''Gifted Children'' - Where Are You Now?

In My Humble Opinion
201

OK, A Zombie thread but an interesting one so I’ll throw in my bit.

I don’t know if gifted is the right term, lets just say I was smarter than most although a few years back my cousins wife who is an academic asked me to participate in a research project she was doing on gifted children. I said ‘No’.

I taught myself to read before I went to school. My grandparents used to read to me and point at the words so I started off memorising the sound that went with the word and progressed from there. When I was 5 I was bored so I sat on the back step and counted out loud to 1000. Things like reading maths and logic came easy.

I grew up in a small country town in Australia in the early 70’s. No such thing as a gifted school program round there so I did the normal local government primary and secondary school gig, and did it easy.

By around 8 I realised that my vocabulary was more advanced than any of the other kids in primary school, and half the teachers, so I deliberately started to dumb down my speech. When you’re correcting your mothers pronunciation at age 7, you don’t need to be told you’re smart. If I was ever tested at a young age, know one ever told me I was better than anyone else.

I learned Piano and pretty much breezed through high school. A mate who was also a mate of a kid who’s dad taught at the school told me that somehow the IQ tests we must have all done at some point early in high school were being discussed and the other kid overheard them say I had the highest IQ in the school at that time. May have been true, may have not, don’t really care.

Finished high school with second highest marks for the year. The kid who beat me studied his butt off the whole 2 weeks break we had before the exams, I spent it playing golf and drinking.

I don’t have no drive or ambition, but I’m not driven either. My desire always was to do well enough to be comfortable. No desire to be rich or famous, as long as I had enough to be comfortable I’d be content, so I did the amount of work required to achieve that outcome, no more.

I never went on to tertiary education, instead I got a secure government job in the nearest big city (Melbourne), left home and went to work. I worked there for 20+ years by which time I was in a good job in Human Resources earning just over $100k. I left there and went to a different kind of government job, still in HR.

I don’t have any social awkwardness although I did when I was a kid. I just figured out young that there are all different kinds of people, so hang out with the ones you feel comfortable with. I am naturally an introvert though so spending too much time around people drains the hell out of me. I need quite time alone with a good book and a few beers. But I’m proud of the fact that i can and do relate easily to people of all different types and educational levels. I can dit in the board room in the suit and tie, or in the bar at the footy with the drunken yobbos and I fit in.

So where am I now?

Been Married, Been divorced, had kids.
Kids are now adults and live with me in the house I’m paying off (drew back on the mortgage a couple years back to build an extension).

I’m comfortably single, in a good job, happy with life and comfortable with how everything turned out. I still get to coast a bit in the job because I know that when I have to flick the switch I can produce more in a few hours than most people I know can do in 2 days.

Could I have done better? Probably, but I always valued my personal time. For me the amount of extra effort required to really excel wasn’t worth the rewards.

I’m happy.

202

I’m surprised I didn’t post in this on the first go-round, but I guess it’s because my input is kind of redundant. I was “gifted”, but also undisciplined and lazy, extremely insecure, friendless, and terrified of failure. Now, I’m doing fine, more or less, and am for the most part satisfied with my mediocre successes. You know, the usual.

Anyhoo, I thought this Washington Post article might be of interest here. It’s about the continuing expansion of the gifted and talented program in Fairfax Co., VA., both in number of students and scope of academic mission. In the 2012-13 school year, nearly 17% of the county’s 3rd- through 8th-graders qualified for the program. It’s no longer even called G/T, but rather “Advanced Academics”, which, according to the author, “reflects broader eligibility standards that include not just gifted kids but also high-achievers and hard workers deemed able to meet the challenge.” While I think it’s certainly a good thing to help each student do their personal best, it’s problematic for me that the help is being provided in such a stratified, competitive fashion. What kind of message are they sending the kids in “regular” classes - particularly those whose parents push them to test into the AAP repeatedly, and yet they’re still unable to get in? And as for the rapidly growing number of students who do get in, are they still getting a worthwhile experience as the program becomes less and less exclusive? Here’s a pithy quote from one (anonymous) mom:

Some interesting discussion in the comments, too.

203

I’m not gifted. I was labeled as high average, which is sort of a bi-intellectuality. I can go both ways, but am not fully embraced in either group. Too dumb for the smarties, but too smart for the dummies. Sitting on the cusp in IQ limbo. I can sometimes create the appearance of being smart, but that doesn’t fly with truly smart people. You guys usually see right through me.

204

I thought that said “Grilled Chicken”…

I was reading from a distance and thought I was in Cafe Society.

I guess I’m hungry.

205

Grilled chicken from the year I was born, where are you today???

206

I truly apologize, but I wasn’t going to read 5 pages of posting. Just lazy I figure. Maybe that or the fact I was diagnosed as dyslexic when I was in 5th grade. I was given major intervention by the school district and ended up in advanced placement classes by the time I got to high school. IQ testing was done at various stages in my educational career and it was always in he range of what is now considered “gifted”. I was never in the “gifted program” because it was only offered in elementary school back in the old days. Unfortunately when the school system realized I wasn’t a “short bus” candidate I actually had to work in school. 4 years of college, 5+ years of graduate school and a wall covered by diplomas, certificates, degrees later I was still a struggling reader.

But knowing I had a high IQ gave me a sense of confidence. So, I did just fine. :slight_smile:

I was never treated as “gifted”, was one of 6 kids and grew up in a very typical middle class family. Dad was probably “gifted”, was a graduate of Warton School of Business and was successful in his work career. But he was never really happy because what he wanted was to be a craftsman. He became a great furniture maker after he finished raising us kids and was able to retire and explore his passion.

My dad always encouraged me to use my gifts and follow my dreams. That was likely because he wasn’t able to until later in his life.

So, what was the question? Oh, where are you now? I’m in a good place. Being gifted gave me opportunities educationally which then opened doors for me professionally. It didn’t work put well for everybody, but it did for me.

207

We didn’t have gifted programs when I was a kid, and we didn’t have ADHD, either. I know what my Stanford-Binet IQ was because my eighth grade teacher told my parents, and when I take online and other versions I come in the same, +/- a few points. I won’t say what it was; suffice it to say that I was a disappointment to him and them.

I spent a few decades further up the corporate food chain than I am now–I am a telemarketer and it would be hard to go much further down–but at no point did I “live up to my potential.”

208

This is awesome and totally worth a zombie resurrection.

I think I’m finally comfortable with the level of intelligence I’m at. I no longer feel the need to prove myself. I know I’m smart. I know for damn sure I’m not the smartest. I am a damned idiot about certain things. But I feel like I get by pretty well. I feel like I can handle whatever is thrown at me, and that’s what matters the most in my life.

209

Hi. Ninety-ninth percentile tested, National Merit Scholar, knocked a year and a half off of college “gifted kid” here. Got accolades for creative writing on a national level. Wasn’t valedictorian. Was the highest testing kid in my year. Once got a D- in Latin for a quarter where A.) homework was 40% of the grade and B.) I turned in zero assignments.

So, here’s the thing about possessing those attributes that collectively make up the gifted kid label: they are not the only factors necessary for having a successful life. I never learned how to work hard when I was young, because everything school-wise was easy. I suffer from mental illness. I have some crippling self-esteem issues. I’m not very good at parking.

As of right now, I’m working on my master’s, with an eye towards applying to PhD programs in the fall. But it took a while to get here–I graduated with my BA at twenty, just turned thirty, and went through a marriage/divorce–and I’m constantly scared that I’m going to somehow fuck it all up. By contrast, my sister, who was never labeled as “gifted”, but is smart and works hard, is in a much better position than I am (though, as far as I can tell, she didn’t quite hit the mood disorder jackpot like I did, but that’s not really a valid excuse, and I don’t want to use it as one).

That being said, the things that mess me up are genetics, a shitty home situation growing up (in a different way than my sister’s), and an inherent aversion towards hard things, none of which were the fault of the gifted classes I was in. I’d be worse off were it not for them, I think.

210

I see that I didn’t post in here yet. I guess I would qualify, even if there were no “gifted” programs for me in the schools I went to. I was reading street signs when I was 3 or 4, and flabbergasted my parents when I was 6 during Christmas after I looked at a globe and realized that there is no solid land mass at the North Pole for Santa Claus to place his castle on, and walked in one evening and announced to them that Santa doesn’t exist.

But with said giftedness came a lot of isolation from my peers (as in incessant bullying) and attempts to “norm” me by my teachers. One graded me much harder than a slower boy in the same class, which pissed my dad off something awful (but he didn’t get the hint and yank me out of the place-Catholic parochial school). As a result, combined with my innate sensitivity, I was an emotional basket-case by middle school, and had no drive, ambition, interests, or self-confidence at all. High school GPA was 2.5, I routinely crammed the night before exams.

Only in my late 20’s did I find the spark that got me going, and went back to college and got highest honors in zoology, but subsequently went into teaching and found I was great at it.

211

I don’t know why this is so earth-shattering or worrisome. “Gifted” has always been relative, as it should be. I sincerely doubt the cut-off for “gifted” in Rural Bumfuck with a median household income of $38,000 is the same as the cut-off for Major Metropolitan Area Suburb with the median income of $80,000. And if I’m wrong and it is, then this doesn’t make any sense to me. The “base-level” educational offerings in Bumfuck will always be inferior to Major Metro Area Suburb. There will always be a higher proportion of high test-scoring kids in Major Metro Area Suburb than in Bumfuck. These things alone necessitate different criteria.

It has been my experience that the vast majority of gifted youngsters are already receiving “exclusive” experiences by virtue of their socioeconomic status and the tendency for the gifted to beget gifted children. For every gifted child who has never been to a stage play, visited a museum, gotten to learn a foreign language, or gotten to make a volcano erupt, there’s two or three “above average” children who have never done these things and will never get to do them. I’d love to see an approach that stops with the “exclusivity” bullshit and simply targets kids who will benefit the most from advanced enrichment activities. Using just a test score to evaluate such a complex measure is ridiculous.

Disclaimer: I was never identified as gifted, but generally tested high and always performed well in advanced coursework. And because of this, I am a bit resentful of the notion that I didn’t “deserve” the extras generously given to lower-performing peers who simply managed to hit the lottery on standardized tests. So I’m in 100% agreement with a more holistic, more inclusive program like the one being offered in Fairfax County. Anything that rubs the “BUT WE’RE SPECIAL!” crowd the wrong way is OK with me.

And as far as “competitive and stratified” go…the traditional model for “gifted” is even more competitive, especially since nowadays parents can get their nursery-schoolers trained to take tests. But aside from this, it’s more competitive because the factors that make a child eligible for test-based gifted programs are already at a premium. If you don’t pick the right set of parents, the right month to be conceived, the right prenatal diet, the right care-giving, the right preschool, the right kind of socioeconomic class…you can wave goodbye to your chances of being identified as “gifted”. I’d much rather have a system where all the planets don’t have to be lined up perfectly for someone to receive useful interventions.

If it’s inevitable for our system to be competitive, I’d rather have the competition stacked in favor of individual merit instead of mere blessings of birth. This would be more consistent with how the “grown up world” works (or at least is supposed to), and it would actually make some pragmatic sense (who is more likely to make for a good ROI…the slacker kid who couldn’t give two shits about learning how to program or make a Thomas Jefferson diorama…or the kid who is enthusiastic about both?)

212

Did the gifted thing. My IQ measured 98th percentile. Highest SAT in my graduating class. Flunked out of state liberal arts university after 1 year. Will have a BA next year at Age 35 after attending 7 colleges. Have never made more than $14,000 in a year from employment (maybe hit 20 total with Unemployment included). Highest hourly wage was $9.75/hr 9 years ago. Never had employer subsidized healthcare. But I guess on the bright side I’m still alive after being born with severe social anxiety disorder and going through a lot or child abuse At the hands of stepfathers after my biological father left before I was born. After 20 years of beig suicidally depressed I’m actually feeling well these days.

213

I read and watched films far above my age level, and was in the G&T program in elementary, and was in honors/AP for math, science, Latin, partly English, but not social studies. I do think G&T was helpful to me psychologically as it helped my self esteem. It didn’t really help me in any real practical way other than giving me an early drive to seek the greater perspective.

I did OK in college, but I suffered from a lack of real focus - I was too interested in too many things, and my interest was more academic than career related. And I spent a lot of time growing up and finding myself. Eventually I got sick of school and just wanted to get on with my life. I also suffered from a lack of emotional intelligence, and it took me a long time to figure out on my own how not to be sidelined by my interior life. And it also took a long time to get over my aversion to physical activity. I’m now back in school, having made some headway on the things that were holding me back, and having figured out a tighter focus for what I want to do.

I guess being gifted in some ways did help, but it was offset a lot by the areas in which I was lacking. I think being well rounded and being well versed in maintaining physical and psychological health are at least as important.

214

I pretty much peaked in grade school. Always by far the highest scorer on every standardized test. Was in a couple of “gifted” programs offered by Chicago schools. One in 7-8 grade was a 1 day/week for one kid from each school in the district - we all reported to a different school. The other was 1 afternoon a week at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Then in HS, my lack of any study habits/motivation knocked me out of the honors classes freshman year. Got through undergrad at a state college with mostly As. Went the path of least resistance majoring in PolSci. Scored really well on the LSAT, so got into a state law school.

Flash forward 27 years and I’m a federal administrative law judge. Pretty happily married the past 27 yrs, with 3 pretty decent adult kids.

At times I wonder what I might have accomplished had I ever tried hard at ANYTHING.

But life is good.

215

In 3rd grade our school district tests for admission to its gifted program. My Mom got a phone call: “Your son got the highest score our district has ever seen! Whatever you do, don’t tell Septie.” Of course she told me as soon as she hung up the phone. :smack: Some of my scores and contest results in High School were phenomenal, well above 99.99 percentile. I can’t take much pride in this – it was genetic. Given my potential, it makes more sense to have great shame for how limited my career accomplishments ended up.

I didn’t need to study in High School. 1st-period assignments were done in 2nd-period while I ignored the teacher; 2nd- in 3rd, etc. A few A-minuses for misbehavior prevented me from being Valedictorian, and extremely poor social skills kept me from being voted “Likely to Succeed”, but as I left High School, most assumed I’d end up as a Professor of Mathematics.

The downhill spiral my life then took is best left undetailed. Suffice it to say that I’d have eventually been institutionalized one way or another were it not for a few strong skills like computer programming. Despite a late start, much silly zigging and zagging, and an almost-autistic focus on abstruse thrills rather than personal ambition, I was lucky that a few well-paying years, frugality and decent investments led me to comfortable early retirement. I even picked up 30+ U.S. patents along the way, a factoid I trot out to demonstrate that drugs in the Flower Power Era didn’t completely destroy my brain. I still dabble, to stave off Alzheimer’s, recently noting a 2012 computer science paper that references help I provided via another Internet message board.

AFAICT, many of the other “gifted” students in our district (30 per year) also “fizzled.” One who did become a Professor later killed himself. The classmate who seems happy and wrote a high school-level physics textbook wasn’t even in the “gifted” group: his science study came from personal ambition, not testing success.

216

I was one of those gifted kids. Had a great time of it in the special classes as I got to do all sorts of fun things like physics, algebra, logic puzzles, reading actually interesting books. I didn’t appreciate having to learn Latin at the time, but I’ll admit it helped a whole lot.

I ended up doing poorly in elementary/middle/high school because their attempts to force organization and busywork (homework) on me made me resentful and didn’t logically compute for me. I wasn’t so hot at conforming just because they said it was good for me. Studying consisted of reading the specified test chapters 2 days before and again 1 day before the test. Did not fail me all the way through college. This meant that I found no logical reason to keep my completed homework around, and thus failed a large chunk of my grade at the end of the year when I could not produce an entire year’s worth of work, organized, for the teacher to grade AGAIN. (I STILL do not understand that unique grading torture) That and I consistently forgot to do homework. More like I was resentful that I had to go to school 8 hours a day and then was expected to work MORE at home. My parents worked normal 8 hour days and did not have to take work home with them, so I was resentful of their freedom after work. I was a C+ student as a result of high test scores and shitty homework. I was also bullied to the point of considering suicide in middle school. High school’s load of busywork made me feel trapped and depressed even more. College was a freeing experience. I actually had REAL work to do, stuff that mattered to my future and would be considered when getting jobs. Stuff that interested me and actually had me use my brain to figure out solutions for because there were no pre-made equations to plug in. I finally could set my OWN schedule. I WASN’T expected to work for 11 hours every day at nothing. What I was doing WASN’T just a rehash and repeat of what scientists, mathematicians, and literary critics figured out a hundred years ago. I worked through my demons developed by the confines of high school there and emerged on the other side very happy. My independent nature finally, FINALLY, had a chance to breathe. I realized how much elementary/middle/high school felt like prison.

Considering that I graduated right at the start of the current recession and nabbed a job within 6 months, I consider myself successful. I scrambled my way up the ladder of mom & pops and I’m now I have a job completely related to my field, as opposed to partially. I’m now the head (read: only) graphic designer at a sign shop, being praised every day for my designs that are put up on business fronts around the county. I can’t do everything I’m capable of here; I’m looking to move on now that I’ve gotten my first few years of experience in and see if I can land a position as a junior designer at a design house, or heck, anything where I’m making things that are a little more original and creative than the local sign code. I support myself and my husband and have no debt to speak of. While I’m not raking in the dough, I live my lifestyle comfortably and happily. I consider that success.

Considering my strengths, I could very well have become an engineer or a programmer and perhaps gone quite high. However, I’m rather lazy and I refuse to do workdays longer than 8 hours. I absolutely need my free time to do crafts and play video games. I don’t like a ton of responsibility. So I’m successful on my own terms, and successful as rated by the middle class, but I will never solve a problem bigger than someone’s company branding and I’ll never get anywhere close to being Paul Rand or something. That’s fine by me.

217

Update: I’ve gone from project manager to something in the “semi-retired, stay at home mom to teenagers, trophy wife” line. I’m also homeschooling my not-gifted son - which is an interesting intellectual exercise.

Because my gifted husband took a job that has him working lots of hours and doing international travel.

218

Learned to read and write by myself at the age of 3. Tested as gifted.

Grew up in the Spanish city of Albacete, where I studied up to my first three years of University (computer science). Took a year off to work in Madrid as a programmer for Banesto (a Spanish bank) and save money to go to Barcelona and finish my University education.

In Barcelona I paid my studies by a combination of being an intern at the University (teaching assistant at the Electronics laboratory) and holding some ad-hoc jobs. Worked for 6 months as a programmer after finishing my studies, and then went on to do my Ph.D. in Tokyo University thanks to a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho).

After my Ph.D. I went back to Europe, to work as a patent examiner for the European Patent Office in The Hague, the Netherlands. I have a great salary and good working conditions doing something that I find interesting.

I am happy with my life and with what I do, and the material conditions are not bad.

All in all I am pretty satisfied with how my life turned out.

219

Well, I have a lot of similarities as some of the other posters:

[ul]
[li]Kindergarten: Got extra play time in class because I already new how to read, and could count to 1 million. Could do addition/subtraction and started figuring out multiplication on my own.[/li][li]First class in economics in first grade.[/li][li]Teacher’s Assistant in second grade. I would work with other students when I was done with my school work, which I would do as the teacher explained.[/li][li]Third grade, new school system and I didn’t want to work like I did in second grade so I didn’t even try. First study of microscopic structures.[/li][li]Fourth grade yet another new school system, but this time teacher saw some potential and used me as the ESL peer tutor. First study of Shakespeare.[/li][li]Fifth grade I realized school was a joke and found Terry Brooks.[/li][li]Sixth Grade moved to another new school system, and got teachers that would make so many mistakes, other students came to me for help. Lost respect for teachers.[/li][li]Seventh Grade I was becoming an intolerable shit because I knew I was smarter than everyone, including the teachers.[/li][li]Eighth Grade got kicked out of class for being disruptive/inattentive constantly, and still got highest grade in class.[/li][li]Ninth Grade moved to yet another school system, half way through semester they had to change my class schedule because I was being disruptive and proved I already knew the material by taking the course final, and for the first time I had to work at school. I was caught up by end of first semester and had second highest grade.[/li][li]10th Grade pulled out of typing class to explain graphing of inequalities to advanced algebra class because substitute teacher didn’t get it and I had shown her how in first period.[/li][li]Eleventh grade started tutoring local college students and got to wondering how college could be worth it if I was tutoring students already in it. Beat local college team in a computer programming competition.[/li][li]Twelfth grade decided life was a piece of filth, humanity wasn’t worth saving, and started drinking.[/li][/ul]

So there you have it, the birth of a drop-down drunk who hated life, the universe and everything in it and never amounted to anything.

220

Interesting – my own life experiences during early education were not much different from this. Yet I did not develop that universal hatred in the end and my life took a very different path.

I wonder what made it different for me.