NutureShock and the Myth of The Gifted Child

I recently mentioned how much I love the new parenting book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. NutureShock challenges many of our pre-conceived notions of parenting and looks at recent science to show what's really going on with our kids. It covers topics like talking about race, lying, praise and one of the chapters talks focuses on gifted and talented testing for kindergarteners, questioning the our ability to measure true giftedness at that age.

In the The Myth of the Gifted Child, New York Magazine took the premise of the NutureShock chapter on gifted children and blew it out into a cover story last week. The article basically reprises the NutureShock research, but aims it in particular at the New York City gifted and talented testing situation. The gist of it is that testing 4 year olds is not in any way an accurate determiner of true giftedness and that it is giving a leg up to those that already have an advantage since children from affluent homes do better either because they are getting the stimulation and education to better their minds or because their parents will prep them.

A few things the New York Magazine article does not explicitly mention that the NutureShock chapter does is that testing 7 year olds, on the other hand, does tend to be a good predictor of future success and that, while scoring in the top 15% (which is what you need to get into a NYC G&T Class) does not predict true giftedness, those that really score in top few percentiles (which is what you need to get into Hunter) do tend to maintain their edge.

My only beef with the NY Magazine article is the opening which, of course, tries to frame the importance of gifted and talented testing in terms of a golden opportunity, stating that testing well in kindergarten puts children onto a "glide path for success" which is not only ridiculous but purposely tries to create the type of anxiety and fervor that the rest of the article purports to poo poo.

The best part of the article is the conclusion which talks about "The Marshmallow Test," a simple test of self-discipline and the ability to endure delayed gratification, the two traits that all the recent research has been pointing to as the true determiner of success in life. The Marshmallow Test gives small children an option: you can have this marshmallow now or wait a while and I'll give you two. While most kids chose to wait for two, only 1/3 of the kids were able to not eat the marshmallow. a decade later those kids scored on average 210 points higher on their SATs. Maybe that's how we should decide who gets into Hunter.

Watch this cute video of kids taking The Marshmallow Test then try it with your own preschooler.

If you want to buy NurtureShock, I highly recommend it.