About Annette Revel Sheely, M.A. Expertise Counseling, giftedness, gifted children and adults, high intelligence, high IQs. Various types of IQ tests. The social and emotional needs of gifted people. Special issues for gifted girls. Friendships among gifted children. I have a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology and several years of experience counseling. For the past three years, I have worked exclusively with the gifted (IQ over 130, some in the 180s and 190s) and I write and speak about gifted children frequently. I have presented research about the assessment of the highly gifted at a conference at M.I.T. I am on the staff of the Gifted Development Center, an internationally known resource center for gifted people of all ages.
Question My son is in special education, his input is okay but he falls down in output. The schools testing has shown him to be of average intelligence, but I feel that he is gifted. He has won two school awards for his art (first in Kindergarten for the whole school) and third place in third grade. There are other indicators that he is bright such as creativity in other areas, inventiveness and wit. What kinds of testing would show the best of his ability or possible giftedness? Thank you. --Nancy
Answer hi Nancy,
Well, the most common way of determining giftedness is to have a child take an IQ test. Those scoring at the 98th percentile are typically called gifted. However, some children are gifted but also have learning disabilities or problems expressing themselves and so they score high on some parts of the IQ test and low on others, and the score, when averaged, looks like a child who is not gifted, when in fact, the child is twice exceptional. For more information about this, go to www.gifteddevelopment.com. An excellent book about this subject is called "Uniquely Gifted" and it is at amazon.com. (Edited by Kiesa Kay)
Another method of determining giftedness, popularized by teachers following the work of Howard Gardener (multiple intelligences) is to have a child demonstrate giftedness in one or more areas (such as verbal/linguistic, mathematical, kinesthetic, etc.)
Your boy is fortunate that you are sensitive not only to his areas of weakness but also to his strengths. Help support those while shoring up the weaker areas. Trust your instincts about this; you know him better than anyone.
Sincerely,
Annette Sheely
