyone who has a Gifted Child must subscribe to believing. And I already know what they are, and I personally just disagree with many of them, but it's never ok to say so. |
Funny, most of us feel that the Official Line is "all children are gifted," and that's exactly what we're fighting against.
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| It's too bad, because I think we do children a disservice by following the mainstream line regarding giftedness, instead of questioning much of contemporary US society's/schooling's expectations and classifications. |
This implies that we are defining our children as gifted based on said expectations and classifications. Again, this is not actually the case. Most of our children were not identified through the public school system; it doesn't change the fact that we know they're gifted. We're fighting the dominant school paradigm at least as hard as you are. How is it doing a children a disservice to accomodate their special needs? Why is it unfair to ask for a free and appropriate education for our children, just because they're not "behind" or even on par with their agemates?
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| I wish there were a place to really question whether acceleration, pedestals, achievement-based standards, and institutional labeling is actually the best for our kids. |
Institutional labeling? Who's doing that? As to acceleration, I think that the folks who researched and wrote
A Nation Deceived have very thoroughly established that in many cases, acceleration is not only appropriate but ideal.
The point of this forum is not to ask questions about how to turn our children into perfect little soldiers, or little geniuses being paraded around on Oprah. It's to find support for a child who plays on the slide like a four year old, talks like a nine year old, and does algebra in her spare time, all at the age of six. Kids with development so asyncrhonous that they can read about the atrocities of the Holocaust, but don't have a good sense of time so they think that this is happening now and freak out when a cousin mentions a foreign exchange trip to Germany. Ten month old children who refuse to wear diapers because they irritate them between the legs, but don't have the physical ability to pull their pants down and get on the toilet in time.
Whether you like it or not, there are gifted children out there, and they do have special needs. We're not saying that all children aren't special, that they don't all have their little idiosyncracies, but you're failing to recognize the extreme asynchronous development so common in gifted children.
