Reply to How long do you wait to tell someone that your child is gifted?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not to hijack this thread but I'm honestly curious, how does one go about finding out if their child is "gifted"?  Do the schools do routine testing based on identified abilities?  Or do parents ask for them?  My kids are still very little so I have no idea how this works.  I remember my own very bizarre experience of being pulled out of class sometime in elementary school to take some tests, then being put in some "gifted" program with some other kids, some of whom turned out to be really smart and some of whom turned out to be deadbeats (er...wasted talent?).  How does it work in this area?[/quote]

read the book Nurtureshock. It has some good points about why kids who seem gifted young don't end up that way. Here it seems they test the kids in second grade, and again in third. Something like 3% get put in the gifted and talented centers for fourth and fifth grades. From kindergarten, kids are clustered by ability within the classroom, and it seems like they re-check ability levels frequently. (in Montco anyway)[/quote]

Even that either is too young, or else hard work may count for more, as one PP noted. Using myself as an example -- I was never labeled "gifted" when we were tested in elementary school, and I was a good but not brilliant student through about 8th grade -- excellent in verbal subjects, average in math and science. And then from about the time I turned 14 it was like a switch turned on in my brain and suddenly math and science made sense. I worked hard, was first in my class 3 out of 4 years of high school, went on to be successful, etc. All of which I mention just to say that the gifted label, or lack thereof, did nothing to help or hurt me. I am not against tracking kids based on performance -- I was horribly bored in many untracked high school classes -- but I see no need to label them unless they truly show brilliance, which is rare. There was such a boy in my high school class, who got straight A's without ever taking notes or doing homework, while the rest of us worked hard. But that is one out of the 20 or 30 who were labeled gifted as young children.[/quote]

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