We just had our end of year teacher/parent conference about our son, Finn. Throughout the past two years we’ve been receiving a steady drumbeat of feedback about how smart Finn is, but today was the first day when we were told that he’s probably going to require some kind of advanced placement when he gets to elementary school. I think all parents want their kids to be intelligent, but it’s kind of scary when you realize that your child is in some sense not “normal” and has special needs.
I mean, obviously, there many worse problems to have. But I just worry that my son is going to have challenges getting the kind of education he needs and being able to socialize with his peers. He seems really well-adjusted and able to make friends right now, so there isn’t any particular concern, just more of a worry that this will present some difficulties for him going forward.
If any of you have experience with how schools handle kids with this kind of special need, I’d appreciate any advice you might have.
The real worry, which it’s not too soon to start thinking about, is that at some point he’ll start being bored out of his skull at school. Getting his educational needs met will take constant parental vigilance over the years, and probably significant head-butting with school people. I’d want to get more details right now about exactly what this “advanced placement” will consist of. On the other hand, if he doesn’t have socialization issues now, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that later. They would only occur, if they ever did, as a symptom of boredom and frustration.
He’s in a great situation right now because he’s in a pre-school where most of his day is spent with kids who are between 2 and 5 (he’s four). The kindergartners do split off for part of the day, but he’s socializing with kid’s that are, on average, older than he is. So, his intelligence isn’t setting him apart because he’s behind a lot of kids, especially in coordination.
They told us that the public schools have no provision in kindergarten for gifted kids, but that they do have something starting in First Grade. So, we’ll keep him where he is until then.
I wouldn’t expect any problems until he’s put into a situation where everyone is his age and he might not be getting the stimulation he needs, and he might begin to feel “different” from his peers.
Had a similar situation with one of our daughters. Though probably not as advanced as your son, it was suggested in middle school that we put her in special classes with the other very advanced kids. At that point she was old enough to know what that involved, and she requested to stay with her current peers. Her way of compensating was to take the most advanced classes she could within her group and even several higher-grade level classes. Now in H.S., of course, they don’t offer that distinction. She takes AP courses. Having said all this, we know several students who were put into the separate advanced classes the first year of middle school, and they all turned out fine.
In your son’s case, he may be indeed super-intelligent. Had another friend with a kid like that. He had to attend a special school. Was a concert pianist with the state symphony orchestra at age 9. By age 14 he didn’t want to be “that kid” anymore and went back to public school to have a normal life. From what I hear he’s just a bright kid now who’s very happy in a public school. He probably realized he could save/use his extraordinary gifts later in life, but he didn’t want to miss having a childhood. It’s definitely a tough decision. Too much intelligence can make a child feel as isolated as too little, I suppose. Advice would be to take the teacher’s recommendations cautiously. There are no “experts” who know your son as well as you do, no matter what they might tell you in those meetings.
First. That’s awesome. Second, that’s awesome.
At some point, PRS had the same reaction to me and wanted me to skip the 4th grade. My mother had been skipped and had found it socially isolating. I would have loved it and would have jumped all over it had anyone asked. Our school (CP) combined grades in class, so a lot of my friends were older. Still kinda irked by how the decision was made (not much to do with me).
So, my advice is: when the time comes to make decisions – include the little guy (obviously the Finnster is a bit young ATM, but you get the idea).
PRS didn’t really know how to deal with either you or your brother. It’s kind of surprising, because you weren’t exactly the only gifted kids in the school system. But the only idea they had was grade-skipping.
Grade skipping and some limited “enrichment” programs often create as many (or more) problems as they solve. Ideally, an elementary school would have accelerated tracks for each subject – especially core math and language arts and also take gifted kids of the same age together through other subjects with teachers who actually have training and experience with gifted kids.
But the reality is that with the lack of resources in public schools there are some disturbingly ineffective workarounds that don’t address the needs of gifted kids very well.
Excellent points.
I wasn’t really gifted but did skip eight grade living in a rural area. Social adjustment at that age was easy (or just as difficult) going to a new school in the big city.
Btw due to our family moving quite a bit, I was no more than 2 yrs in the same school until college.
We always wanted our children to feel comfortable in school, so they had to like the classrooms and surroundings. We made the judgement as to the quality of teaching staff. Kids always need to be laughing at day’s end coming home from school. We have been critical and very Lucky.
Of course it’s hard to generalize, but both of my kids are classified as “gifted” by the public school. We opted to keep them at the 1-5grades in with their peers. Socializing at this age is much more important, IM not so HO, then advancing academically. My high schooler is in the top 5% of her 700 person class and is an incredibly well liked and well rounded kid.
I had some push back from my wife who comes from a family of exceptionally gifted people who couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag when the end is closed. (Pro tip, rip the fucking thing.) But I made an impassioned plea as I had the opposite problem as a kid – I was put in what they called in 1967 the “moron class” (never to our faces!) and it has had a life long impact on how I approach people and how I perceive myself socially.
Ultimately, it is my very firm belief that kids are a product of parenting and not the school system. So you need to be all in without ever seeming to be all in. You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em and know when to bring out the rhetorical hammer when the behavior needs correcting.
I’d agree with staying with peers. I was in the gifted program throughout public school, and could easily have advanced to one or two grades ahead. But by keeping me where I was, I ended up top in my class all the way through, and that’s quite helpful when looking for college scholarships, as well as making and keeping friends (my high school friends are still my closest – it’s an important age, socially, to a degree that can’t be understated).
And frankly, many public schools are moving toward more personalized options anyway, allowing students to move at their own pace. One thing to think about is potentially selecting a larger middle and high school due to more choice in classes that can better accommodate a gifted student.
What I hate to see is people who decide their kids are “smart” and transfer them to community college at the age of 16, where they languish in an environment that often isn’t conducive to high achievement (I do love community colleges, but this often isn’t a type of student they accommodate well). I don’t know how common this scenario is, but I have personally known three parents who have done this – all, coincidentally, arch conservatives – and their kids haven’t gone on to do anything particularly impressive going forward. They would have been better off sticking with HS and applying for a full ride at a four year school with their smarts.
Parents far more important than the school system. But back when we were raising our youngun, 30 yrs ago, the experts seemed to be emphasizing formal instruction to a great extent, including the importance of providing plenty of extracurricular activities to make up for school shortcomings.
As a result many of the kids from that era ended up heavily scheduled with instructional enrichment activities such that they and their over stressed parents left little time for the kid to have his own free time to explore and imagine. Big mistake.
Fortunately ours turned out ok in spite of some well-meaning but poorly counseled parents. Not quite Harvard like he and his mother hoped for, but Whittier College was fine for him. Good debate program too.
So, relax and don’t sweat the academic stuff in the early ages.
Our experience was that the most important learning for our children in the first three or so years of school (local public schools) was social: how to deal with life in a larger institution, how to deal with peers who are different, etc.
If/when school got “boring” for them, then we went and talked with the teachers and/or principal about how to make it more interesting. They generally were very receptive and came up with extra projects or assignments that were, in fact, interesting.
End result: young adults with fine minds and a whole range of social skills (and friends) that many of their peers who went to more homogenous schools haven’t yet developed.
My kid is a few years older than yours. He tested as ‘gifted.’ He’s not. He’s just smart. My sense is that there’s some sort of ‘grading on a curve’ thing happening (with elements of racial and class privilege), where smart kids are getting labeled gifted in a sort of ‘official’ way, for a variety of not-immediately-apparent reasons.
Obviously, your kid might actually be gifted. I think that’s a whole different thing. When my kid scored as gifted, there were suddenly meetings available to use about ‘how to raise a gifted child,’ and ‘challenges of raising a gifted child,’ and all that.
So my advice is, don’t sweat it. Give him 15 years, and he’ll be a well-adjusted disappointment to you!
Parenting never seems to end. My kids are continually a trial to me, and they are 23, 23, 27. On the other hand, my mom lives with us, and she is always nagging me to eat more fruit. She tries to guilt me to eat bananas. I am 61.
Mom parented/nagged until her final days at age 87. We had some lively exchanges as we were both firmly set in our ways.
On the bananas thing, I would counter your mother thusly: store-ripened bananas are very low in nutritional value, and are overly acidic to boot.
Do you have a link for this claim about bananas? It sounds like something your mother made up in her advanced years. Everything I’ve seen suggests bananas are a good source of B-6, C, Manganese and Potassium. Not sure what “overly acidic” is. They’re certainly not as acidic as an orange.
No linkage, but fairly certain it comes from Edgar Cayce materials, or books explaining his dietary prescriptions, read years ago. And overly acidic wd refer to how foods are processed inside the body, I believe.
And the industrial food practice of harvesting bananas well before they are ripe on the vine, leading to a shortage of nutritional value, just makes sense. They haven’t been allowed to fully develop naturally.
My sis used to work with kids with genius level IQ as a group. She contracted with her local school.
I remember her saying that socialization was an ongoing issue and one that since her school was already up to its eyeballs with issues it left untouched.
She found that kids with high IQ need to discover their passions, partly because they may share short attention spans with their age group and finding passions helps develop focus.
Passions can come from surprising places; dinosaur skeletons in a museum can lead to giant discoveries in science; music (for all the reasons we love it) can help share culture; star gazing and observatories, antique autos…but in the end it becomes the way that these kids learn to focus their learning and then share it that gives them balance.
Let’s face it, the most interesting people gain great satisfaction from never ending learning and then can develop the ability to relate it back in understandable formats to us lesser beings.
My everlasting favorite has always been Richard Feynman with his ‘The Pleasure of Finding Things Out’.
I skipped 7th grade. If I had to do it all over again, I would probably do the same thing. Yes, it affected my socialization, but kids know who the smartest in the class is and I was already kind of a loner at that point.
I have no children and can’t really speak to how the education system handles gifted children. If you’re worried about socialization in general, I think the key will be teaching him how to differentiate between those kids who will resent him for his intelligence and those who won’t care. There are plenty in the latter group.
If you’re going to skip, junior high is the time to do it 🙂
In terms of the “gifted” thing, my opinion is that it often involves reading at an early age. My daughter was considered gifted. She did OK in school, but is very awkward and has a hard time relating to peers. So, the socialization is important. We had her in “gifted” kindergarten and 1st grade, but after that, she just was in normal classes.
I raised two daughters who were gifted and worked with lots of gifted kids, teaching creative writing.
It was a mixed bag, frankly. The Madison schools were great, but didn’t really have much of a gifted program per se. But it didn’t matter, because every child was taught up to and above their abilities–no one size fits all. Then we moved to Ohio where there was a gifted program, but it was one day a week, at a different school, and the other four days were horrible. I ended up homeschooling my youngest daughter. They didn’t just teach to a common denominator, they taught to the lowest common denominator.
If they offer to advance your son, it’s probably a good idea. One of my daughters skipped a year of high school and did fine.
Each child is different, but I know of some real success stories of extremely gifted children who skipped a grade. I think social issues will crop up regardless of the grade level, frankly, but some gifted kids are extremely well adjusted–part of being gifted is having more empathy, at least in many cases.
Hopefully the public schools are good where you are, but as I found out, a school district’s reputation isn’t always the best indicator of its quality, especially for gifted ed. Look for a place that teaches to the individual, not to the entire classroom (individual spelling lists, math problems, etc., for example).
And count yourself lucky! Raising a bright child is a joy.
I have a fifth grader in a school for gifted kids now. It’s been an amazing ride so far. It’s rewarding but also stressful and challenging as a parent.
Intelligence involves a lot of components. It’s not just one number. Even “gifted” kids have some elements of intelligence that may be quite average or even below average. This is why many of us in this situation now use the term “asynchronous development”. Most gifted kids are not equally developed among the characteristics of intelligence.
So, the most vital piece of advice I can give it is this:
Have Finn tested by a qualified testing psychologist. And do it within the next 2-3 weeks so that you have plenty of time to plan for next year. Most of the time, this means the Wechsler test. The results writeup should include raw scores plus a few pages of analysis to indicate where Finn would excel most and what circumstances could give him trouble. It should confirm and enhance your insight into how Finn’s mind works.
This asynchronous development can create some emotional adjustment challenges for a child. In first grade, ours was functioning as a 4th grader in some ways and as a kindergartner in others. Sometimes that leads to severe frustrations.
I have two books to recommend, but I don’t remember the titles and need to locate the books first.
About school: For my daughter, the elementary school in our neighborhood simply wasn’t set up to help her. Most subjects were taught by one teacher. They did not make it possible to move to different teachers or levels of instruction for different subjects. They had a “program” for gifted kids but it was only a 40 minute/day “enrichment” period and involved missing most of recess (which every child needs for free play and recharging). The enrichment pull out session was conducted by educators who had good backgrounds in gifted ed. But her main teacher had little or no experience and tended to overlook my daughter’s gifted side and focus only on the struggling side. The challenges were not at the right level for her.
That was first grade. We had her take the Wechsler right after that. Many scores were in the 99th percentile but two were in the 50 %ile and 75%ile. It gave us a lot of insight into how her mind works and how we could help steer her toward the right kind of challenge.
Topping this all off, my daughter is a visual-spatial type of learner much more than verbal-sequential. She is also a kinesthetic learner. She needs more varied approaches than the local public school could give her.
So now my daughter is at a school dedicated to gifted kids. All her classmates are the same age but she knows some older and younger ones too. They all have similar struggles. She is academically challenged, has some great friends and is thriving. The downside is the cost, but financial aid has been generous. The public middle schools and high schools will have AP available for core subjects. I don’t know if that will be enough by the time she is in 12th grade, but there may be some flexibility for her to move on to college courses for 1-2 subjects she excels at during her senior year.
I’ll try to find the books, but meanwhile there is also a website that has a wide variety of resources – including an excellent “article library” on many related topics in gifted education:
http://www.davidsongifted.org/
Have to disagree. First, Finn is too young for the WISC. So, it would be the WPPSI-R. Quite possibly valuable (and do agree that it should be administered by a qualified psychologist) if a child exhibits problems or cognitive developmental deficits are perceived. But not for a bright, normal, happy, and thriving child. Charting a child’s future education based on a test taken at a young age could be damaging.
Should also not that psych testing is as much art as science. Or as my psych professor said to me, “You are the most sensitive instrument in the toolkit.”
Not sure if we’re agreeing, disagreeing or seeing from different perspectives. First off, we don’t know anything about Finn other than he is bright and Booman has concerns about his future ( “but it’s kind of scary when you realize that your child is in some sense not “normal” and has special needs” ). Actually, to be truthful, neither you or I know if a test is advisable.
But I get the idea you’re thinking of it in clinical purposes. I think the test could be useful to spot potential asynchronous development issues or to see if Finn’s brightness starts to reach the profoundly gifted range. It can be worthwhile knowing if those are present at an early age. The many subtests show how different traits of intelligence might work (or not work so well) together. I’m writing about this as value for understanding the shape of a mind’s intelligence and not just in clinical situations.
That’s why I specifically wrote “testing psychologists”. Psychologists without solid testing experience and without knowledge of local resources should be avoided.
And the Wechsler Preschool that you reference would be the right one of course.
Agreeing that if one chooses to have one’s child’s “intelligence” tested, it’s best done on an individual basis by a skilled psychologist for the one reason that the results would be more reliably accurate than group paper and pencil tests. Would I have my bright, healthy, normal child tested? Absolutely not.
At this point, I feel no need to have him tested for anything. He’s doing great.
I am not sure what kind of IQ he has, but he frequently startles me with his analytical mind. It’s humbling to be corrected on facts, both logical and empirical, by your four year-old son.
His ability to learn with very few iterations is astonishing. He learned the alphabet at and could together a alphabet puzzle in record time before he could walk.
When he arrived a nursery school at 2 and a half, he was teaching the four year-olds how to the same puzzle which blew the teachers away.
We have these magnets that you can use to build structures. He builds structures so elaborate that they wouldn’t even occur to me, and makes them faster than I could. When we build them together, he corrects me and shows me how to do what he wants to do.
I have discussions with him on things like gravity that are more appropriate for a teenager. His only real limitation with concepts like that is that he doesn’t have the foundation of ideas yet. But he can learn them.
So, I don’t really know where he is going to stand in terms of “being different.” I just know he’s really cool and fun to talk to.
If his classmates say the same, is there anything more that a parent could ask for?
That’s a mostly a function of brain development. Something that isn’t complete until we’re about twenty-five years old.
At four, his brain is at a prime stage to begin adding a second language if you haven’t considered that. It’s also at or near when he should be able to pass “the marshmallow test.”
well, obviously he has a ton of brain development ahead of him, but when I talk about understanding gravity, it’s not that he can’t understand it if you spend long enough with him. It’s that in order to understand gravity you also have to understand a bunch of other things. So, not too long ago we had a car ride in which I had to answer about 25 “why” questions about gravity because each new concept raised a new question. In other words, there is no simple way to teach someone about gravity if they haven’t already learned about mass and force and distance. They don’t have the language so you have to explain the concepts. He actually can learn the concepts, but that’s the main obstacle to talking to him about it that a fourteen year old would pick up quicker.
In any case, as you imagine, I had not anticipated that I would be getting peppered with questions about why bigger objects suck in smaller objects and how an orbit can be created and why the magnetic bond is strong enough to hold up one piece of roof but not two, and why the use of pillars is essential to construction of non-domed non-pitched ceilings…etc…with my son until he was perhaps a decade older.
Sounds of if Finn might be ready for Dad to begin performing science demonstrations. He’ll soak up the information and results. However, the abstract concept will come later when his brain has developed and reorganized for that.
Not unlike the marshmallow test. An elegant experimental demonstration of nature and nurture.
By age five, most kids have developed enough to successfully handle this test. However,
Yet, education can override the nurture deficit for these children:
The longitudinal studies on the long-term effectiveness of those taught to delay gratification won’t be complete for a few more years. Will they be indistinguishable from the natural and early high-delayers? Or still more like the low-delayers? Or in-between? Recognizing the nature-nuture is an interaction, the hypothesis should predict the “in-between” result. Like the high-delayers would be surprising but pleasantly so. Like the low-delayers would be disappointing but wouldn’t completely reject the hypothesis.
That’s a long-winded attempt to illustrate that there are maturation developments that should be respected but they are facilitated by one’s environment and education.
This.
Start your child learning a second language. I know there are private and public schools that will teach second languages at a young age.
There are very few things that can make the brain work “better” than learning a second language (and more) at a young age. Being able to attribute sound and visual symbols for similar concepts/ideas is a great way to keep your kid’s brain functioning at a high level, even if he isn’t being taught finite calculus.
Why is gaining better insight into how your son’s mind works a bad thing? Why would you not want to know your son better and be better positioned to guide him as he grows and learns about his own strengths and weaknesses?
Reject for the moment that synapse that just fired in your head associating “The reason to test is…” with “to find out what the problem is”. THAT is not what I’m talking about. That is the diagnostic/clinical mindset marie2 is also stuck at.
I’m talking about one human getting to know another better. On the bottom line, that’s all.
Now, if you already have a really good grasp of that and if you have good teachers that will also have the time and training to work with him, all will be well. Testing could be an expensive waste of time.
But stuff can happen and it did for us. I wish I could go back to before my daughter went to kindergarten and have her tested. We could have avoided so much hassle for all of us.
And I have anecdotes about my daughter that sound just like yours about your son.
I wish you much joy with your wonderful boy.
Well since you’re ignoring my responses, let me then say at a minimum what you should be doing is talking to someone locally who has expertise with gifted kids and educational alternatives in your area. I’m just urging you to be informed.
And casual comments on the internet from people that only have a superficial impression of Finn are not nearly sufficient for what is at stake. You know that.
I was helped enormously by being enrolled in an open school that served grades K-12, and generally had at least four grades in any given classroom. It allowed me to hang out with my age peers and learn with my knowledge peers. I don’t know that you have anything like that available to you, but mixed grade schools with some experience with gifted and talented students are can be a sanity saver when you’re reading and are capable of conversing six grades ahead of the kids around you but are still socially and emotionally with your age peers. Being in an open school environment allowed me to form long term friendships with kids my own age, some of which lasted from the early grades (I enrolled around the middle of second grade) through to now in my 40s.
Interestingly enough, when our youngest was in kindergarten, our year end conference was of a different sort. We were encouraged to have a full assessment done of our son which indicated it might be better for him if he repeated kindergartebn.
We decided against it due to the whole socialization thing. He was not the most outgoing kid around but did have some friends and we felt it would make matters worse if he were left behind while they moved ahead. We were warned that this might result in learning issues later on and to expect him to have to repeat a grade sooner or later.
He graduated high school on time, with several AP classes under his belt and received a full academic scholarship to college, then went on to get a PHD at Northwestern.
I think we made the right decision.
A high quality psych assessment would have pointed you in the direction that you took.
Enrichment activities are best done at home. School becomes the venue for broadening his skills beyond those he is most interested in, for social interaction, art, music, athletics.
In an educational environment in which schools, college, and universities have been reduced to being ticket punchers, your main concern with schools is ensuring that he deals with the BS standards that the states and school districts have imposed on the school with letting his aggravation with that get in the way of the ticket-punching function.
Then get his education and job skills (they are different) on the side.
Most libraries are your friend in this regard.
It’s a shame that politicians have made such a hash of public education, but that’s the way it is. At least you don’t have the dual problem of high function and dylexia or high function and attention deficit disorder. Most school districts have neither the resources nor the imagination to deal with these dual issues in learning. Especially when the kids that have them are quiet and well-behaved.
The best practice in education is to use what is known as “differentiated instruction” . That means using different methods and assignments based on the child’s preferred learning style, state of development, academic standing, etc. So some kids are for example given an assignment to do as a group while others do it alone or with a different expected output (a written paper or test vs a class presentation)
That makes for a lot more work for the teachers but it is pretty much what every school district says they are doing (to one extent or another).
One way schools do G&T is this way, so kids don’t get segregated or removed from the classroom because the are “smart or dumb”. And it helps kids who are smart but don’t perhaps learn well from the written word (or otherwise may have special needs) or kids who may not have higher skills but can process exercises without exhaustion.
My suggestion is to stay on top of how your schools and teachers are meeting Finn’s learning needs and styles and keep them on their toes. That said there is an absolute limit to what teachers can and will do so be prepared to fill in what’s needed. Getting angry with teachers won’t teach Finn a thing.
Finally, I am not a big fan of skipping grades. If I was two weeks older I would have been a year behind in school. I was always proud of that but later in life came to appreciate the effects of always being the smallest and least developed (mentally, emotionally, socially physically) kid in my class. That was true through HS. In the end there is no reason to rush.
Yes, absolutely, “differentiated instruction” is what I was describing in my earlier comment. Sadly, we only found one school that did that. We lived all over and experienced the best (Madison had one of the top six school districts in the country) and the worst, and lots in between.
Another thing they did in Madison–they didn’t use textbooks (until 7th grade) and they didn’t assign letter grades. I was shocked to move to Ohio and find out they gave letter grades in kindergarten! That was really the key to differentiated instruction. You can’t grade children who are all learning different things. Besides, the point is to learn, not to pass or fail.
It’s not required to do it, either. Year after year teachers and educators tried to get me into advanced placement in elementary and middle school (I believe it was called SCOPE). I repeatedly said no because it was more work for no reward and I was fine where I was.
Maybe that wasn’t the best decision to make, but it was mine. I did take AP in high school, but that’s for the college credit (reward).
I do remember in fifth grade having to write down definitions from books for certain classes and I always wrote them in my own words. One time when called on teacher was like “just read what’s on your paper and don’t try to impress me.”
In that sense sometimes it is better to go the other route, too. I didn’t give a fuck about impressing her, although maybe it was part of it. But ultimately writing it in my own words helped me understand what I was writing. The girl next to me had to tell her “that is what is on his paper…”
Excellent comments here. Agree that peer socialization is most important through elementary school. One task for smart kids is learning to value the non-academic abilities peers and to be patient with others as they struggle through various lessons.
The “gifted” label is probably thrown around too loosely. We accept that children develop physically at different rates and that’s also true for cognitive development. (Piaget’s work remains relevant.) The home and school environments in the early years play a huge role in readiness to learn what schools teach. It’s known that children from homes without books and parents with limited vocabularies begin school with a language deficit and that is compounded over the years because they start too far behind.
What more developed, advanced, or “smart” kids need is “more” and not different. As much supplemental material as they can and want to gobble up. Good teachers and parents know how to supply that.
At a purely technical (measurable) level, the term “gifted” is used for those with an IQ > 130. Roughly 2% of the population. It’s a blunt instrument that doesn’t actually discriminate between very smart and truly gifted. Very smart gets one through medical school but not a Nobel Prize in medicine. It’s also not very useful information if a person isn’t emotionally healthy enough. Parents should focus on that and not so much on how smart their kids are which today seems to lead to additional pressure on kids to perform well academically. Smart kids do well in good enough schools.
I completely agree that “gifted” and IQ scores are badly overabused. I also agree that for many kids around the IQ of 120-130, a decent public school with attentive parents monitoring progress works great.
But there is an either/or kind of assumption that has crept into a lot of the comments and I don’t see that as inevitable or even relevant for the situations of a lot of asynchronously developed kids. I don’t make a choice between developing my daughter’s IQ and her EQ. We don’t choose between grade level and socialization age level.
In fact we chose an environment that has the expertise to apply the different approaches necessary to nurture the intellectual and socio-emotional life of async developed kids – kids with a variety of profiles. When the Wechsler measured IQ is getting to be around 150-175, things change.
Our biggest challenge was learning some new parenting rules and having to take 40k out of our retirement accounts to get the young’un through elementary, until she could move on to a secondary school that offered a faster track more appropriate for the 3 subjects she learns quicker.
Please don’t interpret anything I’ve said as a criticism of what responsible and well intentioned parents choose to do wrt to their child’s education. My bias is that development is more a process of unfolding, assuming a nutritionally adequate diet and a secure and rich stimulating environment. (The all the kids are above average prejudice.) Those that for whatever reason are born with cognitive deficits, need more.
Weschler IMHO seems to top out at around 145. (Very smart but not scary or spooky smart.) The Stanford-BinetLF may do better up to 160, but it’s stronger in measuring the various abilities that make up the combined score.
More music in pre- and primary school would probably do more for the development of mathematical skills than all the stupid drills and tests we use instead.
I’m not detecting criticism. I think we’re looking at different pieces of the discussion. For example I think you’re probably right that a lot of parents in our society push the IQ and neglect the EQ (to paraphrase your last paragraph here: http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/6/4/93929/83078#27 ). But the opposite would be not be so good either. All aspects of child development deserve attention. Opportunities for development should be balanced challenges across the board of IQ and EQ components, IMO.
This diary is about Booman’s request, so I don’t know if that resonates for him or not.
It may be how you stated it, but I don’t see this:
At least, I think that doesn’t always work so well when the IQ is around 140 and higher. But it is also up to the “shape” of the intelligence (eg. subtest %iles) and how strong the EQ is for reconciling asynchronous devel. issues. A few rules change for teaching and for parenting.
Why not? It’s just a ranking/number on a human constructed test. And we’re not talking about child prodigies but normal kids in most aspects of their being. EQ to some extent drives IQ. Too little is harmful. Too much could lead to an inflated sense of self worth but don’t know that there is any evidence for that.
WTF?
Why not? Because my observations spending a lot of time with gifted kids convinces me of what developmental psychologists tell us: that as intelligence scores go up (eg. Wechsler 14 subtests) there is a stronger chance for asynchronous development and greater chances for struggles keeping up with socio-emotional development. The test numbers mean something, especially in relation to each other.
Do you understand why many gifted children can’t tolerate timed tests?
Have you ever seen any professional analysis of subtests on a Wechsler showing asynchronous development?
This has nothing to do with prodigies. This is all about normal kids.
In any case, I’m done trying to explain why having deeper insight into how a unique and normal child’s mind works is a good thing.
First,
IQ scores are relatively stable throughout our lives. Within a few points up or down depending on tester, test environment, etc. These aren’t achievement tests that can increase dramatically with good education, etc. At least for white, first language English people. If that weren’t so, their use would have been junked long ago.
Probably couldn’t find a single child that doesn’t exhibit some form of asynchronous development. In part a function of maturation, but also we learn early to attend more to those things that are easier or supply rewards than those that are more difficult and thankless. Those that mature physically more quickly and are larger and stronger and athletically advanced are at great risk for emotional and cognitive under-education. The basketball/football star/hero that can’t read is made and not born.
What I meant was the higher a person’s intelligence score is, the more chance for difficulties with async devel or issues found in profoundly gifted. I was not suggesting a single person’s IQ goes up in their lifetime.
Did you lose track of the context in the thread?
You don’t seem to have any experience with gifted kids in education – that I can detect.
And the best advice for Booman is that he talk to someone locally who DOES have experience with gifted kids in education. I’ve advocated for that. Why haven’t you mentioned that? Any responsible, experienced psychologist (as you try to imply you are) would do that.
Two things I left out about Wechsler testing.
My son is a certified genius. Our decision was to spend the big bucks and put him in a school with other “gifted children”. We could afford it but the school also offered scholarships to parents who couldn’t.
This was the ideal solution because he wasn’t bored and didn’t develop behavior problems. He stayed with his age group, got socialization skills, and didn’t get an inflated opinion of himself compared to others who were equally smart. He KNEW he was different, of course, and at age 13, he asked to transfer to a public charter school because, “I need to learn to get along with everyone.” He basically finished the curriculum for his HS diploma by 15 but continued by taking elective classes to stay with his gang of friends and date girls his own age. He solved his boredom by getting an after-school job in his intended profession–computer technology.
End of story, my son is brilliant AND socially well-adjusted. He is successful in his career and highly paid because he is a tech geek who doesn’t “act weird”.
I know from personal experience being a child with above-average intelligence in the public school system produced severe emotional problems. Being in “special classes” only added to my difficulties. My son married an equally brilliant woman and their solution for their children has been secular homeschooling. There are extensive networks available that could help you teach Finn at home AND provide many opportunities for him to socialize with other children. My oldest grandson has made the same decision as his father and will start attending a public charter school next Fall. But he already has the foundation of confidence and self-esteem to survive being ridiculed for being smarter than others. The key is not to make your child normal. It’s making him FEEL normal.
My 3rd grade daughter is highly intelligent and reads on an average speed of 253WPM. She has read All of the “Harry Potter” series She though has been diagnosed with ADHD. If she is not challenged mentally she is all over the place. Her 2nd grade teacher recognized that and told us to advise the 3rd grade teacher that she needed to be challenged all the time.
The Principal suggested she be in advanced classes.
In our school district that means transferring to a different school. It also means that there are few openings at this school. Thus the child is put under extreme pressure via testing and knowledge that must preform extremely well to be considered. My daughter handled the situation in an interesting way. She was not sure that she wanted to leave her current school where she was comfortable. Thus she scored way high on 2 tests,then on the simplest test she scored a 54%. When asked why she said I decided I did not want to leave my school.
We print out work sheets at home and time for reading daily.
Was what I experienced; I was swooped out of 1st grade and put in 2nd after a couple of weeks and it led to a mildly dislocated social relationship with other students throughout the remainder of my public schooling; right through high school, mostly on account of my age as I was young for my class in the first place.
Probably wouldn’t repeat that.
Things have changed. The smart kids really are taking over the world. Nerds, smart kids, and geeks are more popular while jocks and cheerleaders are slowly losing ground. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.
Keep feeding your kid healthy food.
Keep teaching your kid things whenever you are around him, and keep encouraging your kid to learn as much as possible without forcing him to do it.
Keep showing your kid love and acceptance and the difference between right and wrong.
And get your kid learning a second language (perhaps Spanish, Chinese, or another language that is financially valuable and also related to several other languages ((like Spanish)) ).
That’s about it. Your kid sounds well-rounded at four. Smart, intelligent, interested in knowledge, and able to make friends.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
As we can see from comments, the approach to gifted students is going to vary greatly among school districts. My boy is finishing 3rd grade in the Haverford School District, Delaware Co. Here the process is to test in 2nd grade. He tested very high and was placed in the gifted program, which for our elementary school means he has one 3 hr seminar per week with the other gifted students, focused on language arts and social studies. He also has an IEP (Individualized Educational Program), Its called a GIEP (Gifted IEP) but for paper-work purposes its the same as the IEP that any special needs child receives. This can turn out to be a very good thing.
In our case its good because my son started having a lot of inattention problems in his regular classes, anxiety and obsessional behaviors. The fact that he ALREADY has the IEP for the gifted program has helped a great deal in smoothing how we deal with these issues.
Our family’s other experience with gifted student education was that of my wife: she was tested at a similar age in Marple-Newtown, but there they placed their gifted students in a wholly separate class, and she blames this for problems socializing in her school.
Yeah, I know that they’re doing better. In my school days, they just skipped you ahead a grade so you could study on your level, without regard for the social consequences of being in classes with older kids.
I understand that “Our Man Finn” has allergies, perhaps severe.
I have above average IQ and severe allergies to plantspew and am an under performing academic disaster, largely related to the allergic effects.
Be mindful that if he seems to under perform, it may be the allergies
He’s mildly allergic to cow milk and has developed bad hay fever for the first time this year. His mother has asthma and sensitive skin and a pretty hyper immune system. But I don’t think his allergies are too debilitating. I’ll keep your advice in mind, though.