parenting our children's intelligence

Intelligence is a funny thing - not only do we desire to have it, but frequently, to know how much of it we possess in relation to others. This urge reveals our desire to possess intelligence not merely for its usefulness, but also as some sort of reassurance of our value.

This morning, Heath and I attended a meeting with the school psychologist, gifted teacher, and Jacob's regular classroom teacher to go over his test results for the gifted program. Although he tested very high, he was a few points shy of qualifying for the program. He will continue to receive extra work in the classroom to challenge him and will continue to participate in the weekly "Talent Pool" program for the second graders who tested in the top 2% for math on the NEA tests.

As we drove home, I told Heath that I'm really not surprised, since I was tested in high school to be labeled as gifted and did not qualify. I hadn't thought of this in relation to Jacob's testing until this morning.

After scoring well on the ACT and the PSAT, my school counselor suggested I undergo the testing simply to have the gifted label for college applications. At that point it was still possible I would apply to some elite school, so it might have become relevant. She said, "Oh, I'm sure you'll qualify, so let's just go through the testing so you can put it down." Maybe she was familiar with charts showing IQ correlations to SAT/ACT scores, according to which I might have had an IQ of 140+. Despite her prediction, and the predictions of the IQ to SAT/ACT charts, I didn't qualify. I don't have the results now, but I would guess they were very similar to Jacob's results - very high on verbal intelligence, but lower in other areas, bringing the total score down. I think I was just really good at schoolwork, which unfortunately, doesn't always translate into the kind of broad intellectual ability -- reasoning skills, problem solving, etc. -- that is tested in an IQ test.

As I told Heath, in my defense, I think that as an adult, I have branched out somewhat and developed those areas that were my low scoring areas in high school. Perhaps I have been forced to by college experiences and other challenges of adult life. I took an IQ test for a job interview after college and scored slightly higher than I had in high school, and I assume that is why. Supposedly, IQ doesn't peak until age 26 -- and then it starts to decline. Not so great for those of us past age 26!

The real question in all of this is "Why do I care about defending my IQ score, anyway?" Why does it matter if I or any of the members of my family are in the top 2% of the population in intelligence (above 130)? Why is it not okay for us to be in the top 9% instead (above 120)? Or the top 25%, for that matter (above 110)? Or average, for that matter (90-110)?

This seems to be a theme lately in our family, since I also recently read the book Nuture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (which is fantastic, by the way - you may hear more about it from me in later entries). One chapter of the book examines how the way we parent affects the size of our children's vocabulary -- which correlates to their IQ scores and their later school achievement. When I read through the book the first time, I simply took in all the information and marveled at it. However, when I went back through the book to take some notes before returning it to the library, I began to obsess a little bit about this chapter. You see, Samuel is nearly three years old now, and one of the studies examined in that chapter followed children from 9 months to 3 years old. At the end of the study, children who heard the most language had an average vocabulary of 1100 words, children who heard an intermediate amount of language had an average vocabulary of 750 words, and children who heard the least language on a daily basis had an average vocabulary of 525 words. So now I am trying to count how many words Samuel uses, which is really kind of nuts. The researchers in the study tape recorded the children and their parents for an hour a month and transcribed the tapes in order to count their vocabularies and how many words each child was hearing from their parent per hour. According to their chart, at 34 months (Samuel's age in 6 days), the top group of children had approximately 950 words, the middle group approximately 650 words, and the bottom group approximately 425 words. So far I have counted around 730 words for Samuel. But that includes plurals -- did the study include plurals as separate words? Without the plurals, it's about 100 less. And did it include multiples of words that can mean more than one thing? Oh, the obsessiveness of a mother determined to measure her mothering skills.

An interesting result in this study (indeed, the study's main point) was that the 3-year-olds who had vocabularies, on average, of 1100 words were from professional families, the children who had 750 word vocabularies were from working class families, and the children with 425 word vocabularies were from welfare families. Socio-economic class was highly correlated with how much the parents spoke to the children and with the size of the children's vocabulary. I assumed upon first reading this that since Heath isn't in a blue-collar job (my definition of working class), then we must fall into the professional category. However, after looking up definitions of the term professional, I don't know if we would have, since according to some definitions, it only refers to someone who has post-graduate education in an elite field which requires some sort of licensing and often has professional societies (physician, lawyer, engineer, accountant, etc.). We definitely are not in that group! Yet, the term professional is often used nowadays to indicate anyone whose job generally requires at least a bachelor's degree or higher in order to gain the required specialized knowledge or training, in which case Heath's job would qualify. At any rate, it would have been reassuring to discover that Samuel had the average vocabulary of the highest group (the professionals) -- because then I'd have been doing a great job, speaking to him frequently and building his vocabulary, right? Maybe I'd even beat the odds, if we weren't technically part of the professional socio-economic class. But for now, he fits in with the working class group -- unless I find a couple hundred words I've missed recording.

Nurture Shock also gave me insight into the possible consequences of an obsession with our children's level of intelligence. In their chapter on praise, they described how children who are praised for their hard work and who are taught that performance can be improved through hard work (rather than being determined by set, innate intelligence) improve their performance, while children who are praised for their intelligence or innate abilities often decline in their performance when faced with difficult tasks. The reasons behind this involve the child coming to believe that his or her intelligence is innate and immutable, and therefore, he shouldn't have to work very hard to achieve. In fact, needing to work hard to achieve begins to have a stigma for many of the children who are primed with constant praise about their intelligence. Furthermore, these children often begin to shrink away from more challenging work on which they might score poorly, and become overly concerned with their rank in relation to their peers. When value is placed on the amount of innate intelligence someone has, rather than on hard work and improvement, then the score one can achieve on a test becomes the biggest concern for a child interested in proving his value -- or for an adult concerned with it, for that matter.

Let's hope that Heath and I haven't placed so much value on innate intelligence that Jacob will be troubled by the outcome of his test. Let's hope, as well, that he can appreciate his particular strengths and abilities, including the great value of the effort he puts forth, without obsessing about any area in which he doesn't achieve a maximum score. And maybe his Mama will learn to do that a little more for herself as well!