Seven signs of a gifted child

posted by Karen Quinn, The Testing Mom - October 15th, 2014

There are so many gifts and talents that include creativity, sports, music, arts but an IQ test evaluates a child’s academic gifts. IQ scores that put children in the gifted and talented range for academics are:

•     131 – 145 – Moderately Gifted
•     146 – 159 – Highly Gifted
•     160 – 179 – Exceptionally Gifted
•     180+ – Profoundly Gifted

Not only with IQ, there are other ways a gifted child can be identified. Here are the top seven signs of a gifted child:

• Reasons well (good thinker)
• Learns rapidly
• Has extensive vocabulary
• Has an excellent memory
• Has a long attention span (if interested)
• Perfectionistic
•  Prefers older companions or adults
• Source:  Gifted Development Center, Dr. Linda Silverman (site: Gifted Development)

Note: There are several more characteristics beyond those listed above.

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Since Testing Mom launched we’ve helped tens of thousands of parents across the country with preparation for the gifted and talented test. For parents who had a child score in the 99th percentile gave us their tips on how they prepared their child. Here are a few of the many tips we’ve received:

• We always kept our test prep fun and playful!
• We worked on building test-taking skills as much as we worked on the abilities that were being assessed.  It took a while for our son to understand that he really had to listen to and remember the questions being asked and that the pictures represented answer choices.  We taught him to listen to the instructions, look at all the answers, and eliminate what was clearly wrong.
• At first, my son could only sit still and focus for about 10 minutes; every day we added a few more minutes to our practice until he could focus for almost an hour!  We would set an egg timer each time we worked, which my son loved.
• We spent a lot of time working on our son’s listening and following directions skills because that was so important for test taking.
• When questions were hard for my daughter, I talked through the logic with her so that she would ultimately know how to solve each problem.
• I often pretended to be stumped by a question myself and let my child help me.
• When my daughter resisted, it was usually because the questions were getting harder.  Then, we’d back up and do easier questions to give her confidence to tackle the harder ones.
• We never called it test prep – We called it “Zany Brainy Games” or “Puzzlers.”

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