I'm reading this book about gifted children; the psychology of being gifted, kind of. It's making me take a look at my own "giftedness" and how it might have played a role in who I am now.
I know that when I was 8 months old, I could point out the parts of things in my picture books. I would appropriately respond, through pointing, to things like "Where is the axle?" on a picture of a wagon. Clearly my vocabulary was higher than expected.
I know I was reading sometime when I was 2. No one ever taught me, I just read.
I know my IQ was 157 when I was tested about 6 or 7 years ago. I'm not sure what it was when I was tested as a kid. The doctor who tested me as an adult couldn't understand why I didn't hold at least one doctorate: "But... you could do anything!"
I remember being in some study at a university in Michigan... Probably Western Michigan University, based on where I was living at the time. I remember being shown flashcards of words, spiral bound. I remember being asked to read and then define them. They had to send out for more flashcards because I went through all the ones they had. I was... 5 I think, and I scored the vocabulary of a second semester college sophomore.
I remember in kindergarten working from the third grade reader while the class learned their vowels. And counting to 999 when most of the kids stopped at 19 or sometimes 29. By the end of kindergarten I was about to begin the 5th grade reader: I had worked through the previous 4 grades in the year.
This book I'm reading, it's all about how gifted kids' brains are just as atypical as a retarded child's brain. And yet, gifted kids get no additional resources, or very few. Aside from having a personal aid in kindergarten (really he was a student teacher, but he basically got assigned to me), I did a summer camp for gifted kids, and for a few years of elementary school I was in a once or twice a week break away class for gifted kids. Those are the only resources and accommodations I had. And yet, my brain is just as atypical as a retarded child's.
I wonder what that does to a person...
Here is what else I know about me in particular: my brain is constantly hungry. When I find an interesting topic, I cannot turn my brain off about it; reading about it, speculating, writing.....
I have documented disabilities (as in, I don't just think this, I've taken tests and stuff) in "planning and organization" and in "spatial awareness."Planning and organization" doesn't mean, like, are my desk drawers tidy. It means,being able to think ahead, to strategize, things like that.
So yeah... there's a basic summery of my brains. Now I wanna know what it meant/means for who I was/am.
Not all those who wander are lost...
6 comments:
It is a curious thing: An IQ of 70 is enough to be considered mentally retarded. That is only two standard deviations from the norm of 100 (SD=15). An IQ of 157 is four standard deviations from the norm, but to the right instead of the left. If that were to the left it would be an IQ of 40, which is considered Severely Mentally Retarded. A person at this level often requires full-time medical care, and would be provided a state or county-sponsored tutor. Typical goals of teachers of severely mentally retarded students are to help the student be aware of himself as a physical person, and help the student become aware of simple progressions from day to day (taken from the American Association on Mental Retardation). That same deviation to the right of the bell curve, as you can attest, provides little more than overwhelming expectations from others...
You may also be interested to learn that an IQ at your level occurs in approximately 1:11,111 people.
Please consider contacting me at eric(at)giftednessrevealed(dot)com. I'd love to talk more with you about this.
(REFERENCE: Zigler, E., & Farber, E. Commonalities between the intellectual extremes: Giftedness and mental retardation. In F. Horowitz & M. O'Brien (Eds.), The gifted and talented: Developmental perspectives (pp. 387-408). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.)
while 1:11,111 is a great number (i'm looking forward to 11 november of this year!) i find myself thinking it probably means i'm not as gifted as i thought. but then i saw on the site cited here that gifted people tend to think of others as gifted rather than themselves.
humans are confusing.
The doctor who tested me as an adult couldn't understand why I didn't hold at least one doctorate: "But... you could do anything!"
This reminds me of something I read recently in a book called "Outliers". Why some very smart people "succeed" and others live ordinary lives seemingly not making use of their gifts. Great book BTW.
But also, when a giftedness comes with a handicap, such as the not being able to plan, it sure can feel like it is pointless to be gifted or you feel guilty for not "being something" and then you get depressed because you can't seem to "work" your giftedness.....etc, etc.
(speaking from personal experience, though I am sure I am not as gifted as you are, one IQ test says 120 and another says 133-138...for me and numbers are not my strongpoint, spatial abilities are). Anyway, I try not to feel badly for being not as smart as others and not feeling proud that I am much smarter than many if that makes any sense.
"seemingly" not making use of their gifts, indeed.
i guess it probably looks like i don't use my brains at all to a lot of people; i don't work, when i do go to school it's not for something outstanding...
but i use my brains a lot. all the time. i do hours and hours of research a day, for pure pleasure, on a huge variety of topics. i read 10 to 15 books a week, again with the huge variety. i think incredibly hard about myself and who i am and how i live and what i want to do about things like that, and how to do it.
but when someone says to me "so, what do you do?" i usually wind up with "uh..."
I enjoyed reading all of this. I wish I had some of your exceptional abilities Sonya. But I also wish I had some other basic life skills that neither of us appear to be much good at.
yeah, basic life skills can be awfully good things to have around
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