Reply to S/O: If your kid is truly gifted, what could they do at a young age that made you suspect it?

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Reply to "S/O: If your kid is truly gifted, what could they do at a young age that made you suspect it?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsmith123][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is very difficult to suss out without a professional evaluating your specific kid.

I'll just give you my own experience:

Unlike PP's children, I was not reading Harry Potter-type books at 5/6 years old. I starting read by about 4.5, but it was simple books. That said, my parents got me tested for admission to a magnet kindergarten program; my IQ came out at 147.

I never had trouble in school, graduated from a top prep school with honors and from a top research university magna cum laude. Am I gifted? I suppose my IQ would suggest so, but I was certainly not the smartest kid in my high school (though it's an extremely selective high school). If my IQ is 147, [b]I would suspect I went to school with kids who have IQs in the 160s at least. 
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My 3 year old seems bright and inquisitive, but I'm really more concerned about her becoming a well-adjusted, compassionate and kind adult, than whether she is gifted or not. DH and I do not plan on getting her evaluated, unless it's mandated for a program we think she'd thrive in. [/quote]

That's really unlikely. Either you are underselling yourself (particularly common with women), or your IQ is very unbalanced, e.g. only moderately gifted in most areas but highly gifted in one area that does not come up often in daily life, like spacial cognition, for example. [/quote]

PP's description sounds very similar to me, and in fact there were multiple people at my high school with IQs in the 160 range.  I went to a public high school near a university and most of the professors' kids were pretty bright.[/quote]

Same.  Even so, I wouldn't say any of those kids I went to school with wre "truly gifted."  Just very, very smart (and some with very pushy parents, but not all.)  The only child I've ever met who I immediately said was "truly gifted" is actually the child of two of those HS classmates whose respective brains combined in an amazing way. This kid was drawing amazingly realistic and creative pictures when he was 5 years old - as in so good I actually wanted to ask for one to just keep for myself as art.  Art-art, not like "what a cute drawing."  It was truly astonishing.  [/quote]

I’m the PP who went to a very selective prep school. It was one of Andover/Exeter/Deerfield/Hotchkiss. Extremely difficult to get into.

I had a kid in my math class who contributed to the field of geometry with a meaningful original insight when he was in 10th grade. One of my other classmates curated her own anthropological exhibition when she was 16. She went on to earn a Rhodes Scholarship. Several got PhDs in fields like Physics and Biochemistry from Ivy League schools. The school had to offer open-ended seminars in math and all the sciences because there were routinely kids who would exhaust the entire curriculum (well past AP) before they graduated.

I’m a smart person who did well there and have succeeded in achieving my goals, but some of these kids were/are true geniuses. [/quote]

very smart very privileged kids. maybe one actually “profoundly gifted.” it’s very rare. [/quote]

I made the comment about it being unlikely to find so many 160+. I assumed PP went to the kind of highly selective school you would find across many of the major cities in the US. And, I assumed for the same reason that you did, based on statistics. While IQ isn't going to be evenly distributed around regions (there will certainly more in areas that draw in parents who are themselves very gifted), having multiple within the same school just sounds unlikely.

But after reading the responses, I think it's possible that the PP who went to one of those prep schools actually did find his or herself in a different kind of student body---they may be drawing from such a unique and possibly wide base of students that having multiple 160+ kids was possible. Getting a PhD from an Ivy League doesn't mean profoundly gifted or even necessarily highly gifted, but the geometry kid and the girl who curated her own exhibit sound like they definitely could be profoundly gifted. Most profoundly gifted kids don't have such accomplishments, so if there were at least two like that, there very well may have been some more "normal" profoundly gifted kids there too. 
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Prep schools are much more likely to have privileged kids, not “profoundly gifted” kids. They are more likely to be found in placed where a Philosophy professor marries a Physics professor. [/quote]

So I’ll just tell you: I went to Andover. I do think the kids there are different than the kids at excellent public high schools or even selective day schools, since Andover draws from all over the world. The only other place I can think of that would be equivalent to Andover, Exeter, and a couple of other NE boarding schools would be a place like Hunter College, which explicitly looks for profoundly gifted kids.

Yes, many of the kids at Andover are socioeconomically privileged, but not all. 50% of the kids are on FA, with the average FA kid getting 80% of the tuition covered.

Obviously I don’t know these kids’ IQs, but just looking at the course offerings—which go well beyond AP in math and science—and knowing what some of the kids did, I do have my suspicions. I am also comparing their intelligence to mine, knowing my IQ. I know they are, in many ways, smarter than me, so I would assume their IQs would be higher than mine. Therefore, their IQs are likely at least in the 150s. [/quote]

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