Anonymous wrote:My kid isn't gifted. She's pretty smart and picks up new concepts quickly, but bottom line is she's just a normal, bright kid. She's never going to need to skip a grade or take college classes in 7th grade. Her wppsi scores were extremely high as I'd expected them to be, but I think that truly gifted children are really rare. They're the kids who go to MIT at 14, not kids who are the top 1 or 2 in a class of 28.

I completely agree with this. Which is why I'm glad they've changed the name to "Advanced Academics."

Anonymous wrote:Aha: http://www.joannejacobs.com/2010/02/gifted-at-4-ordinary-at-17/

But be sure to read two paragraphs further in the article where Lohman explains that even with those long term instabilities, the tests are still valuable predictors of children's intelligence. He just thinks that children should be tested more often, so that gifted programs have the current top scores.

Here is Lohman's paper: http://faculty.education.uiowa.edu/dlohman/pdf/Gifted_Today.pdf

Anonymous wrote:I'm of the belief that truly gifted children aren't bored in school.

Hahhahahahahahahah. Clearly you haven't been inside a school in a very long time.

I don't. Smart enough little boy (almost five), very proficient with language and vocabulary, but nothing out of the park. I admit I'm going against myself at his age, and I was "gifted" (not prodigy) and very bright and quick on the uptake. I read very early and have always been very good on pattern/process recognition which is why I was always able to ace standardized tests.

I'm fairly normal today. I'd like my son to be quicker on the uptake, but I'm not going to overthink this right now.

I want to add to PP who discussed gifted in terms of being able to not be bored in the classroom. I used to be a teacher's assistant in a gifted and talented enrichment program and there was a range of types in there, who had different need. The first was like me -- very bright, enjoys school, and what you have to do is just make sure the program can go as quickly as they can absorb it. That's the kind of student I'd like to have. There were also the rare geniuses who really had trouble in a school/structured environment and usually had social challenges as well. They needed one-to-one attention to function and were a greater challenge to teach, although I enjoyed working with them. It was hard, however, to have both kinds of kids at the same time. To be honest, I didn't see it as all that much of a blessing.

I would guess that 95 percent of the parents on here who have gifted kids, have the "really bright" kind. Nothing wrong with that but the whole universe doesn't need to be reconfigured to teach those kids -- needs more tweaking and understanding. I read the AAP discussions and shake my head. I am thankful that my county doesn't really institutionalize this all that much.