One Profoundly Gifted Kid's Story

by Deborah L. Ruf, Ph. D.

(originally published in Highly Gifted Children, Spring, 1996, titled Educating My Child: Options for a Profoundly Gifted Child)

There are many different ways to raise and educate a profoundly gifted child. For readers of Highly Gifted Children, I will dispense with the usual, “How did you know he was so gifted?” stories. For most of us, the story is familiar from the day of our child's birth to about age 5 or 6, when we started dealing with the schools. How we handle the school years, and how our child handles the school years, can vary tremendously. This is a brief overview of the approach I took with one of my children. I will refer to him as Eddie.

Although there are important social and emotional issues to be considered when guiding a family with a profoundly gifted child, I won't address those issues in any depth here. Instead, I will concentrate on how we found the academic fit that kept Eddie at least moderately challenged while giving him the social opportunities we felt he needed.

Laying the Foundation

Three initial steps are recommended to parents of highly and profoundly gifted children to lay the foundation for selecting educational options. First, get the child definitively tested on the Stanford-Binet Form L-M. It is the best instrument for finding the upper limits of the child's abilities. Although a child can be tested as early as age four with good accuracy, some schools will not readily accept the score of a 4-year-old. Age seven is the ideal believable age for definitive testing, and age 10 is the last good age for the highly gifted child to be evaluated using the Stanford-Binet L-M. By age 10, the ceiling of the test may be reached, as it was for Eddie.

Why test? The typical classroom does not provide opportunities for your child to display her amazing abilities and you are unlikely to be believed when you say she is really, really gifted. The second recommended step: multiply your child's IQ score by her actual age. The subject matter being presented to kids of that “age” is the appropriate subject matter for your child. For example, if your child's IQ is 180 and she is 7 years old, take 1.8 x 7.0 = 12.6 intellectual years. If the child is place in a bright class with an average IQ of 115, their intellectual age is only 7 x 1.15 = 8.05. Using a little more math and your own memory of your child's preschool years, you can calculate that your child was about 4-1/2 when she was able to think and do the kinds of things the other first graders are now doing. This formula helps you to see that simple grade skipping is not a satisfactory alternative. Your child's intellectual age is “growing” at a much faster rate than her typical age-mates.

My third step is to help parents understand two important concepts: asynchronous development and learned underachievement. Asynchronous development, a term coined by The Columbus Group (1991), refers to developmental disparities within the highly gifted child which frustrate both the child and those guiding her education. A child may be able to read with full comprehension at the 7th grade level but still not be able to write with any fluency or comfort. A 4th grader may be able to fully grasp 8th grade earth science but not be able to reach the lab table or keep a decent lab notebook. A 5th grader may be able to tackle 9th grade algebra, but not be mature enough to understand the requirement to show his work on the homework assignment. A 4th grader in 8th grade gym is obviously a physical mismatch. Although the highly gifted 4th grader may use humor his age-mates miss, the pubescent humor of 8th and 9th graders, while understood intellectually by the child, is certainly ahead of his social-emotional readiness.

Learned underachievement can happen to any child who enters school and spends a considerable amount of time waiting for the other children to learn what he already knows. The gifted child figures out how to use that waiting time, and it's usually not on academics. When the school work does eventually become challenging, the gifted child often suffers greatly because she hasn't had the opportunity to learn to take mistakes in stride, or to study effectively, or how to budget her time. One major problem is that schools often don't address the needs of gifted children until 4th grade or beyond. In the majority of our schools, gifted classes do not exist at all, and accelerated classes don't begin until junior high or high school. Bright children, under such conditions, receive ample opportunity to hone their skills in underachievement. It is essential to make certain a child is intellectually challenged for at least part of every school day.

Eddie's Story

Definitive testing with the Stanford-Binet L-M, using test results to ascertain appropriate levels of subject matter, and understanding the concepts of asynchronous development and learned underachievement provided a foundation for developing appropriate educational options for Eddie. I won't go into the details here of how I convinced the school personnel to do what he needed. It was not as easy as the following chronology would suggest.

Eddie's kindergarten teacher screened all her pupils in basic and “challenge” skills, and saw that Eddie was unlike any child she had ever taught. She eagerly accepted my suggestions and the materials I personally provided for her. Although she thought the school year went very well, Eddie did not. “Frankly, Mom, it simply wastes so much of my time!”

For first grade I invited another child, Jillian, to join Eddie and me for morning classes in our home. Her parents, two MDs, political refugees from Poland, were delighted that I volunteered to teach their very gifted daughter. The school system gave me two school desks, all the textbooks I wanted, and $100 for extra supplies. The kids were put in the same class at the nearby elementary school and their teacher set up her schedule to do regular academics in the mornings and special subjects and group activities in the afternoons. Eddie and Jillian did art, music, gym, lunch, social sciences, field trips and parties with their age-mates, and they finished 1st through 6th grade academics with me during their first grade year.

By second grade we moved to the Minneapolis area and selected a private school with preschool through 12th grade on the same campus. Although the average IQ of the students attending the school was a little higher than the public school we had left, the difference wasn't enough to allow for Eddie's unusually high ability. The teacher made absolutely no adjustments for him, and, in fact, didn't even seem to like him - that is, unless she needed him.
The second grade had a Poetry Program each year, led by Eddie's teacher. She had written a difficult script several years earlier, with a very large lead role, and the other teachers thought it was too hard for second graders. Eddie's teacher believed Eddie could handle the memorization. He could, and he discovered that he enjoyed acting. Acting became an excellent opportunity for Eddie to “fit in” with many other people throughout the years.

We made another major change for 3rd grade; we hired two tutors to work individually with Eddie at his own pace and level during his school day. He covered language arts, math and science with these two people, and then joined age-mates for all other activities. Eddie enjoyed these activities and always has had numerous friends, although none really close. Sport activities, in particular, were important to him.

Tutoring in math prepared him to qualify for the University of Minnesota's Talented Youth Mathematics Program in fourth grade. He completed Algebra I and II during the classes held once a week after school. Eddie was three years younger than most of his classmates, so he had difficulty finding pals with whom to discuss problems. He was one of the few kids who didn't have at least one parent in a technical field. Fortunately, he did well despite these obstacles. Eddie was also permitted to take Earth Science with the eighth graders at the private school.

Eddie started trying out for TV commercials and movies during 4th grade. I hoped he would be cast in a movie because I knew the film industry provides tutors, and our expenses were mounting. I couldn't teach my son at home because he was already too advanced for it to be anything but a full-time job for me.

During fifth grade, he got those free private tutors while acting in Men Don't Leave and Dick Tracy. The tutors followed his school's curriculum, but unlike the classroom teachers, they could go at Eddie's pace. He also continued his University math in geometry and trigonometry, but was unable to finish without a math specialist while working. Eddie was treated well when working with the adults in the movies. They delighted in his abilities and enjoyed his company. This was a distinct change from his treatment at school. Young, profoundly gifted children take a while to learn how to “fit in” in the school.

Sixth, 7th, and 8th grades were an academic jumble. As most of us remember from personal experience, junior high is a tough time, both emotionally and socially. Eddie thinks he missed some important social opportunities now when he looks back on it. I think he's wrong, but I know what really simple and unchallenging and superficial coursework he would have had to endure. He still did not have the maturity or grace to deal with that kind of frustration without alienating himself from teachers and students alike.

Three more movies rescued him from 7th grade. He was in What About Bob?, The Doctor, and Hook. We took advantage of a program called the Minnesota Post-Secondary Options Act, which allows gifted high school juniors and seniors can take college courses at school system expense and receive concurrent high school and college credit. Even though he was only 12, he easily convinced the program coordinator that he was ready, and took 5 college courses through The University of Minnesota. The courses were very well-designed correspondence courses. It worked beautifully because the movie tutors simply guided him through these courses.

By eighth grade I wasn't sure what to do. Clearly my son could have gone straight to college, but he was starting to feel lonely for his old “I hate school” stories. We decided to have him return to school full-time. Students have a wide array of coursework available to them in high school, and Eddie really enjoyed most of his classes. His maturity, finally, led him to be an enjoyable asset to his classes. Most of the teachers really liked him, too. If you look back on your own honors and AP courses, you'll remember that they were as difficult as your college courses, maybe more so. High school is not a worse option than college, and you have all the age-appropriate social opportunities.

Looking back, I can say Eddie's education worked well and I'm glad to be at this end of it - high school graduation. Eddie is happy. He has a wisdom and an acceptance that have been hard won. He has tranquility and the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed enthusiasm for learning about the world that he had before he ever started school. He leaves for college this fall to major in aerospace engineering (or history, politics, or philosophy). He is ready to leave; we seem to have taken care of the inevitable enmeshment issues that occur when highly gifted children and parents find each other. I hope by sharing our story I've given you more confidence to do what you think is right for your own children. Have a good time!