Reply to Teachers, is it true that most of the parents you deal with think their children are 'gifted'?

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Reply to "Teachers, is it true that most of the parents you deal with think their children are 'gifted'?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes!  Through my job, I have learned that the majority of parents believe their children are gifted.

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Well, of course I think my child is utterly remarkable, but I didn't think my kid was gifted when the school classified him as such in a first area, and I still don't now that he's classified in yet another area.  He's curious and bright, but gifted? Nah.
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This. Both my children are clearly more wonderful (to me) than any other children in the world. They are both objectively bright and both were identified as eligible for gifted services. But I think only one of them is gifted, in the sense of really having a different way of thinking about things and really having special talents that distinguish him from the crowd. My other child is curious and bright and quite intellectual, but not [i]different.[/i] [/quote]

Why must "different" be a qualifier for "gifted"? I have two boys who tested within three or four points on IQ tests. One is a complete oddball. The other is the most well rounded "normal" everybody-loves-him kid around. Their intellectual capabilities are quite similar. Is my oddball the gifted one and my normal kid merely bright?[/quote]

I think a good number of kids are very bright, and a high quality school system generally serves them very well. A very, very, very small number of kids are off-the-charts bright (genius), or are very bright (maybe not genius) but different in the way they learn and/or think about things (this would include children who are smart but struggle with learning disabilities). That same high quality school system often doesn't work as well for these kids. I think of "special" education as something that should be designed to serve the needs of kids who aren't well-served in a regular classroom--both because they struggle with learning disabilities/difficulties and because they are "gifted." My "merely bright" kid excels in a regular classroom; he doesn't need special services to do well (though he enjoys them). My "gifted" kid chafed against the confines of the regular elementary school classroom and clearly ached for a different approach (though he had no learning issues at all). He was well-served by special services for gifted kids (though he could have used much more of them; if we could have afforded it, a private progressive elementary and middle school likely would have been a better environment for him. Happily, he has thrived in our public high school.).

JMO.[/quote]

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