What is a Gifted Child?  

What is a gifted child?

The honest truth is that this is a question to which we don't fully know the answer; therefore there's controversy about it, and there are many different opinions.  I have found consistent success over the years by leaving aside the philosophical and existential debates, and working with the following simple "model".

The most common internationally accepted definition of a gifted child is very simple: it is a child who scores among the top 5% of children on a suitably standardised IQ test; that is, above the 95th percentile, which means that the child scores higher on an IQ test than 95 out of 100 children in the population would do. Some countries base the definition on the top 10%; some people narrow the definition to the top 2%.  I believe that the top 10% to 20% of children are "gifted" enough to be disadvantaged in some ways in our current Australian education system, and the same seems to be true in Western countries generally.

Thus the definition of a gifted child is based on high intelligence across the full range of intellectual activities and concepts which are tested by an IQ test.  By stating this I don't in any way mean to ignore the newer concepts which some people in this field are working on: different types of intelligence - emotional and creative intelligence, and so on.  But currently there are many new models being developed, and it takes time to evaluate them and learn to work with them in a practical way.  So meanwhile, with an open and flexible mind so as not to exclude the creativity or individual characteristics of particular children, I find the IQ definition a sufficient basis to work with.  Furthermore, it is currently the only definition one has any hope of discussing with a school or an Education Department; in fact, one often still has problems gaining acceptance of it.

However - experience has taught me that IQ tests are not infallible, and that there are children who are clearly gifted, who don't score highly on their IQ test.  (The term "clearly gifted" is hard to explain succinctly - basically it means a child who is clearly able to do many things that are usually only done by much older children. Also see the page "How do I know if my child is gifted?")  In recent years the problem with IQ tests has mostly been due to the use of out-dated or inappropriate IQ tests, because a modern test that was appropriate for gifted children wasn't available (see the explanation on the page "Testing Gifted Children").  Since 2005 the new Stanford Binet 5 test has been available, and this is the only test that should now be used for gifted children; parents should ask insistantly for this test, in order to require psychologists to move on from the much-used WISC-III, which was never appropriate to test gifted children (again, see "Testing Gifted Children").  

Even so, there are various factors that can cause a lower IQ test than a child's "giftedness" would indicate.  A common reason for this is that a gifted child may have neural "glitches", which show up in the school context as Specific Learning Difficulties; these can cause the child to score lower on some subsets of the IQ test, causing the overall "IQ" to be lower.  The child may therefore have giftedness that is very apparent in his/her conceptual ability and general understanding, but in some of the neural tasks that we usually take for granted s/he may have difficulty.  I have included an introduction to some aspects of Learning Disabilities in gifted children on the page "Gifted Learning Disabled"; do refer to this page as it has some very helpful practical information, but also do search further because this is a vast field. Gifted children with learning disabilities are now being called "Twice Exceptional".  In the case of a child who scores at a gifted level on many of the subsets of an IQ test, but scores lower on some subsets that are clearly related to dyslexia, auditory processing problems, or some other neural glitch, I always still regard that child as "gifted" - he or she is, as the new terminology says, twice exceptional - exceptional in being gifted, and exceptional in having some form of processing difficulty; such a child will need help for the issues of both these exceptionalities.

However, sometimes the cause of low scores on an IQ test, by a child who is clearly gifted, even highly gifted, simply remains unknown. Do they think too much "outside the box", or do they have a particular nervousness in the testing situation? - unknown.  In my experience cases like this are rare, but they do occur. Ultimately, if he/she seems like a gifted child, thinks like one and acts like one, s/he very probably is one.

Returning to IQ tests: people often ask the question: “So, what do IQ scores measure anyway?” This question has been asked so often that it also has created a huge debate of its own, which in the end can only be given the rather inadequate answer that “A high IQ is a high score on whatever it is that IQ tests test”. 

What is the practical meaning of a high IQ test in real life?  Among the complexities of the range of human abilities, the world is full of people who have been very successful financially or have achieved highly, and who don’t have (or who think they wouldn’t have) a high score on an IQ test.  There are many others who do have a high IQ, but have not necessarily become wealthy or been successful in a financial, worldly, or other obvious way.  Because of this some people feel distrustful of the concept of IQ and whether it has any “real” meaning or not. 

However it is important to understand that although we may not be completely sure what IQ tests do measure, the measurement of IQ is a quite strongly based and consistently proven concept.  Mostly this due to huge amounts of information gathered during the two World Wars and other smaller wars through the 20th century.  Hundreds of thousands of service men and women were given IQ tests when they joined were called up, and they provide a very numerous base for research into the practical meaning of IQ.  Research has proved beyond any doubt that a high IQ is associated with faster learning of more difficult concepts, greater creative and problem solving abilities, and deeper insight into complex issues, and these are the most common indicators of a gifted child.

Regarding the successful person with a contempt for “IQ”, many don’t realise that they do in fact have a high IQ; others are a testimony to the fact that many other qualities such as determination, perseverance and commitment are also important to success. Regarding the person with the high IQ who appears not to be successful – if it’s true that he or she isn’t as successful as he or she would like to be, this an example of why we have gradually realised that gifted children need special help.

However it is true that many people with high intelligence do often follow academic courses because they’re so interesting and provide enjoyable intellectual challenges, and can fail to develop the business and entrepreneurial skills, or the confidence, which can turn their knowledge and abilities into worldly or financial success. Where this is the case, again it is hopefully something with which we can help today’s gifted children.  A third possibility is that the individual may have values other than worldly or commercial success, and be content without it.  Having high ability doesn’t mean that one has to prove it to others by means of visible or external achievement or success.

Potential:

Returning to gifted children, it’s very important to note that the definition of a gifted child only requires high intelligence: it doesn’t require that the child is already doing something spectacular.  This is a serious distinction, because there’s widespread misunderstanding about it; gifted children need this issue to be much better understood. Giftedness is the potential for high achievement.

In an attempt to make clear what a gifted child is, some programs and Education Departments in Australia use the terms SHIP (Student of High Intellectual Potential), or CHIP (Children of High Intellectual Potential).  These terms make clear that a gifted child is a child with unusually high potential, which may or may not be achieved.  However to date in Australia neither term CHIP or SHIP has become generally accepted, so the easily misunderstood “Gifted Child” is still most widely used.

"All Children Are Gifted"

One last word: there is a view you may encounter widely, particularly in preschool and junior primary activities, that "all children are gifted"; that every child has within him or her the musical potential of a Mozart, the science potential of an Einstein, etc.  The human brain is such a complex and little understood mechanism that this may well be true, or true in some sense which we don’t at present understand; certainly it seems that most of us have greater potential than we are able to tap into in our lives.  Perhaps some day we’ll learn how to unlock all of our hidden potentials.  

However to date the fact remains that in the history of the world, only Mozart has ever written music like Mozart; only Einstein has ever brought out of his daydreams the amazing insights that Einstein did.  

The concept of IQ is barely 100 years old, and we understand it very little.  Our realisation that gifted children have great needs if they are to be happy, and to reach some of their potential if they wish to do that, is only 30 to 40 years old; obviously we still have a lot to learn, and for the present, this website can only try to deal with some of the issues of Gifted Children, as defined above.  

Parents who have gifted children may often encounter the "all our children are gifted" concept from family members, other parents, school authorities, or from anyone in the community.  It is probably important to remember that in the sense that each child is unique, that all children are wonderful, that all children probably have unsuspected abilities and potential, this statement deserves respect, or at least tact.  In my experience there's not much to be gained in any practical way by arguing about gifted children's issues with this group of people. 

However the fact remains that parents of intellectually gifted children will find  nevertheless, that their child definitely has characteristics and abilities which put them into a small subgroup of children who have exceptional abilities, and also exceptional needs. 

What is a gifted child?  It's a child who's unique, wonderful, and who has even brighter abilities and potential than the average child, but whose potential also makes him or her vulnerable to damage unless special effort is made to understand his or her needs, and to provide appropriate social and educational environments for her or him. 

© 2000  Helen Dowland
This page was last updated on Wednesday, 25 January 2006 06:45 PM

                                              [What is a Gifted Child?] [Intelligence & IQ] [How do I Know if my Child is Gifted?] [Problem Analysis] [Testing Gifted Children] 
                                                [Gifted Children's Needs] [My Child may be Gifted - What Should I Do?] [My Older Child may be Gifted]  
[What do Gifted Children Need From Schools?] [Gifted Children - the Myth] [How can I Help my Gifted Preschooler?]  
[Highly gifted Children] Why do I get Different Advice from Different Experts?] [Homeschooling Gifted Children]
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