What Hath Blog Wrought?
Looks like a serious conversation broke out here.
I attempted to take a light hearted poke at a Mom and she responded, as did another. Remind me to be careful around Mom With Kids. I shouldn’t poke them.
I don’t think there is a difference between smart kids and gifted kids. I think the gummit has foisted “gifted” as a feel good term and made it political.
So I poked around a little bit and found this:
the Daily Mail: “Her parents knew Georgia Brown was bright. After all, she could count to ten, recognised her colours and was even starting to dabble with French.
But it was only when their bubbly little two-year-old took an IQ test that her towering intellect was confirmed.”
Georgia has become the youngest female member of Mensa after scoring a genius-rated IQ of 152.
This puts her in the same intellectual league, proportionate to her age, as physicist Stephen Hawking.
According to an expert in gifted children, Georgia is the brightest two-year-old she has ever met. Parents Martin and Lucy Brown have always regarded their youngest child as a remarkably quick learner.
She was crawling at five months and walking at nine months.
By 14 months, she was getting herself dressed.
“She spoke really early – by 18 months she was having proper conversations,” Mrs Brown said.
“She would say, ‘Hello I’m Georgia, I’m one’. She was also putting her shoes on and putting them on the right feet.” read more
So will the gummit declare her gifted? If the gummit gives us gifted kids can they still grow up to be geniuses? Or are they eternally gifted? Can a smart kid be a genius? Or are they just nerds? Would an artist qualify as gifted? How about an athlete? (Think Tiger.)
Inquiring minds want to know.
I sure am glad I never had to deal with such weighty issues in our family.
UPDATE: I had to deal with the Geek, Nerd, Dork issue. (Used to link to junk site.)
But back then there weren’t so many choices. Guys were either jocks or not. I played in the band, guess which I was.
Oh for cripes sake! Slow down??? 🙁
I tested as “gifted” in junior high. Whoopdedoo. It got me out of PE, allowed me to play around for an hour a day on a Commodore 64 with three upperclassmen, but nowhere on any job application I’ve filled out have I been asked if I am gifted.
My nephew tested gifted as well. Yet the school refuses to do an IEP for him or give him the extra help he needs. In fact, last year his first grade teacher actually told him (the child who is reading on a 5th grade level) to slow down and not work so fast because it made the other kids feel bad. Sometimes that label doesn’t do much more than frustrate.
Gretchen, you need to include “Mensa Member” in all your comments please.
Hee. I post about the Mensa bit because it’s proof positive that IQ doesn’t matter. If I were some hotshot, I wouldn’t say a bloody word, because my self would speak for itself, so to speak.
I mention it mostly ironically — i.e., that it doesn’t freakin’ make a difference necessarily. I know lots of millionaires who can’t read and write so well. Likewise, I know lots of genuises who make well under six figures. As Douglas Adams said, Hey ho, it’s a funny old world.
Plus, as I’ve said, I’m an equal opportunity insulter. And my favorite persons to insult are myself, and lawyers such as my husband, and my supposedly gifted kids. The hallmark of learning the ways of the world is learning to laugh at oneself and one’s own.
Okay – I don’t want to get all serious on you but here’s the BBC’s show link – lots more input there and links to stuff that some find offensive, others find funny.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2007/07/joking_about_jihadists_1.html
Please check out the story Jill referenced and read the comments… very witty.
First one is: I hope it doesn’t bomb.
@Jill, thanks. Jihad, the Musical? Now that’s funny. Remember the brouhaha over Jesus Christ Superstar?
@PrairieGourmet, thanks. Now if Gretchen tells you to fuck off, she means it in a nice way. 🙂
Check out my pasta sauce for the wet noodles. Gretchen, no harm intended. I really like you and your blog.
We’re doing what blogs do best – communicate. Don’t mean to be gushy mushy (I gather that’s not your style). You know, it’s also a bit of, when it’s your own kid who is going through it – it’s a lot more personal. You obviously have a fun time blogging, people like what you write – that’s all good. It’s hard to know how others you don’t even imagine are reading might read what you write.
Today on the BBC show World Have Your Say? The question was about this new musical opening up in England called Jihad: The Musical and it’s supposed to be a comedy. Well, a lot of Muslims are upset and don’t find the humor funny at all.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=1186232007
Everyone is sensitive somewhere.
@Jill, sometimes I don’t know why I excerpt stuff too!
@Prairie, it’s the Jon Benet deal with intelligent kids that I dislike.
You’re post flamed Gretchen, and I don’t want this to become nasty.
Remember Ann Landers punishment? (Three lashes with wet noodle.)
You linked to just another mother parading her freakish child in the media; next come the talk shows like vacuum cleaner boy. If they’re kept out of the limelight, these kids can actually have a normal life.
Gretchen C is right about IQ and money/occupation. People think high IQ guarantees high income. Many gifted kids grow up to be nice, normal people doing ordinairy things, but I bet their mothers didn’t have them doing tricks on tv.
BTW: Gretchen, if you don’t care about labels, why in the heck did you take the Mensa test if you already knew you were gifted? Mensa is just a big club of know-it-alls who like to say they are members of Mensa.
Going – the only thing that matters is that my kids grow up and grow healthy. You are 100% right about the uselessness of labels. My issue was with the fact that my post was a serious post about the lousy job Ohio is doing with kids who need more in school. So I really just didn’t and am still not sure I get why you excerpted what you did. But you know what – I used the word autistic to describe how some editors had reacted in a local paper – and guess which blogs lit up? I really hadn’t thought about it.
Labels stink but it sure can be hard to stop using them.
Remember: you posted your picture when you were a 16 yo, so it’s documented.
And being beautiful helps me a lot.
Hee. Oh yeah, we are super lazy. When God was handing round the workaholic gene, we must have both been hiding in the bushes. Smart kids often end up lazy because they get used to getting As in school without really trying — and then when we grow up and are expected to work, it’s sort of like “What’s that?”
Now, now, don’t get all exorcised! Write about your musicalness, that sounds interesting.
Don’t you know that you do not have the right to free speech on your own weblog?
Sheesh. Some people. My attitude is, if someone doesn’t like what I write, they don’t have to read it.
I was a gifted child and a musical child prodigy… and I have two gifted sons. Yadda-yadda. Poke away!
Beautiful and Mensa! So you and Ben must be really lazy.
Ahhh, nothing wrong with poking fun at Gifted Children — Ben and I were both considered gifted, we’re both members of Mensa, our kids seem bright, but so what? Giftedness doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. I’m a paralegal, not a neurosurgeon, and Ben has never even been a partner in a law firm. High IQs are terribly overrated. I started college at 16 in something called the Freshman Honors Program at the University of Delaware with a whole class of whiz kids, and while our class produced its share of research scientists, it also produced a number of security guards.