Myth or Fact?

1. Gifted preschool children, on average, are about 30% more advanced developmentally than the norm, though there are individual variations.
2. About three-fourths of gifted children during their preschool years have one or more imaginary playmates with complex imaginative schemes.
3. At the beginning of the school year, many gifted elementary school students already know between 40 and 50% of the material to be covered in the class.
4. Typical students require material to be repeated approximately 8 times for retention of information.  Gifted students require 1-2 exposures to grasp new material.
5. Gifted students benefit from interactions with peers at similar performance levels.
6. It is estimated that 20 to 25% of gifted children have social and emotional difficulties (about twice as many as in the general population of students).
7. Between 18 and 25% of gifted and talented students drop out of school.
8. The behavior problems most often noted for gifted students are underachievement, stubbornness, overreactions, peer relation difficulties, intense sibling rivalry, poor self-concept, perfectionism, and depression.
9. A gifted student may actually be listening more when they are actively doing something else, than when they are looking at the speaker.
10. As many as 20% of gifted children can become handicapped by their perfectionism and can be described as “dysfunctional perfectionists”.
11. There is a “zone of tolerance” of plus or minus 20 IQ points for each person, and most people do not initiate interaction with individuals outside of that zone.
12. Parents report that approximately 50% of gifted children sleep less than the average child.
13. Gifted children are often viewed as socially inept because of their intense concern for a piece of knowledge (inquiring minds want to know).
14. Young gifted children spend more time in front of the television set than their same-age peers.