Gifted and Talented

When Your Child’s Intellect Exceeds Your Own

By Sarah Markel / Photography by Jonathan Timmes

Whether by way of proudly hung refrigerator art or framed report cards, parents everywhere extol the talents of their children. But what does it mean to be truly gifted?

Tajin Rogers leaned forward in his chair. He pointed to the stack of books on the table before him. “I find that reading is my favorite way to learn a thing,” he said, pressing his glasses against the bridge of his nose. “If someone is telling you something, it doesn’t seem quite as exciting as reading it from a book.”

Take “The Hobbit,” for example. Tajin, 8, explained that the first time he read it, which was back in second grade, words like “dastardly” tripped him up. “When I learned what they meant, it made it a lot more exciting.”

Tajin isn’t just your average bookworm, he is one of those extremely bright kids who populate the upper percentiles of the IQ scale. While most people use learning as a means to an end, these kids learn because it feels good. Tajin’s brain soaks up information and orders it into neatly accessible patterns as naturally as the rest of us breathe.

Defining ‘Gifted’
“Highly gifted students are those who are extremely proficient in an area of endeavor,” said Beverly Shaklee, Ph.D., a professor and expert on gifted education at George Mason University. “Usually these are a combination of curiosity, talent, potential and acquiring knowledge easily.”

Historically, gifted designations have been based upon IQ scores, with the mean hovering somewhere around 136 on the Stanford-Binet scale. (Average intelligence is considered to lie between 90 and 110.) The problem with numerical quantifications, however, is that they favor kids motivated and able to take the exams.

In recent years, the definition has widened, in part to better identify under-represented groups, but also because researchers now know that talent comes in many forms. At Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY), reasoning and verbal ability trump IQ as indicators of intellectual talent. The key, Shaklee noted, “is a combination of curiosity, drive and motivation. A gifted pianist loves playing the piano.”
For Tajin, who attends Haycock Elementary in McLean, his thirst for knowledge and ability to focus on seemingly dry material are the defining characteristics of his gift. Last summer he attended a camp for gifted kids run by CTY. Among the assigned texts was a portion of “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau. While high school students across the country howl at such summer reading, Tajin enjoyed puzzling out Thoreau’s message. “I found it interesting,” he said, although he admitted it didn’t compare to “The Hobbit.”

The Parental Difference
It used to be that psychologists believed intellect to be hereditary and therefore predictable. Now most experts agree it’s not a matter of nature versus nurture, but rather a combination of the two. “Any child can be gifted,” Shaklee claimed, “but nurturing the gift is the key to keeping it alive.”

For Kim O’Sullivan, who resides close to Richmond, nurturing her son’s gift has involved a lot of patience. “Andrew loves magic. He has since he was about 3.” O’Sullivan has sat through years of disappearing coin tricks as Andrew, 11, has polished his routine. His technique is now so professional that he hires himself out for kids’ birthday parties. “They love it,” O’Sullivan grinned. “One little boy came late and was so upset that he missed it. So Andrew did more tricks for him.”

For Andrew, who is in a gifted program at his school, the passion for magic is a combination of an interest in science and an extroverted personality. “Part of it is making other people happy, and a lot of it, too, is science,” O’Sullivan said.

Last summer, on a family trip to Myrtle Beach, Andrew worked his way around the poolside performing tricks, much to the delight of guests and staff. One of his favorite tricks is to hide a card in an unusual place, such as a hotdog bun. “That’s where the intelligence comes in. He finds ways to be ahead of the person he’s talking to,” O’Sullivan said.

Andrew and Tajin both come from families willing to feed their children’s interests. As much as O’Sullivan claims to be “on overload” from the magic tricks, she still drives Andrew to the store to restock his cache of novelties. Similarly, Tajin’s father, Halsey Rogers, never dreamed he would one day become so knowledgeable about reptiles, Middle Earth and military history, but he has made an effort to share in his son’s excitement. “I try to have compassion for his passions,” he said with a touch of humor.

Not all parents have the time or ability to cultivate nascent passions, which is why Shaklee insists it is important to identify gifted students early. “I can’t tell you how many parents have come to me and said, ‘I never knew,’” Shaklee lamented. “We need to seek out the kids who do not come from families that celebrate and nurture giftedness.”

Plenty of studies have shown the picture is less than rosy for gifted children who aren’t nurtured. It isn’t the risk of behavioral problems or depression that most upsets Shaklee, but rather the travesty of lost potential: “If you are a child of privilege, or you have parents committed to education, then you get the nurture. But if your parents are new to this country or for a hundred other reasons they don’t see you as gifted, it’s another story.”

Plays Well with Others
One of the hallmarks of gifted children, Shaklee noted, is that they tend “to develop a particular interest and follow that path.” If that passion is something outside the social norm, it can be difficult for gifted children to find a peer group with which to connect. Shaklee also pointed out that gifted kids “may articulate social problems early because they are more aware of their differences.”

When Logan Kearsley was young, his mother, Sharyn Kearsley, would send him out to play, but the other children simply ignored him. There was not a lot of common ground. Logan’s IQ is so high it is literally immeasurable. As a toddler, he developed a taste for scientific manuals and back issues of National Geographic that his peers simply couldn’t share. This difference has stayed with him, and in some ways has grown parallel to his specialized knowledge of physics and computer science.

Logan, 17, explained that even now he has a tough time socially because it’s tedious to discuss only one idea at a time. He enjoys online forums, like CTY’s Cogito, in which renowned scientists discuss their work with students, because they allow for numerous conversational threads, or “asynchronous conversation,” as Logan puts it. Meanwhile, he has tried to adopt a code of social behavior to get by, especially on the telephone, but he said it doesn’t come naturally.

Last spring Logan graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. There he had the freedom to bounce ideas around with peers who shared his passions. Evan Glazer, principal of Thomas Jefferson, is quick to point out that his school is not just for the gifted. “This is a place aimed to nurture students with a passion for science and technology.”

Nevertheless, Kearsley described the years at Thomas Jefferson as “the answer to our prayers” because of the opportunity for social growth the school afforded her son. Logan described the social culture of TJ as both fiercely competitive and highly collegial. He grinned as he recalled an impromptu race among students killing time at the end of an AP physics exam. Whoever could re-derive all of the results of special relativity using first principles would win. “The atmosphere in the classroom was more like being in a sports arena. It’s surprising how exciting it can be working in matrix algebra with 10 other people.”

Glazer noted that because so many of his students are already high achievers, the faculty tries to focus instead on the development of values as the criteria for success. “Problem solving, ethics and social responsibility,” Glazer said. “These are traditionally hard to measure, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to tackle them.”

The commonality in all of Logan’s favorite Thomas Jefferson teachers is their willingness to allow the students to pursue their intellectual passions without judging or dismissing them. “A lot of adults ignore kids as if they are not as worthy of intellectual consideration,” Logan claimed. “At TJ the teachers look at kids as the same as everybody else, they just lack information.”

Although graduates of Thomas Jefferson do tend to go on to prestigious universities, Glazer stressed that the purpose of the program is not to produce Ivy Leaguers. “We are here to get excited about learning. To pursue something unique. We make no promises for what happens next.”

Under Pressure
In fact, the lack of correlation between giftedness and success in later life has long been one of the chief arguments against gifted education. One 35-year study of high-achieving Harvard students found that the ability to cope with the ups and downs of life was the crucial factor to both personal and professional success.

That notion is why many educators and parents are focusing on raising well-rounded children rather than child prodigies. Shaklee sees a lot of helicopter parents in her work. “They are well-intended,” she admitted. “But parents must be able to set realistic and fair expectations for the child and be able to celebrate their child’s achievement as belonging to the child.”

Shing-Wai Koo is an eighth-grader at The Potomac School in McLean. She sings, she dances, she plays several instruments, she writes poetry. For her, school is a breeze. She is both quantifiably gifted, according to her IQ scores, and diversely talented.

When Shing-Wai was three, her pediatrician noticed that she could read English—no small feat for a child whose primary language was Chinese and whose only exposure to the second language had been via PBS and “The Velveteen Rabbit.” “We thought she had memorized the book,” recalled her mother, Wai-Soo Koo.
Furthermore, like Tajin, Andrew and Logan, Shing-Wai is highly verbal. Her mother joked that Shing-Wai could be a lawyer because of the way she argues rings around her parents. Listening to her describe her favorite Italian concertos in grammatically perfect sentences, it is easy to forget she is only 13.

Her parents try not to push her to achieve. They are focusing on the whole child and not just the grades. It’s not easy, given the attitude of perfectionism common among very bright students. Sharyn Kearsley, Logan’s mother, put it this way: “Because they know they can do well, they want to.”

Shing-Wai’s parents see this intense competitiveness in their daughter and try to temper it by stressing self-discipline over successes. When she recently brought home a relatively low grade on a math test, they were the ones consoling her. “I cried and cried,” Shing-Wai recalled. “Sometimes it’s so easy, I rush through and then I get careless.” Her parents nodded at this, but said nothing.

Part of their restraint is personal. Both said they grew up in traditional Chinese households where education was highly valued. “My father was a typical Chinese father. He pushed grades,” Koo shared. “I don’t like to put so much pressure on children.”

Nonetheless, the Koos have made tremendous personal sacrifices to have Shing-Wai privately educated, although part of the reason for choosing The Potomac School was the lack of emphasis placed on grades. They moved to McLean to be near the school, and their townhouse is filled with framed examples of Shing-Wai’s drawings. They chalk this up to both their culture, in which “education is a family affair,” and the fact that Shing-Wai is the only child of older parents.

But when it comes to parsing out who is gifted and who isn’t, Shing-Wai’s dad, Kee Koo, insisted that in fact he is the one who is blessed. Beaming across the table at his daughter, he said, “I think she is a nice normal child with the potential to be successful.”

 

Think Your Child Might Be Gifted?
The Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University holds its annual talent search each fall. CTY talent searches identify students with exceptional mathematical and/or verbal reasoning abilities. Students in grades two through eight can participate in the search. Those with qualifying test scores are then invited to take part in distance learning courses, summer camps and online forums, such as the renowned Cogito. CTY offers numerous scholarships as part of an ongoing mission to identify under-represented scholars. Since 1972, CTY has identified more than a million gifted children. Visit www.cty.jhu.edu.

All Gifted is Local
Identifying Talent Falls in the Hands of the State

The types of services available to gifted kids vary by state and county. “There isn’t one standard perspective, and there is a good deal of variance,” Shaklee said. For kids who live in areas with few services, public education can be a crushingly dull experience punctuated by social isolation and busywork.

Gifted kids in Northern Virginia have it better in a lot of ways. In the first place, state law requires schools to offer gifted programs. But Shaklee offered two other reasons Northern Virginia is ahead of the curve: access to enrichment opportunities and the quality of teacher training available locally. “Many teachers in this area have advanced degrees.”

“There is also a drive to identify giftedness in diverse populations and to recognize, especially in Fairfax County, that all giftedness isn’t academic,” Shaklee said. She noted that in many school districts, gifted programs take an “in or out” approach. Fairfax County takes a needs-based approach, offering a continuum of services, which, as Shaklee pointed out, allows educators to better match educational programs with student needs. It also expands access to gifted education.

“We tend to err on the side of inclusivity,” said Carol Horn, Ph.D., director of gifted education for Fairfax.

According to Horn, about 25 percent of students in Fairfax County receive some level of gifted services, with 12 percent of students in grades three through eight receiving the highest level of all-day instruction in the county’s gifted centers. That’s five times what the U.S. Department of Education reports to be the national average. “We want to be sure that any child with the capacity to be successful can be,” said Horn.

(January 2008)

Tags: Education, Gifted and talented, gifted children