Just because I wasn't confused enough… ADD or Gifted?

[Monika]

Just an update. Thanks so much for all the replies and advice.

We’ll be working on strengthening his reading and reading fluency and his general knowledge (A PIAT was done and revealed this weakness). I heard this is a typical thing for a child with ADD (inattentive). General knowledge is picked up incidentally so if a child is busy with internal adventures (wool-gathering), then they will be missing things like the fact that the animal from whom we get wool from is a sheep.

So I guess it would it be day-dreaming instead of wool-gathering? Either way, will we have a summer filled with fun mixed with a little learning.

Thanks again,

M

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[Mica]

@ mmarcel – It’s funny that you mention problems with general knowlege. My son’s gr. 4 teacher just asked me the other day if it was possible that my son didn’t have a complete grasp of the months of the year. Since he still has trouble remember which part of his body are his shoulder and which are his elbows, I said that it is very possible that the months of the year also need a refresher.

The last time things like this were actually taught was probably when he was in preschool or JK – since he didn’t pick it up like the other kids did at that time it never became part of his general knowlege. I think that this is partially why it took a while (and a lot of tests) to prove that my son was actully functioning at quite a high level cognitively. All of these “holes” in his knowlege made it difficult to answer, for example, math problems. They weren’t trying to test whether he knew the months of the year but not knowing them by heart made it almost impossible to answer the question correctly.

I think his teacher (who is fabulous) really learned something that day.

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[Anonymous]

ADD or Gifted, especially after quickly reviewing the site you found, I can see why the confusion… in an attempt to clarify or further confuse, I ask the following questions:

ADD and gifted

OR

ADD and not gifted

Then, the next question that comes to mind:

Good gifted

OR

Bad gifted

I sometimes wonder about the impact of implied old baggage that may come along with the meaning of these terms?

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[Anonymous]

” I even enjoy using the dial as long as there aren’t too many 8s, 9s, or 0s in the number. “

Tim, you just made my day with that comment. That’s probably the funniest thing I’ve read all week. So true for us!!!

The touch-tone pad had to have been invented by someone with ADD.

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[ellamama]

I’m enjoying this string. Fred’s comment reminded me of when I had a psycho-ed reevaluation as an adult. I’d been evaluated ~age 13 and was found to have dyscalculia, an LD. In my 20’s I was applying to graduate programs and in order to get extended time for standardized tests, I need a recent evaluation, so I was reevaluated. At the appointment where we reviewed the findings, the evaluator told me, “You’re GTLD”. I thought for a moment, then replied, “Greater than learning disabled?”

Now I’m wondering if you’ve got multiple diagnoses, which goes first? ADDGTLD? LDGTADD? LDADDGT? Can I add my degrees? GTLDADDPhDMPH? Or MPHPhDADDLDGTADD?

Jeez! Talk about alphabet soup!

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[Patte Rosebank]

They’d look most impressive on a business card, if you could fit them all onto it.

Just be sure to end the list with “DBTC”.

(Don’t Bend The Card)

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[ellamama]

DBTC *snicker*. I could add a Myers-Briggs Personality Type, too!

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[Anonymous]

Teacher, I have to go to the bathroom!

Alright, but first you must recite your ABC’s for me.

OK. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRSTUVWXYZ.

Wait, where is the P?

Running down my leg!

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[Patte Rosebank]

Or, for those of an older generation (like my parents):

Student: Teacher, can I go to the bathroom?

Teacher: No, you can fill up the inkwells instead.

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[Anonymous]

Find a way to put them together as A.D.D.L.E.D.PhD!

That’ll make a great business card. ;]

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[Geoduck]

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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[quizzical]

Hi Geoduck! Thought I’d chime in here because, like you, I’ve got a super-smart daughter and a super-smart hubby, too! So naturally the whole gifted/ADD thing intrigues me as well

In fact, one of the questions you posed when I was still in my “wondering” phase was Was I bored and daydreamy in grade school because I was gifted? And I have to say that it probably was a big factor: I wasn’t necessarily gifted, (but then, they didn’t really test for that sort of thing back then), but I was definitely smart, and not being challenged, because back then they just threw everybody in the same classes, so it was all taught at the same speed, and so reading ahead in the books in class was something I couldn’t help doing.

However, looking at my daughter over time has been one of the things that made me begin to suspect I have ADD, because she’s really smart, and, like me, she devours books the way I used to at that age and has a love of writing…..

BUT she’s also a lot of things I never was: organized, disciplined, a planner, social, and, overall, very confident. Sometimes she’s hesitant to try things if she’s not sure she’ll do them perfectly right out of the gate, which can be frustrating, but she pretty much amazes me on a daily basis. I love to go into her room and look at her desk, because I was with her when she set it all up back in September, getting ready for middle school, creating special spaces for everything….And here it is, nearly one year later, AND IT STILL LOOKS THE SAME WAY! I marvel at how together she is, and all the wonder and awe at it all made me realize how much of that was lacking in my own study habits (or lack thereof).

Like you, I credit my extreeemely smart hubby with a lot of what my kids are doing right. It actually becomes a problem sometimes, when I’m feeling low: “All the kids’ good stuff comes from him, all the bad stuff comes from me….” It gets hard, sometimes, to not feel an imbalance, real or imagined.

Got lots more to add, but I can sense this is getting long, so maybe I’ll add more later on.

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[Anonymous]

I was in the gifted class in school, went to college for physics, grad school for atmospheric physics, worked for NASA, then went to law school and graduated 2nd out of 300. I just found out about my ADD a month ago, at age 37. I never thought I was smart, I always attributed my success to hard work. I tended to think the stuff I did was easy, and was just a matter of thinking through things, staying focused. I realize now, that that was delusional–I am really smart. You don’t get a fellowship from NASA if you’re not smart. But it’s hard to believe you’re smart when you have to work hard to study for exams, you can’t focus on the boring stuff, you fall asleep while reading (all the time!) and you make brainless mistakes on simple things.

I don’t know if ADD people are smarter than the muddles or not. From this site, it certainly seems so, but we’re all self-selected. We are the ones who know about our condition and are looking for help. My therapist said that people with a high IQ are able to cope better with ADD, so maybe those with normal or lower IQ are the 50-70% of folks in prison with ADD, or addicted to drugs. If you include them in the ADD pool, maybe we’re not as smart–or maybe we are, and they just had bad luck.

Maybe IQ tests are not useful for people with ADD. We’re all good at solving non-linear problems, and thinking outside the box. A standard IQ test is about linear thinking and pattern recognition. I don’t think those are core competencies for folks with ADD. My IQ was tested just above 100, not what you would expect for someone with my accomplishments. When I look back at my success, it was always due to my contributing big, splashy, revolutionary ideas (in admittedly narrow areas of science and law). I was the guy who came up with a clever way to solve an intractable problem.

I guess my point (if I even have one), is that you shouldn’t worry too much about standard measurements like IQ. If you have ADD, you’re a different kind of normal. One definition of intelligence is:

1. Adaptability to a new environment or to changes in the current environment
2. Capacity for knowledge and the ability to acquire it
3. Capacity for reason and abstract thought
4. Ability to comprehend relationships
5. Ability to evaluate and judge
6. Capacity for original and productive thought

These are all core competencies of people with ADD, but are implicitly difficult to test objectively. They are sometimes expressed as restlessness, curiosity, hyperfocus, interrupting people because you know what they’re saying before they finish; impatience with waiting for others to catch up. I think that’s what the borntoexplore site is saying. That’s not to say that ADD is a superpower or a gift, or that we should live without treatment (whether medication or meditation or something else). The gifted and talented classes gave me an opportunity to learn exciting stuff, instead of memorizing the state capitals. But my life probably would have been easier, and I might have gone even further, if I had been diagnosed and taken meds.

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