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Anyone wanna talk about the conception of "gifted" status in children?

24K views 835 replies 73 participants last post by  NoHiddenFees 
#1 ·
I know this discussion is not considered appropriate for the "Parenting the Gifted Child" forum, but I'm hoping it's okay here, as there is a lot of interest in the subject.

I am uncomfortable with it, myself. I was labelled a "gifted" child, and there was a lot of pressure, and a lot of ego stroking also. I think the ego-stroking was good for me in some ways as I also had an abusive childhood, but I feel uneasy with the current labelling and treatment of "gifted" children.

I think IQ testing is problematic at best, and focusing on a particular brand of intellectual development is unwise.

I also think "gifted" labelling sets up a hierarchy among children, where "gifted" children can be made to feel like they are better than other children.

I think the labelling can lead to arrogance.

I think parents can become so invested in their children being intellectually "superior" that it becomes a badge of honour, and I think children can feel this, and it can prevent them from actualizing all the parts of who they are, or being comfortable with the ways in which they fall short of that "gifted" standard.

I think parents can become convinced that their children are an alien breed, that they are not competent to parent them, that their children have immense and unmatchable need for intellectual stimulation, and that all kinds of special treatments have to come into play, even during early childhood.

I believe it is not good for children to pick up on the energy of a parent's anxiety about being able to nurture them, on the parent's fear that the child is unknowable, that they are somehow "greater than" the parent.

I believe that all children, especially very young children, really need the same things, such as love, nurturance, freedom to play and develop at their own pace, acceptance that is not conditional, and a pressure-free environment in which to learn and grow.

Thoughts?
 
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#155 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nora'sMama
My experiences as an adult have not validated the judgment of my teachers and testers. At one point as a young adult I felt as if I had been robbed of something that had been promised to me by those who focused on my "giftedness" rather than on my development as a whole, functioning person. I resent them for labeling me, whether the label was accurate or not.
OMG. Ditto on that. No one bothered to tell me that Ivy League scores don't mean squat when you're trailer trash...
 
#156 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama
Oh no, now we are comparing IQ scores. This is going nowhere good in a hurry.

This is the way the gifted support threads often end up too, but in a more snarky, passive-aggressive way. And someone will say someone (else's child) is not "really" gifted, as giftedness must meet X criteria.
Yes, and this is why IQ tests were developed, so that there could be supposedly "objective" criteria for measuring intelligence. But does anyone agree with me that this is the wrong way to look at intelligence?? For me it is a question of functionality and rightness of fit with the world. IQs of 180+ do not seem to lead to correspondingly high levels of productivity, success (by any definition of success you care to use), or happiness. So why do we measure this shit?? Can someone tell me what purpose it serves other than to classify and hierarchify human beings by an arbitrary standard that has no particular application that I'm aware of besides...further classification?


A friend of mine has an aunt who is mentally retarded due to hypoxia at birth. She has always lived with her mother, who recently died, and is now moving into an assisted living facility. Her IQ was tested as part of this process and the testers were AMAZED at how "high-functioning" she is with such a low IQ. What did the IQ score really tell them? Shouldn't the way she functions in life tell them all they needed to know?

Similarly, if a person is performing with brilliance and aplomb at any particular pursuit, why do we need to know his or her IQ? If a person is performing brilliantly in some areas but has deficits in others, how does knowing that the person has a high IQ help correct their deficits? Please, I'd really like to know!
 
#157 ·
My husband, who was not labelled as gifted (yet makes three times as much as I do, pretty good for "average") remembers feeling quite jealous of the gifted pull-out kids, as they got to go on field trips and other experiential journeys. I guess the average kids just wouldn't be challenged enough by a trip to the aquarium, unlike the gifted ones? In my school, there was definitely prestige associated with being in the pullout programs, and I lived in the bumstix of ******* americana. He also learned to work his buttinsky off to get what he wanted, while I learned that if it don't come easy, it ain't comin' at all...and I do think he is a much smarter person than me as far as problem-solving, but lacks the vocabulary to sound like he's really smart. Verbal ability is not the end-all be-all, despite what our culture insists and GT programs focus on (after all, that's why GWB is "dumb," right - because he sounds like he swallowed rocks for breakfast and can't put two words in a sentence together where there is a subject-verb agreement. Or as his mom put it, "he's stupid like a fox." Ugh.).

I think that this article is very interesting regarding labelling and motivation that someone posted on here a while ago, and it played a huge role for me in making a decision to keep my child out of gifted programs and either homeschool or seek out programs that catered to the individual.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_issu.../chat010.shtml
 
#160 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ#History

And, may I suggest to anyone interested in this topic to read Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man?
Thank you so much for mentioning this book! It's one of my favorites. I love Gould, and I read this assuming that it was just some paleoanthropology of his... but no. It is SO much more.

Your bringing it up also reminds me of why I hate the constant IQ-score badgering. I hate people being commanded to pull things like that out to "prove themselves" when I really don't think it means a damned thing.
I personally don't think it matters one whit what your IQ is, so long as you inform yourself to the limit of your personal capacity and have a kind heart.

But hey... if we can measure all that in numbers, why try? Sadly, SJG shows that that attitude is a LOT more common than I'd hope.
:
 
#162 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama
Oh no, now we are comparing IQ scores. This is going nowhere good in a hurry.

This is the way the gifted support threads often end up too, but in a more snarky, passive-aggressive way. And someone will say someone (else's child) is not "really" gifted, as giftedness must meet X criteria.
I've got to get to bed, but wanted to say something in regard to this briefly. I may have been guilty of this in the past as I truly am irritated by other moms at dd's school who go on and on about how gifted their children are. I will watch this in the future. I don't believe that giftedness needs to meet X criterian as there are such varied ways to exhibit and be gifted. My aggravation with everyone claiming the term "gifted" for all children relates back to my prior post:

Quote:
...many parents (especially high SES, high achieving parents) see it as a badge of honor or proof of their superior parenting. Way too many children are being ided as gifted in our school system (at least the one in which my children attend school). It obscures the true needs of the truly gifted child b/c *everyone* is gifted...
It prevents my child's needs from being met if she is being grouped together with children whose needs are nothing like hers and she is viewed as a problem b/c the program is meeting the needs of these other "gifted" kids, so what is her problem?!
 
#163 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by boongirl

I know of no program where gifted kids get more and better field trips and extras than the regular kids.
I certainly didn't have more and better field trips and projects when I was in school, but a same-age friend of mine (another MDC mom) was just telling me recently about all the cool things she got to do in her gifted program, that were not part of the "non-gifted" students' experience. So this disparity does exist in some districts.
 
#165 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama
But this is the thing that gets to me every time - what do people mean by "intellectual talent?" That is a very broad term. Verbally gifted? Mathematically? Memory? Retention? Speed? Inquisitiveness? what?
I don't know what "people" mean, but I'd say that all of those things are intellectual gifts.
 
#168 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Charles Baudelaire
Profound giftedness is more like this: Your child strikes other people as unsettling and weird, and when she or he was young, people criticized you for hothousing or pushing, not understanding that it's not your "fault" they learned to read fluently at age 2. They just picked it up. Other parents isolate themselves from you and may give negative comments, including words like "monster."

They have interests in highly specific, rather abstruse areas of interest that don't really appeal to most people and certainly not to peers. In school, they are viewed as freakish or disruptive because they're so often bored to tears by the constant condescension from teachers, the irritating busywork that seems to have absolutely no purpose: "But WHY do I have to color in the number '5' in all my answers? WHY?", the fact that they're simply not allowed to read ahead to the next chapter...and the next..and the next while the other kids labor through the first one.

They're not allowed to skip the spelling test whose words they knew five years ago, so they blow it off and write down stupid sh*t, because that's an expression of the hatred they feel toward the teacher and the school where no one cares about the real stuff, the words that stretch the mind and feel "hard" and cool.

They're driven insane by the fact that the teacher mispronounces and misspells words and gets facts wrong and doesn't seem to care when she does -- and gets irritated, even to the point of referring them to the principal's office for correcting them when they're wrong.

These kids have no friends, or very few, and quite often really don't know why. People often seem strange and mysterious in the sense that they're concerned with absolute trivia and get worked up about events or issues that are absolutely irrelevant. If they're an angry personality, they can start lashing out either at others or at themselves.
So, why isn't "profoundly gifted" referred to as the more accurate "profoundly burdened"? Oh wait, that has a negative connotation, doesn't it? Just like if you're not "gifted and talented" then you're...what..."not gifted and untalented"?

I am not denying that children we are shorthandedly referring to as "profoundly gifted" have unique learning needs and styles. But the label and common usage of "gifted" in the education system reeks of elitism and superiority that serves only to segregate children and disserve all of them in the process.
 
#169 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nora'sMama
I have no idea about Siobhan's IQ, of course, but I just had to
because one of the results of having been told constantly how smart I was is being terrified that I will make a grammatical mistake or typo! I confused things like that with intelligence for a long time.

.
I don't confuse the two. Trust me. However, it was ironic, and a little suspicious. The error wasn't something like an apostrophe, which I wouldn't think twice about. Typos are nothing. Basic use of the English language is another- yet we all make mistakes, even profoundly gifted people. I completely understand that.
 
#170 ·
Well, to start with, I am of the mind that the whole school system should be thrown out and restarted from scratch. I think it's too far gone to fix in it's current state. Do I have any delusions that that will happen in the next 100 years? No, not really.

That said: With the school system as it is now, labels are needed. They are needed on both ends (and about a thousand in the middle....) I have not heard anyone claim that children with learning disabilities shouldn't be served. I have not heard anyone say that children with low IQs should not receive special services. Even IF we want to pretend that "gifted" children have no other needs than that, we should still serve that need.

I agree with CB and others that a different label would serve them better. Alas, the education system changes slowly. I expect that "gifted" or "gifted and talented" will be the label used for at least the next 20 years.

-Angela
 
#171 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by talk de jour
Hell, I dropped out of high school to go to college as soon as it was legal for me to do so, is that antisocial and defiant enough for you to consider me "gifted"?
Sorry your needs were not met.

My dd is 10, and she has been begging to go to college for the past 3 years. There is a program in the city that will let her do so. I think I will listen to her and try my best to get her needs met or at least provide what she wants.
 
#172 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by glendora
Except that, if memory serves, most kids end up in GT and other programs because the kids get tested at the parents request.
When I had my run-in with CPS, that was one of their requirements, for my dd to be tested. I don't know what tests they gave her along with the I.Q. test, but they labeled her extremely gifted and told me to put her in programs. At the time I thought it was 'bad' to label her and thought it was another way to say something was wrong with her.
Now, that I have been reading, I am leaning towards changing my mind and figuring out how to meet her specific needs that are so different than everyone in my family.
 
#173 ·
Along the lines of the problems with lower socioeconomic groups being under-represented in gifted programs, it is a BIG problem. Here they have been working on attempting to improve the situation (of course causing as many problems along the way as they solved....sigh) In the big school district here the identifying test for G/T programs is entirely non-language based. It's based on spatial talents. Great for finding non-english speakers. Rotten for gifted kids that aren't strong in the spatial area. Dreadful for gifted kids with LD in the spatial area.

BUT they are trying. We also have a dual-language (Spanish) G/T program.

Another aside- on gifted schools, I happened to be reading last week, there are a few in TX, one in Houston (Private).

-Angela
 
#174 ·
This discussion is kind of fascinating to me, especially because I've had people from "both sides" agree with me (and I've agreed with them). I do think no one here disagrees with the idea that complete school reform would be best, and that the current system is not helping everyone the way they deserve. Honestly, to me (and this is ONLY to me, I am aware, not belittling anyone else's passion on this subject), the rest is just quibbling. Not that it's not important - it's just the details.

(Just today, DP and I were, once again, single handedly designing the complete fix for all the problems with our national government. We do this on a regular basis, and the bits we spend the most time on are the details, like what we would call the new style of government, the minutae of how it would be run, etc. It's all fantasy, of course, because none of it's going to happen, although it's not unimportant, either, because it gives us ideas of where to put our efforts for social and governmental change. The only thing we agree on every time, and the thing that somtimes gets lost in our quibbles over details, is that the current system doesn't work, and something needs to change.)
 
#175 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by bri276
I don't confuse the two. Trust me. However, it was ironic, and a little suspicious. The error wasn't something like an apostrophe, which I wouldn't think twice about. Typos are nothing. Basic use of the English language is another- yet we all make mistakes, even profoundly gifted people. I completely understand that.
Seriously, I could go through that post and find every grammatical and stylistic mistake I made. There are several - definitely more than one.

Why nitpick that much, though? I was referring to situations in which the teacher would write, say, "You're Lesson For Today" on the board - or get very confused when a geography book referred to the "Hearth of China" and say "Weird. They must have meant 'heart.'"
 
#176 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama
I think that this article is very interesting regarding labelling and motivation that someone posted on here a while ago, and it played a huge role for me in making a decision to keep my child out of gifted programs and either homeschool or seek out programs that catered to the individual.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_issu.../chat010.shtml
I wouldn't say that article necessarily shows that there is a problem with gifted programs or identifying kids as gifted. A quote from the article:

Quote:
A classroom that teaches students to equate their intelligence and their worth with their performance will, in general, stifle the desire to learn and will make students afraid of challenges.
I totally agree with this, but to me, that's simply an argument against teaching kids to value grades (or any other measure of school performance.) What if you identified some kids as gifted, but encouraged them to believe that their school performance had nothing to do with their intelligence or worth? What if they got to attend a school where no one even attempted to measure or judge their performance? (Not likely, I know - that's one of the big reasons why I want to homeschool my kids.)

Of course, if the gifted programs in your area are more along the lines of the "equating intelligence and worth with performance" model, it might make sense to keep your kid out of them. But it doesn't mean the whole idea of special classes for gifted kids is necessarily bad.
 
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