Should you tell gifted kids they're gifted?
… and why explaining this is a bit like talking about sex.
I’ll admit I can talk easily both about sex education and giftedness, and I suffer no shyness or embarrassment about either. Maybe the giftedness talk is more difficult for you, though, and this piece may help with that. Feel free to share or copy.
This post started as another snippet from a podcast interview with Deborah Ruf (me) by Julia Krysztofiak-Szopa, for Julia’s podcast — Dzieci Zdolne — which is Polish for Gifted Children. I’ve provided the link at the end of the post. Right now, I’ve written far more than I had the chance to explain during that interview.
When Julia asked me this question, “Should you tell gifted kids they’re gifted?” my short answer was (and is), “yes.” But the timing of the “telling” is somewhat intricate, so I ended up saying that the experience between child and parent can be somewhat awkward, somewhat like talking to them about sex when they are still young. Now, though, I am taking the time to give you readers a little more support on the issue of “how to tell them.”
Here are quotes and synopses of subjects from both my books (5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options, 2005, 2009, and The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us, 2023) from the longitudinal study and listed at the end of this post. Most of these people are from families who worked with me in one way or another, that is, they consulted with me to administer evaluations or already had those done elsewhere and wanted me to help them to deal with the schools. Most of these examples come from the latter group … no complete consultation where I would have explained how to share the testing results with their children. I’ll let you know which is which.
<<Also, because I use my educational jargon from the study in the post, I’ve provided tables at the end that describe a brief description of the Levels of Gifted “qualifiers,” some important personality details, and how to take the tests affordably yourself and whole family.>>
Feedback From and About the Longitudinal Study Subjects
Brennan’s family never used my services and volunteered to participate in the book study.
Brennan, an exceptionally gifted Level Three (Highly to Exceptionally Gifted), has an ESFP (the Performer) personality type preference. Brennan’s family volunteered to be part of the first book study and continued as participants for the second book. They never worked with me as clients. Many people do not have a clear understanding of what their intelligence results mean. Sometimes when parents endeavor to share test results and their meaning with their children, they aren’t sure what the results mean, either. That can sometimes lead to an explanation that can be confusing or even inadvertently misleading to the child.
Brennan showed anger as he explained the “pointlessness” of intelligence testing when he and I met for our interviews. His anger indicates he got the information poorly. This is how Brennan stated his views when he was in his late twenties:
I’ve gained nothing in my life from knowing I was gifted. They could’ve just sent me to school … and it would have done fine. It’s simply wrong to tell people they are special and better than other people. I’m angry about a lot of this. I think that I — and everyone else — would be much better off if they weren’t told anything about intelligence. For me, it just made me arrogant for a long time and now I think it is simply wrong to put so much value on high intelligence. So, my advice is not to worry about it, talk about it, or even consider it at all. It’s a total negative, so why bring it up?
Another subject shared his experience. William is an exceptionally to profoundly gifted Level Four and scored as an INFP (Idealist) when he was younger and EnFp as an adult. During his school years, William was overshadowed by his Level Five younger brother, Jacob, whose childhood personality type, ISTJ (Duty Fulfiller), aligned well with school expectations. William’s family came to me for help working with their children’s school after the children were tested elsewhere, so they did not have the kind of information I usually share about test results. William initially believed, to some extent, what Brennan Ahlers and several others have said they believe: gifted labels don’t matter or help. When he was in his early thirties, he and I did talk about what his intelligence means, and he said this by way of recommendations for people who have the care of and interactions with gifted youngsters:
In the past, I thought I should have been treated like everyone else. My giftedness shouldn’t have been an issue. But after talking with you, I realize that might not have been the best approach. I could tell that what worked for my brother simply wasn’t an appealing option to me, and now I know my personality was likely behind that. The unlimited compassion of my mother — that was huge. She never, ever gave up on listening to us and finding what we wanted or seemed to need. As for advice to teachers, the thing I really valued was being talked to not as student #45, but “William, how’re things going?” Treat me like a person, someone who mattered. Be like the teacher who asked me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Wow. It changed my whole approach to life even if it took a while for some of it to kick in.
Although William’s personality type preference is often a problematic personality for school, such people — INFP-Idealists — are natural Searchers. They are people who use what they are experiencing, things that don’t make sense or that don’t work well for them, to find a way to make things better for themselves and others. Whereas his brother’s ISTJ would ask the teacher, “What would you like us to do?” or “What should we do?” the INFP would say, “Why are we supposed to do that?”
Ross is a Level Five profoundly gifted person. He was raised in rural and then not-quite-so-rural places where he never encountered anyone else like him except, possibly, his mother. By the time Ross was contacted for the adult study of the former gifted children, he agreed to an interview in exchange for finding out his IQ from his childhood evaluation with me. He said his parents believed one does not tell children their IQs, and so they never shared all the information about his unusual intelligence with him. He referred to the IQ report results as “just the tip of the iceberg” for finally understanding “what had gone wrong” in his life. His parents, particularly his mother, had always treated him like the prodigiously gifted person he is, and yet, according to Ross, she never told him his specific ability level or anything about it except that he could successfully do anything they or he could set up for him.
Ross’s educational years were unusually chaotic from a school fit, academic rigor, opportunity, and learning standpoint. He attended a Tier 4 post-secondary institution, one of the branch schools of a Tier 2 university (most state universities are Tier 2), and he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. Ross finished high school at age 16 and had already completed two years of post-secondary options at this same Tier 4 institution. He never experienced a good fit for himself and when first contacted for this book, he hesitated to participate. I told him that now that he is an adult, I could directly share his test results from when he was a young child. He said, “Send it. It may be the tip of the iceberg that I’ve been trying to decipher my whole life.”
In his first year of college, Ross was put on academic probation because he “was so bad with study skills and turning in assignments.” He worked as a telemarketer “as a way to do penance until I was readmitted.” After finishing college, Ross worked at a rural location for a grocery chain.
At [a store where] it was so clear no one wanted to be there. So unpleasant. I was paid about $20,000 below the going rate, but because I was stuck in [a small town in a mostly rural state] at that point, I was more or less forced to accept it. The bosses were flauntingly rich. Rolls-Royces, expensive vacations, and they had an outrageously outdated [computer] program platform.
Ross eventually moved to a major metropolitan area to work at an organization he knew about and wanted to work for them before they even knew who he was. He knew what they wanted and programmed what he knew they would want, and he was right. “They actually flew me in for an interview. I got the job!” After two years, Ross moved on to a job he enjoyed as a web application developer. In his late twenties during our last interaction, single, and fully self-supporting, Ross lived in an apartment on his own. He paid for his own post-secondary expenses by working throughout his post-secondary education years.
Chances are that Ross would have fared better emotionally and socially had he had that conversation with me earlier. He was 9 years old when I assessed his intelligence on the Stanford-Binet LM. As a Level Five profoundly gifted child, he could have handled the information about his results easily by age 6, so age 9 is more than able to deal with the details of how different many of their needs are and will be. I tell people that their child is ready for the information by the time they have reached a “mental age” of 12. Here’s my table for that:
When does each Level reach a Mental Age 12 of:
Level One (Moderately Gifted): about age 10
Level Two (Highly Gifted): about age 9
Level Three (Exceptionally Gifted: about age 8
Level Four (Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted): about age 7
Level Five (Profoundly Gifted): age 6
Rebecca, an exceptionally to profoundly gifted Level Four and who preferred INTP (Thinker, 1.7%, rare for women) in childhood and adulthood, wrote this when in her late twenties:
Friendships were predictably difficult for a number of years. I have no idea how much of this was due to being gifted and how much of it was due to being a total jerk. I do know that in 5th or 6th grade, a classmate “invented” the game “Genius Germs,” which was basically “tag” except that I was always it, and from then until high school I pretty much spent free time alone. I struggled for many years to understand why someone I didn’t even know that well would do this to me, but thinking about it now, I had probably acted like a jerk.
Rebecca’s mother refused to compare her children and didn’t give Rebecca or her sister any specific information; she just told them they were both gifted. That is true, but Rebecca was considerably more intellectually able and legitimately had a more difficult time finding true peers and academic challenge and depth. Here is what happened as a result of my interviewing Rebecca and encouraging to see if her sister would want to talk to me, too: Her sister not only refused, but she involved Rebecca in a conversation about how the “gifted label was a negative and there is no good reason to use the term at all.”
After being open and generous about her life and views when I first contacted her, after interacting with her sister about the book, Rebecca asked that I not contact her again.
Emily is a Level Four to Five Exceptionally to Profoundly Gifted person, the eldest, and the only girl in the family. Emily’s younger brother, Allen, didn’t test as high on the old Stanford-Binet (Form-LM) and is likely a Level Two (Highly Gifted) youngster himself. The youngest boy wasn’t tested prior to the study because he was still too young for the first book (5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options, 2005, 2009). Her parents were determined to treat them all equally, stating that Emily could work out how to make school work for her, and it would keep Allen and Edward from having issues. Unfortunately, it was Emily who was the most negatively impacted while her brother’s thrived. She has had great anxiety and depression and dropped out of college to lessen the stress in her life. Her parents wrote this about the younger brothers’ outcomes so far:
Her younger brother Allen is doing much better [than Emily], kind of the golden boy, now a junior at [Type 1] college, majoring in chemistry. Very bright, but without the extras. Youngest son, Edward is a sophomore in high school and is a very solid average kid. Pretty shy, but not a huge problem (yet). Likes computers and techy stuff. He has some friends, but distant. He likes the computer too much, we feel. Keeping an eye on him, but easy to let him slide by as we hover over Emily and try to figure out something.
I could give you the responses from the study of the Baby Boomer generation in my doctoral dissertation when I asked them all how they found out they were gifted. I’ve linked to a free copy below if you would like to read it online or print it out. The summary answer to this question is that most of them were never told and grew up to wonder what is wrong with them.
Let me know if you want me to share the dissertation stories about not knowing one’s IQ while growing up in a post by responding in the Reply section and telling me what you hope I wrote about on this topic and why I recommend what I do in my talks, writings, speeches, and consultations.
Finally, here is a little reminder clip from early 2023 before my follow-up longitudinal book was published. I’ve listed and linked to it below, as well.
This part of the podcast is 2 minutes 10 seconds long and comes from a much longer podcast.
Aside from the short video podcast, I’ve added links for further reading and explanation if this is a topic that interests you. My small book, Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child (2023), tells parents — or others who give guidance to a gifted child — how to tell them they are gifted and help them understand the details of the IQ test evaluation that underpinned all the qualitative date available, too. Plus, if you need more guidance on this, I provide parent Zoom consultations of different lengths. “Should you tell gifted kids they are gifted?”
Julia lives with her family in Poland and it was such a delight to get to know her. Like me, she has lots of thoughts and ideas and she loves to talk! Me, too. While my own children have been out of the nest for more than twenty years, she still has children at home. Her questions to me are mostly related to those listeners who are still raising their gifted children. My answers to readers of this post relate to gifted adults whether they have children or not!
Take a look and listen. I hope my answers here are useful to both readers and listeners.
Helpful Tables
Levels, Scores, and Gifted Descriptions Table
www.personalitypage.com I’ve been recommending this site for many years. I personally used the professional MBTI® site for my clients during my consultancy. I’ve found the results to be accurate and the interpretive feedback is terrific for those who’ve taken the test.
Resources and References
5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options in 2009. Here are links to the 5 Levels of Gifted book on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/5-levels-of-gifted-deborah-ruf/1126358834 and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-School-Educational-Options/dp/0910707987 or directly from the publisher: https://www.giftedunlimitedllc.com/store/p12/5_Levels_of_Gifted.html
The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023). Find on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709. This is an 18 year longitudinal study follow-up about the original gifted child subjects in 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009).
Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child, 2023, by Deborah Ruf. Find on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Keys-Successfully-Parenting-Gifted-Child/dp/B0C9GHSJ53
A free link to my entire dissertation: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.positivedisintegration.com%2Fruf1998.pdf%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0hyDDm_-IaYxIbJDHfYKz389TLmHx_cm0D4-JQSHkGbKDGJU0Uom3hkJs&h=AT2NhDiK7gli5COD6ckJiyQoPzdQmmF3pVAjFOlglPp5rvkcXYWCNWofxg7Q90SOON5m1ytqr4hmmxoIjYqyK-S71wqWjMKC2nQqpiDwOpCZFWyvK7Px3ZW75sFz6bUeplcampR7xXjTZZouUq0
Professional Website: www.FiveLevelsofGifted.com
Substack: Gifted Through the Lifespan
Medium - https://deborahruf.medium.com/
PS: I’d consider hiring a very part-time person to help with technical issues. Setting up the helpful infrastructure issues gets in the way of my writing. I’m quite overwhelmed.
Hi Deborah, I would love to know your mbti type?!
I have already vaguely told Annie, age 3, that she is gifted. Your description of level 5 easily fits her, and her tested IQ is above 150. I've told her that her brain works fast, and that I want her to feel happy and fulfilled. I told her I don't believe career is important, apart from her interest and fulfilment. Needless to say I'm INFP. People (like me at least) spend a lifetime trying to understand ourselves. Why not help someone along.
We told our kid without using the term gifted. We just told him that he might learn things quicker than other kids his age and so he needs to try to be patient for kids at school if it takes them longer. We also told him that there are going to be things that are going to be more challenging for him than other kids his age (for him it is sports) and that’s ok. He’s perfectionist and this was hard to learn to be ok with. He also hated art because it wouldn’t look as good as what he had in his mind. When he started to dumb himself down to fit in at school we had to tell him that he needs to advocate for himself and ask for more challenging work instead. So I guess we are allll about the neurotype and want him to understand himself but we aren’t really in to the label and the stigma and expectations it can bring.