Development in Gifted Children: Different in Many Ways

Scatterplots to illustrate some of the ways!

Early in my consulting career with gifted families, my natural inclination (combined with my doctoral training) to explore, theorize, and try to figure things out about high intelligence and its affects, led me to do a fun little investigation.

Design process for the Ruf Estimates of Levels of Giftedness[i]

In 1999 I developed an intake form called “Developmental Milestones.” Parents who came to my new consultancy gave me all the information I thought I might need to figure them and their children out so that I could help them with their schooling and other issues related to their child being ahead of most children in their age groups. I ended up later omitting many of the questions after I analyzed the usefulness — or not — of some of the questions. In the meantime, though, I used a scatterplot design to see what I was getting from the responses.

Might As Well Share Some Results

I did a lot of public speaking. I needed a way to summarize what I was learning and these posts now come from that part of my sharing.

As I gathered early milestones and behaviors of gifted children for my first…