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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I'm not trying to be snarky or catty but I do have a contrarian perspective.  It is this:  if you look at long-term outcomes there are not a lot of prodigies who are successful adults.  There are some but they tend to be outliers.  If you don't believe me then start to do some research yourself.

And then think about all the quasi-regular kids who are accelerated for the super-TAG/AAP kind of things or who are home-schooled because the school systems cannot or will not move the child through the programs quickly enough for the parents.  Consider how many there are in school or home-schooled each year and then ask yourself how many you know about who are stunning the world as adults.  There aren't many.  So, yes, keep your kid active and engaged but set your goals on the long-term outcome.

My sister has a child who is PG (lowest score was 178) and multi-dimensional.  They chose a different route.  They went private at grade level.  It gave the kid an opportunity to socialize with peers.  Yes, there were times when the child was probably bored during the school day but the socialization aspect was more important.  The kid had a lot of after-school activities to keep busy and to exert energy.  The kid's parents required that the kid attend college for 4 years so the kid took 6 years and graduated with a bachelors, a Master's and most of the academic work for a PhD.

Why were my sister and her husband so rigid about this?  We have two older relatives who also are PG.  My sister and her husband made the choice having seen the experiences of the two relatives.  Their goal was to have a happy, well-adjusted adult after 21 years, not some frazzled, stressed out basket case.

I am posting as a many years super-TAG/AAP teacher.  I loved what I used to do but I will tell you that there were a lot of kids I wish could have been taken off of the hamster wheel.  Be thoughtful.  Be careful.  Good luck.
[/quote]

What you're missing is that families gravitate towards what their personalities allow. We all like different things and have different goals.
There are gifted individuals who do well in general education settings and gifted individuals who don't. There are children who are feel better in accelerated classes and others who are happy elsewhere. 
There are intellectual gifts and organizational gifts and emotional gifts, and all the combinations thereof. You might not accept that parents *usually* know what their children need, but then you don't live with them 24/7, do you?

And MOST OF ALL - it is extremely ignorant of you to presume that just because you don't "hear of" a gifted child beyond their childhood years, that they somehow were misdirected and did not live up to their potential!!! I work at NIH where some of the STEM-oriented gifted people find their niche. If ever you need cancer treatments, do you think it's only the one who won the Nobel in Medicine who was the child prodigy?!? Do you think it's only the one who wins the Oscar who is the acting prodigy? There are plenty of professions where nobody is ever famous outside of their field of work, and gifted people can and do end up in those professions.

My profoundly-gifted cousin works for an NGO. My profoundly-gifted nephew works in the roller-coaster industry. You will never hear of them.

[/quote]

LOL.  If -I- didn't hear of them because apparently neither did [i]any[/i] of the researchers who have studied the issue not hear of them, then are they really gifted and performing to "potential"?  Probably not.  On the other hand you, unlike your relatives, are being somewhat effective in demonstrating how dangerous anecdotal evidence can be because, as you prove, people like you give it credence and spread it without any reason or shred of proof.

Thanks for stopping by though![/quote]

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