Gifted Children: An unsubstantiated psychological assessment

[lupinesque]

Tabouli wrote:

>It's the putting all your eggs in one basket problem. If you
>single a child out on the basis of IQ and everything that happens 
>thenceforth revolves around being intellectually superior to others, 
>the child is being taught that intellectual superiority is his or her 
>defining feature. That it's everything. Their role is intellectual 
>achievement, and if they don't get it, they are a failure as a 
>person.

My only quibble with the rest of your profile (other than that it gave 
a chilling assessment of some problems besetting myself and plenty of 
other people I've known) is its place in the context of the original 
thread, which was about the validity and value of intelligence testing 
and in particular, the label of "gifted" or "profoundly gifted."  In 
that context, you seem to be suggesting that the labels themselves are 
the problem, when in fact the problems you describe come from other 
factors:  parents' and teachers' overemphasizing this one label, the 
child being given no realistic models but only Nobel winners and other 
certified lucky geniuses, the message being sent that people who don't 
measure up in this narrow definition of intelligence are inferior to 
him/her (your brilliant ex may have been right that his therapist 
wasn't as bright as him in this regard, but perhaps the therapist was 
a lot *more* intelligent about emotional issues and had something to 
offer, hm?).  I'm not a fan of telling children their IQs, or indeed 
even testing for them, but I don't believe that doing so automatically 
equals teaching them that intellectual superiority is their defining 
feature, any more than telling them that they have tremendous talent 
at the piano teaches them that their defining feature is musical 
talent, or telling them they're the best Seeker in years teaches them 
that their defining feature is Quidditch talent.

Plenty of parents manage to convey to their children that they are 
brilliant in some way or another, without also conveying that this 
brilliance is "everything."

I agree with your recommendation, therefore--with apologies to 
Thoreau, "Diversify, diversify."  And while we're telling kids their 
*many* talents, we might also affirm that their worth comes from other 
attributes such as being loving, patient, honest, kind, etc., or even 
(gasp) that it is inherent in being human, and not contingent at all.

Amy