Frukc, thank you for posting about the sensitivities. I was labeled as gifted as a child. I have always been extremely sensitive to smells and chemical additives in foods. I cannot tolerate chemical perfumes without getting a migraine. This is extremely aggravating, but it makes me wonder if it is tied. Do you know of any more research on this?
There is a whole website dedicated to training your child to take an IQ test/gifted school entrance exam, like anything, it is trainable to an extent. www.testingmom.com. She even has a test prep game called IQ Fun Park ($300) which pulls questions inspired from the top 4 industry standard IQ tests. I find it fascinating, but I’ve not yet had a reason to train my children to take an IQ test although the logic portion of it is probably very beneficial, test or no test. If my children did need to take some kind of entrance exam, I would absolutely prepare them as best I could. This is what she had to say about how she became involved in preparing her son for testing.Talk about a huge jump!
aren first became interested in testing when she noticed that her son, Sam, wasn’t developing as quickly as her daughter had. A doctor diagnosed a hearing problem that could be fixed via surgery and (after giving Sam an IQ test where he scored in the 37th percentile) pronounced that Sam would never function in a regular classroom. Luckily, Karen’s mother was a PhD in Early Childhood Development. She showed Karen how to work with Sam and get him ready for both testing and a regular classroom. Karen worked diligently with Sam for about half-an-hour every day doing activities that would build the abilities he needed for school and testing. A year later, Sam scored in the 94th percentile on an IQ test. He was admitted to a competitive private school in Manhattan and is now an honors student.
Interesting thread. I agree with DadDude on this one. However, I would like to point out that while every child who has done the Suzuki program does not end up being a prodigy, there are a large percentage of string prodigies that came out of the Suzuki program. (I’m not going to look it up, but I remember reading that somewhere). Why? Because those children who really were gifted had the opportunity to excel. If giftedness is associated with early reading, then they first had to have the opportunity to read, just like the string prodigies had an opportunity to play. How many gifted string prodigies have we missed because no one ever put a violin in their hands?
So I say, teach your children to read early. Maybe they will become gifted. Worse case scenario, they become a well-educated child. I can live with that.
I would also assume that many children who do Suzuki also have parents that are of high intelligence and successful. So socio economics probably plays a part in that also.
Just as with early reading parents. Many of the parents here are of high intelligence with more than a few earning high degrees.
I don’t know if giftedness can be taught and intelligence raised. But I do think that early learning does help. Take the success rate of early intervention for example. A program in the US that proides therapies and eduction to children from birth to three that show developmental delays. The stats for children succesfully catching up with their peers developmentally are all over the place but they are generally high. Some stating sucees rates higher than 80%.
My son had issues during birth and in his first year of life that left him with a chance of 85% mental retardation. I believe it Is because of early learning that he can read and do maths above his 2.5 year old age level. Genetics may have played a role in his achievements because I was in gifted equivalent classes at school.
People tell me James is smart, I consider him an average boy that is trained. However I have been getting my hands on some workbooks written for gifted and talented children and I am finding that he does well with the challenge. The content in the workbooks I have found is quite differnt to the standard books that I encounter. So we enjoy the diversity.
Korrale4kq- If you have connections to the early intervention community, have you considered volunteering to spread EL to those children who truly need it? BrillKids’ charity arm, the Early Education for Every Child Foundation, needs individuals like you to help identify children in need of receiving BrillKids learning programs. Go to www.eeecf.otg to apply to volunteer or PM me for more information. 
This holds true for anyone else reading this post–if you know of schools, orphanages, special needs groups, low income day cares, etc, who need to be reached…please help us reach them!
I didnt sit the test with her. She’s very independent and still is. The tests she did had nothing to do with reading…from what I saw its just shapes and logic and determines how a child process the information that is given. A child from a non english background can take the test as well. So I assume a math whizz could easily excel it. I do think EL has alot to do with exercising the working memory and many other factors of the brain.
She was the first child, talked early so theres no comparison. I started EL with her from 12months old, very erratic and no routine sort of learning.(which doesnt seem to work with the 2nd daughter!). Did ybcr starter dvd twice and the rest once…as she was bored with it.
After I found out she could read we left it at that. So EL stopped at 3 at home as thats when she attended preschool. I was told that the brain stabilize at 6-7…we then can get her tested again to see if theres any changes to how she process information. Not really a priority though…more of curiousity.
At the moment she is attending Kindergarten doing a grade above in literacy and maths. Although she is happy, I do believe it is a breeze for her and she doesnt need to work hard so she is content.
Diva7, I understand that difference. My first was happy to absorb what I tell her after just one hearing. The other two need a gradual reinforcement and building upon the knowledge regularly to maintain the information. Unfortunately I am more haphazard like my oldest and not so great at routine and commitment. 
Oddly enough, I doubt my oldest would test the highest on an IQ test as the other two have much better thinking strategies. We will probably never know as I just don’t think it’s worth the money to find out! :laugh: From your comments I do believe your daughter will still test highly if you have her tested again later on. It also appears she had a pretty good quality test done. your observations about the math whizz being able to ace the test are possibly quite true. However it would need to be an EL math wizz who has been given lots of opportunity to see and develop patterns and logic ( or probably any kid who could still subitize).
TMT i have checked out that ladies website. It was quite interesting, from memory you could get some test questions free by email? And then had to cough up that ( incredibly expensive!) $300 for the rest. However yes if it mattered that my kids needed to be tested I would probably find the $$$$ to be sure they were well prepared.
Now isn’t this an interesting conversation? :biggrin:
I have the iq fun park game. I bought it because my eldest dd seems to be going through a resistant stage but will play a game. Personally my dd really enjoys it and we she is solving questions in the 6-7 age range. I get free practice questions all the time. If I end up having her tested she is well prepared but I will be having her tested more because I just need to have the piece of paper that says she is bright and needs to be challenged just to prove it to the school because heaven forbid they believe a parent.
Do I believe she is gifted? No, I believe she is well educated enough to pass a test and get a high score. The Pediatrician wants her tested and has told me to bring her back at 5 even though I explained to him that I taught her to read and I taught her maths. He said even if you taught her it is the ability to retain the knowledge at her age that would suggest that she is gifted. Because I have taught her I guess that I have always taken Dad Dudes opinion that she was given the opportunity to learn and there fore become well=educated because of it not because she naturally gifted. But I still argue the children’s whose parents say they received no active early learning but still test in the gifted range still provided an environment (maybe unknowingly) where the child could learn to their optimal rate. Maybe read lots of books to them? Maybe talked to them all the time? Maybe Dad had them in the shed? Or mum played an instrument? Mum or Dad cooked with them and had them actively participating in things even though they thought they weren’t doing anything special?
shadahfree,
here is a test if you are highly sensitive http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test.htm
If your child is sensitive, here is a book http://www.scribd.com/doc/60743155/The-Highly-Sensitive-Child
and its summary http://www.mandalachildrenshouse.com/DYK/Did_You_Know-Highly_Sensitive_Child_1-08.pdf
I do not personally know any IQ 200 child. But I know several enough gifted children. Their parents think that their giftedness is inherited. I think that parents spent a lot more quality time with them than average child has.
All gifted children I know are the first kids in their families. When I see families with two and more children, typically the first child is academically more successful than the second one. It can not be due to genetics 
but probably because of the possibility to have more quality time with a particular child.
http://taylorfinch.hubpages.com/hub/How-Birth-Order-Affects-Your-Life
… The oldest child tends to have a higher IQ and be more responsible, career-driven and confident. … Many Nobel Prize winners, US presidents, astronauts and classical music composers were first-borns and likewise a Time magazine survey revealed that 43% of CEOs interviewed worldwide were an oldest child …
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I picked up Sidney Ledson’s “Give your child Genius IQ” today. I found it interesting that Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Karl Witte, and Lord Kelvin, among others, were all child geniuses of parents who believed in early learning. They emphatically stated that their children’s intelligence was a result of their education, and that they could produce the same results with any other child. John Stuart Mill said the following:
"If I had beenby nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory, or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would [still] not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries."
So now I ask myself, what is the difference between gifted and well educated? Certainly a famous singer could be said to have been gifted with their beautiful voice, for although singing can be taught, you simply have the instrument that you were born with. Some will genetically be better built for Olympic sports that others, no matter how superb their education is. Certainly some children will take to some academic pursuits more readily than others, but what constitutes being gifted? If John Stuart Mill denies that he was gifted, then who is? Perhaps being gifted is simply a rare talent that cannot be predicted when a child is born. Most adults would never predict that an average child is capable of reading when they are three, and so those who do must be gifted. But we on this forum assume that they can and will. When they do reach that potential, we are not surprised because we predicted that they would. Our peers perhaps feel otherwise and say label our children as gifted.
I don’t have the answers, but I have been thinking a lot about this thread. Perhaps my children aren’t gifted. I don’t think that they are, because I know that my 3-month-old will be reading just like her older siblings are. I expect it. HOWEVER, for all intents and purposes, they are gifted. The typical kindergarten curriculum is inadequate for my oldest. I have realized that I need a little bit of a paradigm shift. I’m somewhat reluctantly researching educational programs for the gifted because that is what my children need now.
Thank you everyone for the interesting discussion!
I don’t agree. The first child is not necessarily the smartest. Have you seen the dynamics of large families? My mother calls it the trickle down effect. The older teaches the younger usually unintentionally. When I was in elementary school I helped my older brother with his high school homework. When my older sister was learning piano, we imitated her. We drew treble clefs, picked out her songs by ear,etc. An amazing amount of early learning happened simply because of the wide range of ages and interests in a small space. Have you seen that Tamsyn? I see it as a disadvantage to my children that we will probablt not be able to have a large family.
As far as Frukc’s comment on gifted children being the oldest, well, there are some studies that suggest that they may be more academically inclined, ie, to pursue higher education, but even if that is so, that doesn’t make them be more gifted. It may mean that their parents pushed them to get a degree more than their younger siblings. The first is the grand guinea pig, and once parents see that they did alright, perhaps they push the younger ones less. I personally am the oldest of 11, and while I have confidence in my abilities, my younger siblings certainly have a lot of talent and are on par, or even surpass me. I have amazing parents that have striven to be equal with their children. I’m the only one with a degree, but my brother next to me has a great job teaching at the tech school, is an avid reader, and is happy. Then my sister has traveled overseas three times to teach English. She now is pursuing midwifery, but she is as old as I was when I graduated. She wouldn’t trade her experiences overseas for a white piece of paper like I have, even if the world would say that she was less academic than me. Hello! She can speak Chinese now. I certainly can’t. The next brother just got back from a two-year church mission, and the rest are younger and are each excelling in their own right.
In my own home, with the oldest of 4 being 5 and a little baby, I can honestly say that my oldest child received a lot more personal attention FROM ME when he was a toddler then my current toddler gets. I just had more time for him, and I did my best with what I had. But I didn’t know about EL then like I do now. My personal resource library has grown. My younger kids are better readers for their age then he was simply because I know how to teach them better. They want to do what their older brother is doing. I think it all works out in the end. There are inherent advantages and disadvantages to sibling order, and they vary from family to family.
I am a middle child of 3. I was the only one in my family considered gifted.
From personal observations I have seen that it is the second or subsequent child that is more advanced or gifted. The first child may get the benefit of one on one, but that first child often becomes an unbeknownst teacher to their younger sibling if they are close in age. I always recommend to pregnant mothers who are considering potty training their older babies and toddler to wait and just potty train both at once. My younger sister walked months earlier than my brother and I just because she wanted to keep up and play with us. This pattern relates to many other aspects of learning. If they three year old is learning something the younger child is often soaking up the information by proxy, or they are making a concerted effort so that they can play the same things as their siblings.
I think TMT has seen this with her 2 children.
Statistically speaking, oldest children have higher IQs than subsequent children.
In the study, Norwegian epidemiologists analyzed data on birth order, health status and I.Q. scores of 241,310 18- and 19-year-old men born from 1967 to 1976, using military records. After correcting for factors that may affect scores, including parents’ education level, maternal age at birth and family size, the researchers found that eldest children scored an average of 103.2, about 3 percent higher than second children (100.3) and 4 percent higher than thirdborns (99.0).http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/science/21cnd-sibling.html?pagewanted=allThe difference was an average, meaning that it varied by family and showed up in most families but not all.
The scientists then looked at I.Q. scores in 63,951 pairs of brothers, and found the same results. Differences in household environments did not explain elder siblings’ higher scores.
I’ve seen for myself families that have younger children that are more precocious, that is capable of doing things earlier. But even in the families I am familiar with the older is frequently more gifted, that is capable of going farther. I think the act of teaching siblings, or the competition of having a sibling (and not wanting to be outdone), or some other factor in their relationship to each other, causes the older to develop more, though not necessarily faster.
I’m the youngest of four…the only one of us to graduate from college, although my siblings are no dummies.
The 3 IQ points might be statistically significant, but it’s still a tiny amount. What’s the standard deviation, I wonder?
I’m pretty sure that the standard deviation on IQ tests is 20 points. 100 is average.
Tamsyn-
In reading your posts I was reminded of a few threads in recent months that you might enjoy! Personally, they have completely changed my thinking, my approach, and my ‘Mindset’ (title of a fantastic book by Dr. Carol Dweck)
Hope you enjoy them as much as I did (as well as many others here )
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/can-genius-be-learned-or-is-it-preordained/
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/‘talent-is-overrated’-practicing-parenting/
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/‘the-talent-code’/
3 IQ points would still be within the confidence interval so it would not be significant as far as I know. The standard deviation is 15, so two standard deviations above the norm, 130, is considered gifted, while two below, 70, is considered a learning disability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq
I’m not sure about tests, but IQ SD is 15.
We can go all day with the anecdotal stuff LOL… I’m the oldest of three and easily the most intelligent (and would guess by around 30 points at minimum) - but I have a different father so there goes that, confounding variable and all, plus I might confuse educated vs. non-educated (I’m the only one I’d consider remotely educated). I DO remember teaching the middle brother a bit while growing up, but he didn’t take to school much… but DID take to basketball and I helped him loads there too, and he became very precocious at it. The youngest didn’t get taught squat by us brothers and I’d guess he has an IQ around 85-90. I have two other brothers by the same father and both are in engineering… so perhaps I have a good case of nature instead of nurture (my latent intellect didn’t really hatch until I made it happen on my own as an adolescent)