The Forums › Forums › Ask The Community › Just because I wasn't confused enough… ADD or Gifted? › Re: Just because I wasn't confused enough… ADD or Gifted?
Some random thoughts on the subject:
Of course, like anything, there can be overlap.
I have an extreeeemely gifted daughter, who was identified and put in the gifted spec. ed. program. Now she’s exhibiting signs of my ADD, especially the inattentiveness. However, it is very hard to tell which is the gifted thing and which might be ADD. My hubby is extreeemely smart, too, so that comes from him. While I see the difference between him and her, and that she is way more inattentive, he doesn’t see it and doesn’t even want to go there.
She also has anxiety issues from his father’s side. His paternal grandmother was very gifted, but was so anxious, she became afraid of everything. We fear she may be headed down this path as well. She’s cute, and we’ll keep her, but I do worry about her (I’m a mom, it’s my job).
One thing I noticed that was somewhat in common was that truly gifted kids don’t have to do all the steps to a problem. They can intuit the correct answer after the first or second step, while other people would have to work all the steps to get the correct answer. It’s the difference between high performing intelligent kids, and truly gifted children. ADD people can’t help but do just the first and second step, then jump to the conclusion, possibly wrong (in my case, I’m wrong a lot). Very interesting.
My basic psych. class in college mentioned that ADD people, when tested for IQ tests, would test high on one day, then low on the next. Just one more example why IQ tests may not be the best option for testing intelligence. My daughter was identified as gifted using the Naglieri test, and the CogAT test.
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