Exceptionally Gifted Students in Their School Years - Part 1 of 5
Introduction to Level Three Longitudinal Study Results for 9 Exceptionally Gifted Youngsters
Level Three — Exceptionally Gifted — individuals are all in the 99th percentile of the intellectual continuum. So are Levels Four and Five. But you will see more and more differences between each Level as we move through that continuum. Being at the 99th percentile intellectually in some or all things, doesn’t mean you are exactly like someone else in that range.
I’ve learned throughout 30 years of gathering information to explain giftedness through the lifespan — based on the high intelligence continuum — that very few of my subjects themselves read the entire finished product.
My doctoral dissertation (1998), the first Levels of Gifted book (2005, 2009), and now The 5 Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up (2023), are studies of what it is like to be gifted at different levels. I’ve explored the subjects’ personalities, upbringings, access to what they need, what their test scores and early milestones mean and don’t mean, and their inner development stages of development, etc., and yet, many of them scroll until they find what I wrote about them. So, for those who only look for themselves, they don’t get to see how many others are like them! Why do I mention this here? Because many of you might not have looked at Levels One and Two, but to do so would give you a deeper understanding of the variety of achievement, careers, parenting, and schooling and how difficult and confusing it can be to zero in on what you think is your Level of your child’s Level.
Level Three — Exceptionally Gifted (throughout their growing up years)
There are nine people from Level Three for whom there is enough personality and parenting information to explore. Six of the nine subjects had at least one parent — a total of seven parents — show a personality preference on the MBTI® for J-Judging. Of the nine fathers, three did not take the personality instrument, three scored as a J-Judging type, and the three remaining fathers scored as a P-Perceiving type. Six of the children preferred P-Perceiving, two did not take it as a child, and one showed a preference for J-Judging on the MMTIC®. So, the pattern continues in this group for more of the parents to show a preference for J-Judging than did the children they brought in for evaluation and support.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, It is my conclusion that more P-Perceiver than J-Judger children have negative school issues that attract the attention and judgment of the adults in their lives. And as my loose form of proof, both parents are likely gifted, as I pointed out earlier, but it only takes one of this gifted parent pair to be a J-Judger and take their P-Perceiver child to a specialist for help.
Li Bartrom and Betsy Dunkirk both had some early difficulties finding the right fit in school.
Li Bartrom
Li describes both of her adoptive parents as authoritative in their parenting. Even after their divorce when Li was almost five years old, her parents continued to co-parent their two children by dividing the children’s time equally between the two homes, and by making decisions together about their education and activities. Li’s childhood personality preference was ENFP (Inspirer). Her mother’s personality type preference is USTJ (Duty Fulfiller/Doer) and her father never participated in or contributed to this study, so there is no type preference available for him. Both Li and her older adoptive brother started life in Korean orphanages and came to their new family in a small Midwestern community where they were the only Korean-born children they or anyone else knew. For Li, with an educational fit that went from Unsatisfactory to Excellent from her first school experiences to her last, finding an overall good social fit was difficult.
Li’s mother has a completely opposite personality type preference to Li. The small-town atmosphere, too, led Li to compare herself to the norms of the conservative population there and to mold herself into someone of whom others would approve. Her mother described it this way:
I believe that the educational/friendship journey for Li would have been much more difficult had it not been for her personality. She is extremely loving and caring and works very hard to create situations that are not uncomfortable for others. She was not outspoken in middle school or high school (that has changed dramatically in college). She would quietly doodle on her papers rather than be outspoken.
Another aspect of growing up in a small town is that Li stood out for a variety of reasons (e.g., highly intelligent, Korean descent, being adopted, having divorced parents). By age 18, Li’s personality profile was INFP (Idealist), and she wrote:
While growing up, my confidence was pretty much just arrogance, but now I’d say I’m a genuinely confident person, and I definitely do not fear failure. I embrace trying, shooting for the stars, so to speak, and am not embarrassed when I fail professionally. Sad or disappointed, of course, but not embarrassed. I don’t think it reflects anything about me except for the fact that I’m ambitious. Failure gives me fuel to do things better on my next try. I’ve become, in other words, really resilient, though I have had lots of periods of uncertainty and feelings of failure and depression. Well, at least in regard to professional success. My personal life is a different story? Been sorting that out lately, too.
In a catch-up interview when Li was in her mid-twenties, she answered my question of how she got to be so driven to succeed and reach out for paths not often taken. Here is how Li described her parents’ influence and viewpoints:
I suppose it was support from my parents (versus pressure) — they’ve always encouraged me to find something that I care about to work on, no matter what that was. They are concerned (especially my mom) about outward success as well, though, so I definitely did have some pressure though it was all implicit. I knew my mom would really be proud if I went to an Ivy League school, for example, though I don’t think my dad cares as much. Because those types of goals are achievable for me and I also care about them, it’s been fine.
It is clear Li is someone who is often looking at who she is and how she can grow, find her true self and make a difference in the world with her behaviors and actions, all Searcher behaviors. She wrote:
I changed a lot in college, I think. I gained social skills, the ability to be charismatic, and confidence — and worldliness. I basically was trying to shed my naïveté as quickly as possible, and was thrilled to experience lots of new things, and become more sophisticated beyond my conservative midwestern upbringing. After a couple years of confusion post-grad, and lots of feeling lost, and unwise choices (but the necessary foolishness that teaches you lessons you couldn’t learn otherwise) — I’m now feeling like I’m back on the track to where I want to be going. I got a Fulbright teaching grant to Korea, which really bolstered my self-esteem.
While I just wrote a bunch about how resilient and confident I am, I might not be so resilient if I didn’t have a job I was proud of. When I was unemployed, or employed at places I didn’t feel proud of, it definitely affected my self-esteem, even though logically I knew it shouldn’t. That’s my remnant of pride (and the concomitant lack of self-esteem) — I always feel like I have to justify myself, to be outwardly successful in some way. It’s also a result of being high-achieving as a kid and having that be my refuge and solace to my loneliness and social isolation maybe? So, I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about loneliness lately.
Both Li and her brother were good students and her mother limited Li’s grade level acceleration in school to keep her grade placement behind her brother for their combined social and emotional benefit. Her brother was also a good student but not so intellectually different from others as Li. She was a dutiful child and student so there did not appear to be a problem with this decision. Her parents had no specific career goals for their daughter and were open to giving her the opportunities she wanted as far as activities and college choices. Despite the completely different personality preference of her mother, no apparent conflict developed between them. Li felt free to chart her own course while she was growing up and still does.
Asked about her current life and what she likes to do in her spare time, she wrote:
In my spare time, I’m working on my first music release right now actually. I recently ran my first race, a 10km. Running and exercising is something that I’ve picked up as an adult. In high school I was definitely the non-sporty one (my brother was very, very good at sports) and I was put in the “artsy” box. And besides, I don’t think I had the competitive drive or discipline back then. I go on solo hikes in the mountains, I go on walks, I hang out with friends, I love going out dancing in the city, and lately I just read in my bed. I also compose songs and write.
Li is well-advanced of most of the other book subjects so far — except Seth Cannon — in the early to mid-twenties in her self-awareness, circumspection, and pursuit of inner growth. She denies it, but it appears she “heard” her mother’s inner goals even though her mother was apparently not overt or demanding. Although she knows it does not make sense, she is self- critical. She wants to rid herself of those feelings going forward.
Betsy Dunkirk
Betsy, who has a sister a little over a year older than she, said her parents used a mostly authoritative, leaning toward permissive, parenting style. Her childhood personality type preference was UNFP (Idealist/Inspirer), and she shifted to ISFJ (Nurturer) as a young adult. Her mother preferred INTP (Thinker) and her father INTJ (Scientist). Neither of her parents were F- Feeling types, which is to say they are both T-Thinking types, and this became an issue because Betsy wanted a closer and more emotion-based relationship with them that they were never able to give to her. Betsy showed a preference for ISFJ (Nurturer) when 18.
With an educational fit that went from Unsatisfactory to Excellent over her school years, Betsy found school to be socially difficult mostly because she was not “taught about feminism yet” and viewed the other girls as competition. She described the viewpoint she got from her mother and how it affected her interactions while in middle through high school:
I would have one close friend and a couple others as friends. I was mostly quiet. I was a very good student but not very social. I resisted being any more social. There were people who liked me, so I’m thinking I was the one who was pretty judgmental and maybe jealous of the more sociable and popular girls, so I kind of kept them out. There were a lot of really well-rounded people and I thought they were great, but I was just too uncomfortable to try to know them closer. Now I’m sorry, really. My mom was always very negative about boys: “Boys are trash, and girls who make out with boys are sluts” and I just sort of had that mentality. It wasn’t an intelligence thing because they were all good students, too.
Betsy discounted her intelligence as a possible factor in her difficulties “fitting in.” Much like Li Bartrom earlier, she needed to find excuses or reasons for why she struggled with popularity because she did not understand how different she is. Additionally, because the mothers of both girls thought everything was okay with their daughters, they did not seek to accelerate or find alternative classroom settings for them.
Betsy mentioned that she was compliant as a child because she wanted to please her mother. She eventually recognized her need to make her own decisions about life. After several years working as a coding specialist (Coding is changing one computer language to another computer language for use with existing computer programs), Betsy is considering graduate school because she would rather be in education or doing something that includes other people more. She earns enough money in her current work to save for a possibly less lucrative career. And most recently, she sees it will benefit her to look at what she wants for not only her relationships but for her career and whole way of making her own choices. Although she sees herself as stuck, it appears she has already made some personal decisions — holding off on dating and pursuing therapy are two clear examples — that will support her future emotional growth and well-being. Her therapy indicates she is open to internal growth and change, and she is currently in the early stages of just wanting to feel better and understand who she is and can be.
When just past her mid-twenties, Betsy answered the question about her current self- concept and social skills: “Now that I’m an adult, I like to spend time with friends, joking and talking in our apartments. That’s certainly a big change for me since my school days!”
Handy references from past posts:
Gifted Children and Their Personality Types
On Substack: https://deborahruf.substack.com/p/gifted-children-and-their-personality-e12?utm_source=publication-search
On Medium: https://medium.com/@deborahruf/gifted-children-and-their-personality-types-f875785c53f6
The early milestones of gifted children from the different Levels of Gifted
My current published books about the gifted:
The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023). https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709. This is an 20-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). On Amazon, Keys to Successfully Parenting Gifted Children (2022, 2023) Print and ebook. The Nook version is also now on B&N. This is a short book 80 pages including pictures — that is a great starter for parents just wanting some answers … fast! The content was originally from a PowerPoint I created for the parents of gifted children presentations around the country. The contents zero in on some of the most important things about raising gifted children want to know.
Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (Oct. 2024). The book provides a detailed analysis of the different levels of giftedness, the concept of “good fit” in educational settings, and the impact of various school environments on gifted children. It also includes personal stories and experiences of gifted children and adults, highlighting the challenges they face in finding appropriate educational and social environments. Available now on both Amazon and B&N. It is not the old purple book from 2005. Also, the Kindle and Nook versions are formatted so readers can click back and forth easily and find their place again. Follow this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL3BSC9X or this link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/losing-our-minds-deborah-ruf/1146410968?ean=2940185888872
Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (Oct. 2024). The book provides a detailed analysis of the different levels of giftedness, the concept of “good fit” in educational settings, and the impact of various school environments on gifted children. It also includes personal stories and experiences of gifted children and adults, highlighting the challenges they face in finding appropriate educational and social environments. Available now on both Amazon and B&N. It is not the old purple book from 2005. Also, the Kindle and Nook versions are formatted so readers can click back and forth easily and find their place again. Follow this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL3BSC9X or this link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/losing-our-minds-deborah-ruf/1146410968?ean=2940185888872
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
Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies (D. Ruf, 1998) doctoral dissertation. Free PDF https://dabrowskicenter.org/ruf
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