IQ Testing is a dead end. You don't need anyones permission to know that your children are capable and intelligent.
Mastery and Performance should be the basis of your discussions. (One day I pray)
Glenn Doman of the Institutes in Philadelphia (The Gentle Revolution) states that ALL children, even the brain damaged ones, can perform in the gifted range. I ask all of you other parents to please stop being surprised that your children are bright, gifted, profoundly gifted and whatnot. It's both normal and to be expected.
Gifted children have a biologically determined optimal level of stimulation. There is optimal level for arousal, alertness, and activation. Gifted children (and adults) tend to show disordered behavior when exposed to low sensory input environments. They respond by seeking to adjust their own level of stimulation through activity (adults use coffee, tobacco, music etc.).
IF -You or your child's teachers or the the school or any combination therof do not arrange the child's environment at an optimal level for THAT child you get various types of dysfunction including boredom, underperformance, distractability, withdrawal and/or hyperactivity in the form of inappropriate speech or behaviors. The child is in pain and responds by avoidance or by self-stimulating.
IF -You use increased stimulation in the way of books, games, activities of all kinds, extra-curricular instruction, you get stimulus seeking responses for increased novelty and application. In other words they (the children) begin to seek instruction/learning/novelty like an addict seeks a drug.
SINCE - The children also have very high adaptation rates, exactly like addicts, the daily requirements (the fix) of both the quality of material and the rate of absorbtion go up steeply over time.
-That's how you get MIchael Kearney's who attend college at age six and graduate with honors at the age of ten.
- The children can't help themselves, they simply respond to codes built into them.
YOUR CHOICES -Watch your children become behavioral problems (to everyone) because they need to self-stimulate and find the most stimulation in "acting up".
-Let the schools and Phychiatrists socialize and medicate your you children into unavoidable deviance status (Ritalin).
-Self-school at the rate of your own child's level of Optimal Stimulation and witness them nearly effortlessly but joyfully "race" through the standard curriculum right into early college and beyond.
Kevin Kearney
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