Kids & Parenting

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Childhood Giftedness
© 2015
(Part I)

by

Stephen A. Peterson


Since the Golden Age of ancient Greece, societies across the world have been concerned with identifying and educating gifted children. Socrates considered giftedness an in-born trait and possible to increase. To increase a society’s intellectual base, Socrates suggested inbreeding persons found to display high intellectual potential/ability with others possessing similar intellectual exceptionality. Socrates based his thesis on having observed inbreeding among animal species. He further found if one desired a faster horse, breeding two fast horses resulted in faster, stronger offspring.

In the early years of the 20th century, American psychologist Lewis Terman of Stanford University tested more than a thousand children between 1925 and 1959. Those who scored 125 intelligence quotient (I.Q.) on his intelligence test were designated as gifted after consulting with colleagues. Terman so designated children as gifted if they demonstrated achievement and potential abilities in any of the following areas, singly or in any combinations:

1. Intelligent Quotient (I. Q.) at or over 125 points on an Intelligence Test.
2. Demonstrated academic excellence in certain subject areas such as history, chemistry, mathematics and so forth.
3. Creative thinking and the ability to discover new things easily, find alternative ways of thinking or variety of ways of looking at life.
4. Unusual leadership skills.
5. Unusual problem solving skills.
6. Visual and performance arts skills. Such as talents in the arts, music, drama and their related disciplines.
7. Excellence in psychomotor abilities (exceptional sports athletes).
Other child oriented behaviorists following Terman and his colleagues found children
who demonstrated one or more of the following should also be designated as gifted:

1. The ability to categorize objects.
2. The ability to use their imaginations to develop ideas, art.
3. Quick thinking.
4. Walking or talking before children within their age group.
5. An interest in collecting, saving things.
6. Displaying an early and continuing interest in music, the arts, writing, inventing.
7. A good sense of humor.
8. Tend to be self-critical, perfectionists.
9. The ability to concentrate, working on tasks longer than children in their age group.
10. Tend to be risk takers often with little regard for the potential for injury or risk to life.

At this time, gifted children are identified on the basis of an Intelligence Test and the
results the test yields resulting in an intelligence quotient (I.Q.) score combined with teacher observations and parent/caregiver observations and reports.

The next report will examine the characteristics and prevalence of childhood giftedness.

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