- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Austin Babies
Poll: Do you feel your child is "more advanced" than others?
A post on another board got wondering what percentage of moms think their child is gifted.[Poll]
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Poll: Do you feel your child is "more advanced" than others?
(read it. you know you want to.)
anderson . september 2008
vivian . february 2010
mabel . august 2012
aww - yes!
My kid is a genius. Just like her mother.
Nah, seriously I really haven't 'compared' her to other toddlers her age, so I don't know how 'advanced' [or not] she is. I just know what I've taught her, and that she picks up on things quickly. She knows how to count to twelve and can recognize all her numbers and alphabets (upper and lower case) and knows their sounds. She knows five shapes (including oval and diamond). She can only recognize green, purple, pink, blue and orange but still doesn't know the other colors yet. She knows when to say please, thank you, and excuse me
<--I'm proud of that ...
This is exactly us! Except my brother was always compared to me and it sucked for both of us.
lol. i'm with mlf. of course i think my children are amazing but i don't have any fantasies that they are einsteins in the making
it will always be far more important to me that my children are kind than advanced intellectually anyway
Pretty much this. But then, I think that I have a pretty elevated standard of "gifted." And double ditto on early acquired skills evening out over the next few years.
It's making me laugh that 70%+ kids in the poll are above the average.
I've always thought of Abby as average with the usual moments of brillance that helps you see there is SO much more going more going on in her little head than she lets on to. But overall, just a solid kid who hits all the milestones when she's supposed to. I like to think she hides her intelligence in her madcap Stewie plan to take over the world.
Emily however is at least above average. She started walking at 8 months!! I know a lot of that is due to 2nd child syndrome. But, it still really freaks me out that Emily has pretty much potty trained herself, uses proper pronouns most of the time while speaking in complete sentances, knows the whole alphabet, sings Twinkle Twinkle and can count to 10. She tells knock knock jokes and can dress and undress herself. She's pretty much where Abby was at age 3. At 25 months.
Me too.
The original post was asking about differentiation in the preschool classroom for an advanced learner and I kind of had to scratch my head at that. How much planned differentiation does there really need to be at age 4? Like, do you have to add that to your lesson plans? I had to plan gifted/ special ed differentiation with my 6th graders, but it seems like a bit much for preschool.
To be fair, we're planning on Montessori for preschool which is kind of self-differentiating as I understand it. I don't know a whole lot about what the curriculum looks like at a play-based preschool though.
SS, I know, I know....
In some ways DD is definitely advanced, in others she definitely is NOT. There are so many different areas a child can excel I think it's ridiculous to pick a small area and base their "giftedness" on it.
I
There is built in differentiation in my kids' MDO classes. It's there, mainly, due to the teacher to student ratio. So, for kids who might need additional help w/ letter identification (in the 2 yo class), they get that one on one help. If the teacher sees that a child (or children) has mastered letter sounds, then they move on to application. With the work they are sending home and from what I have observed in class the teachers are consistently keeping kids in their ZPD, which is the ideal. Again, I think it has more to do w/ class size than w/ intentional, planned (grouped) differentiation.
My mother teaches a 3 year old preschool class. In her class she has children who are all over the spectrum in their current "knowledge." She has some kids that have a bit of catching up to do, she has some kids who are right on par with what a 3 year old "should" know and she has a couple who definitely show some signs of having an above average intelligence. Due to the small number of students in her classroom she is able to develop activities that can be individualized for each student. I would assume it'd be similar in most preschools. I do think that a teacher, no matter what level their teaching, should be aware of the different abilities of the students in their classroom and should attempt to give each student an opportunity to excell on their level.
As for Tegan... I think, like most mothers, that my child is amazing. She is personable, talkative, seems to pick up on concepts pretty quickly and goes with the flow even in stressful situations. She's definitely advanced in her language skills and she can recognize most shapes, but she's not interested in identifying colors. I think that it all evens out in the end and in a lot of ways she's a very typical 2 year old. I do wonder if she'll one day be one of those "gifted" children, but I plan on giving her time to show us what she's capable of doing. There are a lot of expectations place on "gifted" children. I want Tegan to be a strong and stable student in school and she most likely will be, but I'm not sure if I want that "gifted" label put on her. Of course... it's totally likely she'll just turn out to be "normal", lol!
Daniel's in PreK-4 at a pretty structured preschool, where he's thriving, but the principal and his teachers actually have developed special lesson plans for him.
Academically, he's way far ahead of the other kids in his class. When his teachers hand out worksheets that they intend to work through with the kids, he has his finished before everyone in the class has even received theirs. He's completely skipped the first level of reading and is halfway through the second -- and the other kids haven't even started on the reading part of the curriculum yet. He got bored and he was starting to act out, so they've developed special strategies for him: They let him help teach the other kids when it's appropriate, his lead teacher develops extra challenges related to the classwork so she can offer them to him when needed, Daniel gets special reading time, etc.
As one example, let's say the class is doing a worksheet where they have pictures of objects and they have to circle, from a group of options, the letter blend with which the word for each picture begins. This is the kind of thing D would have done super-fast, then he'd be sitting there getting himself into trouble while the other kids finished theirs. So now his teacher will suggest extra challenges for him, like if the picture is of pants and he's circled the letter blend "pa", then she'll challenge him to write the rest of the word, or write a word that rhymes with "pants", or one that starts with the same letter blend. Something like that.
We've had more than one meeting at the school just to address Daniel's, um... I don't want to call it giftedness, because who knows if that's what it is at this point? But his being so far ahead. His school is very good about keeping us informed of what they're doing for him that's different, so that we can employ those same techniques with him at home. And we try hard to keep them abreast of what he's especially interested in at home, so that they can tailor his special learning times to him and his current interests as much as possible. Right now we're all just working hard together to keep learning challenging and fun for him, so that he stays positive about the idea of school.
We feel really blessed to have him in a school where they're willing and able to give so much time and energy to him. And I know they must be doing it for other kids, too -- Daniel can't be the only one who requires special teaching strategies for one reason or another.
But anyway, that's what a special learning plan for academically advanced kids looks like for a four-year-old -- at least, for our four-year-old.
I don't have kids but I think sometimes it's a little too early to tell. My one brother was put into remedial classes in first grade because he couldn't read yet. To my parents credit they were less concered than the school and knew he'd hit his stride.
He went on to be validictorian of his high school, graduated college premed, received an MBA as an undergrad and is currently in med school getting an additional masters in medical ethics. Needless to say the kid is a super smarty but he was definitely not an advanced toddler or preschooler.
I think she's advanced at throwing temper tantrums, smiling and making my heart melt.
She's also advanced at pooping as far as I can tell. She's very regular.
My toddler poops 5x a day... does yours?
I voted that he's "above average" but he's probably somewhere in between average and above average. I think he's above average right now, but I don't believe he'll always be above average. I think he's super smart, but he's the only kid I have and the only kid I've seen learn, so I'm sure that plays a part in my vote.
Just from what his preschool teachers have told me, he seems to be more advanced right now. They've commented on his language compared to all his classmates (complete sentences, correct grammar, vocab), they'll read a story and he'll be the first one to answer all the questions (correctly) etc. It could very well just be the class he's in and the other kids he's around. Next year he could very well be behind a lot of his peers, so I think it's pretty hard to tell for the long term.
I dunno, dawg. I think for USSC you need both. Those people are scary smart.
I agree! From my background I have a pretty good base on what "gifted" actually is. And, yes I do think my DD is gifted, based on the identifiers. She meets "gifted" in pretty much everything but social areas. It is not about learning to read at 3 or any other knowledge she acquired before others, it is more about how they look at things, learn things, etc. We will have her tested by the ISD before 3rd grade (when servics start). Not because I want her recognized as "the smart kid," but because I worry about her honestly. One thing many gifted kids struggle with it dealing with challenges, because not much comes as a challenge to them. I see this in A. Most things come very easy to her, so when she is met with something that is not, physical things usually, she wants to immediately give up, throws up her hands and say "its too hard, I don't want to do it. We try to work with her on it, but its hard. If she is not identified by the district as gifted that is fine by me too.
Knowing 2 gifted (both tested and identified as) people in my life- DH and my brother who were not at all motivated I would much rather be above average intelligence with a lot of drive and motivation. Both DH and by brother had everything come easy to them. It is not always a good thing. Once met with something they had to actually work at, they did not have the skills to do so. DH's sister who is above average intelligence and highly motivated as a kid did MUCH better in school and has gone on to receive much higher academic accolades than him.
I was just going to say this. Being smart (even super smart)=/=gifted/talented. They are not necessarily the same thing. It is more about how you look at things, etc. This is something that drives me nuts in the education system. The 2--being super smart and being G/T--are mixed up all the time. Just because you are getting all A's in your AP classes does not necessarily make you G/T.