Very advanced children

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I just happen to have landed on a bunch of threads by parents with 'gifted' children, and one or two about parents who think their kids are more gifted than they are.

It's reminded me of an 18-month-old I once met, who talked more eloquently than most 7-year-olds can. He had a very enquiring mind, asking intelligent questions (I was at work) and telling me about stuff he'd learned. He could read and was good at arithmetic. He was a little charmer, really, a delight to meet - if somewhat wearing; he never stopped asking questions.

He evidently had the mind of a toddler despite his advanced skills. He was quite physically developed, though still within range for his age. His mother told me her biggest worry was that people couldn't help treating him as if he were older, expecting him to be more responsible or experienced than he was able.

One of my nephews suffered from this as a young child, too - nothing like the prodigy I've just described, but he was verbally advanced due to spending nearly all his time with adults and was also big and strong for his age. Kids shouldn't have to keep telling adults "I'm only three, I can't do that!" but he did have to.

I sometimes wonder how Prodigy Child turned out. His mum said she was prepared for his development to slow down until others caught up, but lifetime prodigies do exist and I don't think they always have an easy time.

Have you known any DC like this? What happened to them? Alternatively, feel free to share about the deluded parents of normal children you have known!

She’s not dyspraxic, doesn’t meet any criteria. Her fine motor skills are well ahead. She has excellent balance, handwriting, memory, rode her bike without stabilisers at 4. It’s only gross motor-running, jumping, throwing. It’s in the “normal range” for age but right at the bottom of the curve. She was monitored very carefully as a toddler because she wouldn’t walk but there’s no concerns.

The general consensus is that she’s very, very cautious and so won’t “let go” but physically she’s fine. But unlikely to have an athletics scholarship!

I worked in reception class and some children were far more able than others . As they all went through school the able children were just average and were overtaken by others . Children mature at different ages .
The so called gifted and talented group were often just named that for Ofsted I felt , and were just generally hardworking kids , bright but not genius and the numbers in the group were always the same (strange that)

@sunshinestar1986 unfortunately or fortunately it's just not true that "children just become what they are exposed to"

My son's class is full of children who are bright - sometimes scary bright, IQ160+ as far as they can tell (my son is nowhere near that) but who could not cope in a normal school. The most frequent giant problem was social - the high difference in IQ but beyond that, many of the children simply interacted in a different way to more 'normal' children, and not always better. In many cases, as far as I can see, many of the children are what old fashioned teachers call 'wilful' and don't play with others easily. The teachers don't get them, the other kids don't get them. They can have meltdowns at the (to us) oddest things, and demand their own way. They can end up bullied and school refusing. Sometimes they end up bullied not because of their own behaviour but simply because they've been cursed with an exceptional sensitivity and can't take ordinary rough and tumble in their stride.

With teachers who understand these kids, they can handled in a different (and honestly, having seen my son's teachers in action) extremely skilful way, based on what research exists on these TEO children (twice-exceptional). Without that some of them have literally ended up out of school, isolated, terrified of other children and on a trajectory to not cope, lifelong.

The parents btw vary wildly. Some are ordinary people, some carry their own scars, some only just function and a few are wildly successful. Sometimes the children gain their smarts from their parents and their parents have often struggled in the way that society functions now.

I think that’s because someone somewhere dictated that a certain percentage of children in each school had to be labelled G&T and provision put in place, so it was always 3-4 per class. G&T in one school would not be in another school, and some schools would have whole classes who would’ve g&t based on another school’s criteria. It was a bit bonkers 😂

Do you mind me asking, knowing he was an advanced speaker and very able early on, how did you continue to encourage his abilities? Did you sign him up to special activities or programmes? This is where I am completely clueless. We go to libraries, museums and Art Galleries but I feel I am missing something.

That’s interesting and I have to say, does ring a bell x

There was a trend in the 90s to register some g&t children as sen to give them extra support.

Children at either end of ability (ie G &T or have limited academic ability) are screwed by our schooling system. G & T children can get bored very quickly, and that can lead to behaviour issues or school refusal, children who are crap academically, can be disruptive or school refuse. (I work with both ends of the scale). It means many children never fulfil their true potential. I hope one day we stop trying to make children fit school, and instead see school work for these kids. There are also a number of children who are ‘late bloomers’, and these children are also penalised by our current educational system. Personally I think 16 is far too young to decide on capability, and GCSEs results only show a very narrow field of ability.

I hate that saying normal Children there's no such thing as a normal child. As a mum of 2 both neuro diverse. Neuro typical is the preferred term.

There was a lad at junior and secondary school in my year. He always knew the answer to everything and explained it so well. Teachers would only ask him if nobody else knew to give others a chance to answer. His cousin was in our year as well but he was average. He was quite geeky him and another lad used to do inventions together.

I don't know what's happened to him since he left school. I have looked him up on Facebook but I wasn't really friendly with him at school. Not that he wasn't a nice lad he was. His Facebook says he still lives in the same town and he rides a motorbike. He has had a couple of children doesn't say where he works or anything like that.

@Queenoftartts on any bell curve, the bulge in the middle is 'normal'. Norm is a statistical term for an average, and of course most children fall within the average on all metrics. This is how we know if a child's percentile height, weight, etc is OK, and how milestones are established.

If we didn't know the norms, you wouldn't know your children are ND! They're divergent from the average (norm) in neuro-processing.

While exceptionally high and low intelligence are neuro-diversities, strictly speaking, the term has been appropriated for autism-spectrum conditions. If someone referred to a well-functioning child with an IQ of 160+ as ND, they'd be accurate but not correct: you'd assume they meant their little genius had autism. The child's IQ is abnormal, is all.

My sister was talking (proper sentences) and walking before she was 1. She was moved up a year at primary after a raft of psychological assessments and IQ style tests pegged her as G&T. She probably sounded older than she was but looked younger (very short) so perhaps it evened out. She's now extremely successful (and rich) and works in an academic area. Obviously I'm delighted for her 😂

I have a MENSA-tested IQ of 154. I didn't even go to university when I left school, and I only passed 2 of my 3 'A' levels. I was a chronic underperformer until my late 20s, when I completed my BSc, followed by MEd in my 30s and MA in my 40s, and now in my 50s I'm highly respected in my field of work (which I didn't anticipate was going to be my field of work, at all) and I'm working on my doctoral thesis. In my 60s, I'm going to retire and live somewhere warm and it will all go to waste 😂

I'm 100% sure I was a pretty unremarkable child.

DH was truly a gifted child, he took all his O levels early and got 13 at grade A and then his A levels when 16 and got all A grades, he did 4 including further maths. He then worked in a laboratory for 2 years and went to Cambridge to take his UG degree and his PhD. He ended up being head of a University dept in a STEM subject. His Mother did take him for an IQ test and I can't remember what the score was but it was ridiculously high.

So he stayed in a field where being a bit different was very accepted and he is a little bit like that himself. I also worked in HE and whilst certainly above average I have met some truly gifted people over the years. It does mean when I have heard people talking about their very clever children usually they are certainly above average but not exactly rocket scientists.

He was one of the worlds leading experts in his field and it’s nice when you have opened a newspaper and seen him quoted or he has popped up on the Tv being asked his opinion. But I’m thinking that man still doesn’t always shut cupboard doors or drawers. He retired a year ago but does still do some consulting and work and thank God because he is quite restless. He actually hardly said a word till he was almost 4 and then came out with incredibly complex sentences way beyond his age. When I was PG I said I hope I have a child as clever as Mr ViciousCurrentBun and his Mother said no you don’t.

To be fair a Mensa tested 154 is a standard IQ tested 132 - top 2 percent rather than top 0.001 percent.

Mensa uses tests with a standard deviation of 25
Standard UK measures (WISC, BAS) use a standard deviation of 15.

Hey,

Very similar to DS1. Maths teachers all acknowledged they probably didn't teach him much. He's final year of his Maths degree (didn't go to Oxford, wanted a diff RG university) & doing brilliantly, but he says that his friend who will no doubt get the top of the year is like a genuis level that is amazing to see - he seems to just 'see' the Maths. He also says he's probably autistic- DS1 who is firmly NT but with 2 ND brothers can recognise it pretty easily. He also says the other 2 wildly clever ones are ND too.

Interesting! I’ve always tested highly on standard IQ tests (137-146) and wondered whether I should try a Mensa one but I think I’ve decided that I wouldn’t like to get in by the skin of my teeth and be one of the stupidest people in Mensa 😅

I cared for a little boy a few years back who was really intelligent. When he was 2 he came home from a family City Stay in Barcelona & told me all about some big Cathedral he's visited. All the history of it etc. I had to Google it to know what he was talking about. He spoke quite a few Spanish words & phrases after his week there. Another time I asked him to put his jacket on. He corrected me saying 'It's a Gillet'. When he started nursery at 3 his Mum mentioned that he was getting bored very easily. He wanted to do experiments with Mentos sweets & coca cola while the others were sticking glitter to a toilet role tube & wanted to read Harry Potter books & not My first words & shapes books.

The Government were trialing a new learning style called ITA writing & reading where you spelled words as you said them & there was a little squiggle symbol for 'ING' at the end of a word. I could write quite well from the age of 4 & have always loved reading so I'm not sure if it helped or not.

It didn't. I taught ITA; the children's learning trajectories were the same as if they'd been learning with the standard alphabet. The big difference was that there were no anomalous spellings - it was strictly phonetic.

However, they then had to learn that the reading & writing they'd mastered was not good enough! This permanently demotivated many children. There was no natural transition from ITA to standard - the kids who handled it best were those able to see how the ITA graphemes related to standard letters, but they'd have been the quickest literacy learners anyway. It was widely held to have damaged literacy for that cohort.

I did ITA too! I’m also good at reading and writing but I was speaking to an education professor and he said it was ineffective and confusing for most kids so it was abandoned after a few years.

Stanford Binet has a SD of 16 so I'm not sure which test you're referring to (although I'm not really interested...and I am qualified to administer and score psychometric tests).

British mensa historically has tended to use Cattell 3B and Culture Fair both of which have std dev of 24.

Hth

My middle child was identified in the first years of primary school as “ gifted and talented “
Their teacher had a meeting with me and directed me to an educational program we might be interested in .
She gave advice but of course we agreed that my child needed to be willing to do this .
Response was “ why would I want to do this when my life is very good just as it is mum ? “
They did well at school throughout the years but I never pushed them .
Just made sure they had a good environment to work in and tried to expose them to different environments , experiences and one or 2 extra curricular activities.
None of my children had a busy schedule because there were 3 of them and life was busy enough. So they all did 2 things each that was it .
This particular child is happy enough in life now but did go through a period of anxiety but that was health related ( they have a lifelong health condition)