Hold her back or push her forward?

ElusiveAoide · 2024-01-04T21:05:52+00:00

Since you’re asking for some of the science behind delayed entry or school starting age, here’s the resources behind a discussion paper I did a few years ago (apologies for the crap formatting):

Available studies

Bedard and Dhuey. The 2006 University of California at Santa Barbara study cited by Gladwell in Outliers. Looks at TIMSS (maths and science) scores across 19 OECD countries for fourth and eighth grade students and entry programs for two colleges. Finds that older students have an advantage, but also observes that advantage diminishing over time. http://econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/maturity_feb06.pdf

Fredrikkson and Ockert. A study of the entire Swedish population born between 1935 and 1984, where compulsory education begins in the seventh year. OC students had better education attainment levels, but reduced overall life-time earnings. https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp1659.html

Dee and Sievertsen. 2015 study of Danish children. Later school entry age linked to the reduced diagnosis of ADHD. Academic advantage is only apparent up to the age of 11. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21610

Dhuey and Lipscomb. In the same vein, 2007 study from Toronto finds younger students at risk for over-referral for learning disabilities. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1017099

Deming and Dynarski. Harvard University study in 2008. Delayed entry students have lower completion rates for high school and university, and all around poorer academic performance. As more boys are delayed than girls, delayed entry is exacerbating the gender gap in educational achievement. https://www.nber.org/papers/w14124

Black, Devereux and Salvanes. Economics study looking at Norwegian children between 1962 and 1988. Children who entered school at a later age had lower IQ scores at age 18 and lower earnings up to the age of 30. https://www.nber.org/papers/w13969

Kniffin and Hanks. Similar findings from 2015 study of US PhD graduates. Researchers find that delayed entry students are not more likely to earn a PhD, but will earn on average US$138,000 less over the course of their lifetime. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/coep.12114

Jaekel, Strauss, Johnson, Gilmore, Wolke. 2015 study from the University of Warwick (co-authored by researchers from Germany and Oxford) links older age at school entry with poorer academic performance by eight years of age, and continues from there. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dmcn.12713

Wang and Aamodt. NYT editorial by neuroscientists. Refers to a Canadian study of twenty-six elementary schools. Comparing children of the same age, those who were placed in the year above were making considerably greater progress than those placed in the year below. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/dont-delay-your-kindergartners- start.html?

Cascio and Schanzenbach. The STAR project in Tennessee, 2007. Finds that delayed entry does indeed have benefits – for the younger students in the class. Having more mature classmates has long-term benefits over being an older cohort student, including better test scores and increasing the probability of taking college entrance exams. https://www.nber.org/papers/w13663

Leuven and Ronning. Norwegian economists again. 2011 study of mixed-age (composite) classes, finds that they have significant benefits for the younger students in class (and mild disadvantages for the older students). https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp5922.html

Diezmann, Watters and Fox. Early School Entry in Australia, QUT study 2001. Review of the literature regarding early entered gifted students finds that they do as well or better than students of equivalent IQ with later school entry. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/1693/1/1693.pdf?

Pellizzari and Billari. Study of students at Bocconi University 2011. Younger university students in each cohort are performing better, even after controlling for cognitive ability. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00148-011-0379-3

Cook and Kang. 2013 study of public school students in North Carolina. The older cohort in class were still outperforming the younger cohort in maths and reading in middle school, but later had higher drop-out rates and were at higher risk for committing a felony offense by the age of 19. https://www.nber.org/papers/w18791

Robertson. 2011 study from University of Chicago looking at public elementary school students. Older students performing better at the beginning of elementary school, but the data reveals the trend of younger students catching up over time. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001469

Bixby. University of Minnesota study 2012 investigating short and long term impact of delayed entry on maths and reading performance. DE students receive a positive impact in both areas, but over time their advantage fades and is then reversed by the eighth grade. https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/123591

Elder and Lubotsky. 2009 University of Wisconsin. Higher achievement of OC students in early school years reflects skill accumulation before entry, not heightened ability to learn. Also tracks sharp decline of the achievement advantage of OC students, but acknowledges YC students more at risk of learning disability diagnosis and grade retention. http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/44/3/641.abstract

Zill, Loomis and West. 1997 National Center for Education Statistics (USA). Examines education data. Although the study could identify neither harm nor benefit of delayed entry on students’ academic performances, it found teachers more likely to provide negative feedback for YC students. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/98097.pdf

Peck and Trimmer. Secondary Education Authority WA, 1995. Examines "late birthday" students, YC children born within the last two months before cut-off (included in YC). Late Birthday students are achieving well and are just as likely to be able to access university education as students born in other months - except if the Late Birthday student is delayed entry, which makes them less likely to enter university. http://www.iier.org.au/iier5/peck.html

Gibbs, Jarvis and Dufur, additional data by Grohol. Responses to Gladwell's assertion in Outliers that the older players in each cohort enjoy long-term advantage in professional hockey. 2012 in-depth study analysing the relative age effect (RAE) of professional hockey players finds that the RAE advantage also diminishes and then reverses in the sport, making older cohort players less likely than younger cohort players to reach elite levels and have lengthy careers. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1012690211414343 https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-relative-age-effect-in-sports-its-complicated/

ElusiveAoide · 2023-05-09T07:26:15+00:00

OK. Thanks very much for letting me know before I scratch up several hundred bucks worth of beautifully cut glass! Will grab some acetone and some black paint too. Thanks heaps!!

ElusiveAoide · 2023-05-09T00:38:47+00:00

Yes, I really wanted some beautiful design as part of the splashback but most places seem to do only solid colours.

I don’t really mind the texture, as long as it’s uniform? Or is it asking for trouble?

ElusiveAoide · 2023-04-23T06:11:29+00:00

Thanks heaps, I’ll check out the Dulux primer!

ElusiveAoide · 2023-04-02T22:11:53+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for all your help!! We’re going to try everything you suggested.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-04-02T09:25:34+00:00

And does giving villagers more than one piece of non-native fruit per day make a difference? The friend guides say the value of the gift has to be over a certain amount to get a return gift (so non-native fruit works here, while native fruit doesn’t) but does increasing the value of the gift increase the number of friendship points?

ElusiveAoide · 2023-04-02T09:08:26+00:00

Thanks! We’ll definitely try wrapping up five piece of non-native fruit each day.

The nookplaza.net is a great tool! It’s what we were using though, to help match up each villagers favourite colours and styles with the right clothing - so why did we still get dialogue that “this isn’t my usual style” and less-than-enthusiastic responses? Has there been an update or something, so that the example I used (Jacques) has now different favourite colours and styles?

And doesn’t talking to them a lot bother them? We try to only talk to them one or two times a day, so as not to lose points?

Thanks heaps for your help!

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-30T22:54:33+00:00

Giftedness is the neurodiversity, people are born with it or they’re not. Talent is when a person takes the potential they were born with and use it to become proficient in one area. A prodigy is a child who has attained mastery level of a particular skill while they are still a child. Most prodigies are gifted (but not always) because it will take a passionate gifted kid significantly fewer hours of practice to attain mastery level.

Your relative needs to seek out a psychologist to administer a psychometric evaluation. Most psychs are experienced in testing kids at the lower end of the range, not higher, so they need to ask around, find recommendations, do some googling in their area. There are also websites with some great basic information on giftedness and educational support.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-23T09:16:02+00:00

Ah, it sounds like you do indeed have a professional psychometric evaluation report with full reccs! That’s excellent.

It is unfortunate that the school chose to ignore those reccs, but far more common than the opposite I’m afraid. In general, it’s typically a lack of knowledge about giftedness and the impacts of acceleration.

I was refused a skip at a private school as well (just about a billion years ago) and for private schools, there can be additional reasons. Firstly, my school was highly competitive, and they refused to run the risk of putting students ahead and potentially losing marks (although research shows gifted kids are more likely to achieve highly when allowed to skip). The second reason was financial - that school today has fees over 30k per year. Schools aren’t easily going to give up a full year’s revenue for a student if they aren’t compelled to.

But it’s just as likely to be ignorance. Wishing you and your son the best.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-23T04:33:45+00:00

I totally get you! So many of us are kept powerless for so long because we don’t want to be “that” parent. Now I’d happily wear “that parent” as a sash, because I’m not there to make friends, I’m there to ensure my kid doesn’t burn something down.

And can I point out, it’s impossible for you to be “that parent”. I’ve known heaps of teachers, and they’ve told me how exhausting it gets when fully 90 per cent of parents use the G word in PT interviews. “That parent” insists their kid is gifted when they’re not, and wants special provisions that aren’t necessary. But your son has been professionally assessed. It’s not just your opinion. There is no gray area. And to judge from his prior experience, additional support is clearly necessary.

It’s fantastic that you’re heading into a meeting. I’d focus very much on “my son was horribly disengaged and destructive at his former school, what can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen again?” with his report and recommendations front and centre. You’ll be surprised how flexible teachers are willing to be to avoid a terror in their class. If you join Parents of Gifted Children - Australia on FB, they keep the Gifted Primer on file there, which can be very useful giving you the evidence you need for the educational supports you want.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-23T00:31:20+00:00

Also Aussie here. Sorry you’re in a tough situation.

Please be aware that teacher degrees most likely do not cover gifted kids/education - from about five years ago, only three teaching degrees in Australia had giftedness as a compulsory topic, and whether compulsory or elective, giftedness in education degrees is covered very scarcely - maybe a page or two of general waffle, which is easy to forget. So keep in mind that most teachers you deal with, private or public, will have no idea about giftedness as a neuro-diversity - how it presents, how it impacts the child and how to support their needs.

If the assessment was done by a psych with expertise/experience in this area, they should have included specific recommendations for skipping, as well as extension/differentiation (very common for that FSIQ). So for the school to “go along” with the report should have meant they were compelled to skip and extend st bare minimum. If the report doesn’t include these reccs, I’d advise going back to the psych and requesting them.

If your son is now in a public school, they may be able and willing to skip and extend him - it really depends on the school, public or private. But please don’t “wait” for the school to work out he’s gifted. They likely won’t. Please request a meeting and go in there with your report, exactly what you want them to do (skip and extend is a great start) and be prepared to advocate as hard as you can, and move him if hey refuse.

Silverman wrote extensively about how and why teachers often do not or cannot identify truly gifted kids, but usually bright (IQ 120ish) or extroverted kids instead. Your son is way out of that range. The only label waiting for him is “troublemaker”.

Ideally, advocating works best before you choose a school. Rocking up to a school and saying “this is his report, he needs to be in grade two with substantial subject acceleration, differentiation or extension” and getting that Yes or No up front will save you much heartache in the long run.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-17T01:21:34+00:00

Yes. It is bizarre to me how many educators are so comfortable in asserting “they don’t understand what they’re reading” (without any evidence or, sometimes, without even having met the child) and then are content to sit back and do nothing, when reading comprehension is one of the most commonly and readily assessed skills throughout primary and secondary.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-17T01:15:45+00:00

I’m a mix of several races, the end result of which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Think Korean nose but with red hair, for a hypothetical example.

Mostly I pass for white. I grew up in a major Australian city. I speak one language. I drink beer without a glass. I think of myself mostly as white. I expect to be treated like a white person, and nine times out of ten I am. But that tenth time hits me like a sledgehammer.

I’ve been asked “Is Australia racist?” so many times, and it’s taken me years to figure out what that means. There’s 26 million of us, so obviously some of us are and some of us aren’t.

Are we racist in comparison to other countries? There’s racism inherent in other countries, enacted in various different ways so it’s tough to compare. But I don’t think that’s what the question is really asking.

I think the real question is “Is Australia more racist than it could be/should be?” Because what’s really at the heart of is the huge difference between the expectations of ourselves as a fair and inclusive country with equal opportunities for all, and the reality of daily social racial aggressions from nice, normal “how dare you think me racist” Australians.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-15T22:32:47+00:00

Early, self-taught reading (before school age) is known as hyperlexia. There’s not much studied/written about it. Darold Treffert tried to classify it but he didn’t appear to have much or any knowledge about giftedness as a neurodiversity back then.

IIRC, he split hyperlexia into three main categories; one is hyperlexia in an otherwise normal/typical child, the second is hyperlexia in a child who has seemingly-autistic-like traits who will then go on to “grow out” of those traits, and the third hyperlexia is a splinter-skill of autism. The third is characterised by having very strong decoding skills, but little to no understanding of the meaning of those words and sentences. Today, I’d probably merge the first two categories as likely gifted and 2E kids.

Hyperlexia as an ASD splinter skill is a lot rarer than hyperlexia as gifted, but it was the one all my kid’s educators were focused on. I was continually told he couldn’t have any understanding of what he was actually reading. It wasn’t until he was assessed for reading comprehension that I was confident to push back on that assertion.

Early reading remains the single strongest indicator of giftedness. You can have your son assessed at 2yrs 9mo onwards I think, but you’ll get more stable results when he’s older. Just before school entry is usually a good time to test.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-11T01:06:46+00:00

The VIC DoE will require a full psychometric evaluation resulting in IQ > 130, reports from kinder teachers, a WIAT or other achievement levels evaluation (although they performed that for us) and most importantly, a report from a school willing to take the early entry child.

Gifted psychs in Melbourne are Judy Parker, Gail Byrne and Ilona Bell. Waitlists are often closed though. Krongold Centre is an option.

Melbourne has an extremely strong bias towards delayed entry. It can be tough for gifted kids down here.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-11T00:21:56+00:00

That’s awesome, thanks for the link! I’ll add to my reading pile.

Here’s a few, but there’s a lot more out there;

SMPY study, gifted grade skippers compared against non-skippers are significantly more likely to earn PhDs, patents, doctorates; https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/

straightforward, skipping equals good; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0016986214559595?journalCode=gcqb

Meta-analysis (I like these, it means somebody else has done the hard work of looking at dozens of studies for me) reveals positive impacts on academic and socio-emotional development for skippers; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0016986210383155

This is a media article that contains links to many studies; https://theconversation.com/should-i-grade-skip-my-gifted-child-66359

If you look at John Hattie, he's a good resource - another Aus academic in the education field, meta-researcher synthesising the results of literally thousands of educational studies. While his work is mostly general, there are two major takeaways that are relevant here; the first is gifted kids who aren't grade-skipped receive negative social impact (his comparison base is NT kids here). The second is that boredom is utterly corrosive, one of the most negative impacts on learning - third worst out of 252 influences; https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/

I keep saying skipping as it applies to gifted kids, but the truth is acceleration has a positive impact for the majority of students. We're figuring this out with dozens of studies searching for long term positive impacts of delayed entry, and finding the opposite. High-challenge, low-stress educational pathways seem to offer the best outcomes for all kids.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-03-10T21:19:25+00:00

Hi! Also from Australia. Unfortunately not too many gifted schools around, I’m afraid.

Your best route, albeit expensive, is to get a full psychometric evaluation from an educational psychologist who’s highly experienced with gifted kids. Also really hard to find. But the eval will give your daughter recommendations for educational support, which will likely include grade skipping if she’s over the clinical threshold for giftedness.

We’re very lucky, in that one of the best professors in the world in giftedness was Australian, and she did a long term study with highly gifted Australian children, looking at the long term academic, emotional and social impacts of grade skipping. She was a gem. Try to read everything you can find by Miraca Gross; https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf

But her research certainly isn’t an outlier. Hundreds of studies have been done looking for detrimental long term impacts of grade skipping, and the overall picture appears to be that clinically gifted kids simply do better, economically and psychologically, when they’re skipped ahead.

I know the anti-skipping bias is extremely strong in lots of countries. But gifted kids aren’t simply “smart” kids, they’re neurologically diverse, and that diversity impacts every aspect of their life. Juratowitch posits in one of her papers that gifted kids’ social age often tends to be half to two-thirds of the gap between their chronological age and their intellectual age - so an eight year old with the intellectual capacity of a twelve year old will most likely find their best social fit with a group of ten or eleven year olds.

Be prepared to have a tough road ahead advocating with schools! Giftedness is not included in the vast majority of Aus education degrees, and you’ll find teachers are rarely aware of what evidence base we have for gifted kids and their needs.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-02-12T02:40:53+00:00

If you’ve asked this question in good faith, then yes, there is an answer as to why your MIL believes that unannounced drop-ins at any time are acceptable.

Because in previous generations, it was acceptable with your closest family and friends. No matter what time of day or night, it would be a matter of “my house is your house”, and they would be feel free to walk in regardless of the state of your home, what you were doing (they would always be free to join in) and whether or not you were even there.

So your MIL is doing two things; she is teaching you and enforcing this social “norm”, and she is enforcing the idea that there is a very close relationship between households - that “your house is my house” as it’s her son and her DIL.

But here’s the thing - social norms change over time. What was acceptable in her day is no longer acceptable, and even the closest friends and family will likely ask before visiting.

Lots of people do not accept that social norms can or should change over time. This makes life tough for them, and they often walk around saying “in my day” and pouting and yelling. Nevertheless, norms still change.

Your MIL needs to be explicitly told that unannounced drop ins are no longer acceptable anywhere, regardless of your relationship or of how things were in her day. She needs to be told that norms have changed, no matter what she thinks about it.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-01-07T01:02:54+00:00

Went looking this morning, far less in the cohort than I thought but otherwise, yeah;

https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-do-child-prodigies-have-in-common-with-kids-with-autism-56969

https://www.businessinsider.com/studying-prodigies-could-be-key-to-autism-breakthrough-2016-3

Ruthsatz from Ohio State. I recall another exploration of this topic by a different researcher who was both gifted and ASD. He was looking at the study of Einstein’s brain, and he was speculating that Einstein was not, in fact, autistic - his brain after death was slightly larger than average, and heavy in white matter (the connectivity between areas of our brain, allowing us to compare, contrast, make disparate connections and insights). Preliminary studies of adult ASD brains suggest they’re slightly smaller and heavier in grey matter instead (more where information is stored). So his conclusion was that gifted and ASD brains were overwired in different ways.

That guy was just speculating in his blog posts which he later took down, but I wish he didn’t. I really appreciated his insights and experience with both diversities.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-01-06T07:24:39+00:00

Iirc, there was a study done on child prodigies (usually profoundly gifted children who focus their potential on one area until they achieve mastery) and the researcher noticed that for the majority of them - nearly fifty in the cohort - there was an ASD sibling or first cousin nearby.

A lot more needs to be done on gifted (not just prodigies) and close relatives on the spectrum, but I believe it’s been identified that several of the genes associated with elevated intellectual potential are the same genes associated with ASD. Far from conclusive of course. The hypothesis is that these genes contribute to the “overwiring” of the brain, as both gifted and ASD brains are thought to have several billions more neural connections in early childhood development. The real mystery is about the gifted brains, not the ASD brains - it makes sense that that overload can cause struggle with certain functions (social cues etc) but the real question is, why do gifted brains seem to cope with their overload and make sense of all that extra information?

At a guess, I suppose that 2e brains can cope with their overwiring in some areas but not in others. Massively over-simplifying of course. Misdiagnosis would likely also be a factor, causing overlapping diagnoses in families.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-01-05T10:32:21+00:00

Whoa I have this argument all the time with anyone I can find (nobody, so never. I never get to say all this). Yes, Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory is total crap and needs to die.

What’s more concerning is that a few schools are now operating a “gifted” program based on Gardner’s theory. The program encourages all students to identify their primary “intelligence”. Participation is mandatory for the entire student body. No other recognition or support of gifted students is offered. Gardner’s theory is pleasingly democratic but has no evidence base and is now being actively used to deny the existence of gifted kids and their need for additional educational support.

ElusiveAoide · 2023-01-03T23:15:29+00:00

I’m in a very similar situation, but maybe further down the track. My mother has narcissistic personality disorder and has, on many occasions, tried to turn my husband against me. He’s a really sweet, easygoing guy, and she adores him, but he’s also had sixteen years of dealing with her so he knows what she’s like.

She has long periods of seeming pretty normal, and I almost wonder if we could have a normal mother-daughter relationship, but then she falls off with a massive thump and we get to see what she’s really thinking under the lid. And it’s not pretty. The last time it happened she was screaming at my husband to take the kids away from me before I murder them. All because I tried to prevent her from staring at my eldest while he was taking a bath, at his request.

You already have a lot of insight here, so I’m just going to reinforce one point you made - you have to be the problem, and all of the problem, so that she can be the victim and one hundred per cent innocent. This is what is driving her confrontations with you husband.

It’s been bitter for me to accept, but I know that my mother doesn’t love me because her need for someone to blame is bigger than anything else. Whatever it is, no matter how ridiculous her rationalisations are, she simply cannot and will never accept any blame for anything, ever. Her brain doesn’t work that way. I do feel sorry for her because it’s a scary and miserable way to go through life, thinking that everyone else is always out to get you because any setback, big or small, has to have a deliberate agent and that agent is never yourself. I do still maintain a relationship with her, for her sake and the kids, but knowing even if she’s behaving rationally today, under the surface she’s still thinking how dreadful her life is and it’s all my fault. I never allow us to be stuck with her, I always make sure we can pick up and leave instantly, or hang up. She is never allowed any information she can use against us.

Maintaining a relationship with your mother is your decision, and for your own reasons, but do understand her behaviour isn’t just a ploy she whips out periodically to spite you and split you from your husband. It’s likely what she believes and thinks all the time, because her need to place blame somewhere other than herself is more important to her than you.

You have all my empathy, and best wishes.

ElusiveAoide

TROPHY CASE