If You're a Parent Whose Kid(s) Are Gifted...

In My Humble Opinion
21

What’s that line from When Harry Met Sally? “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.” :lol:

I do worry about that “using up” part, though, or that I’m somehow failing to help them develop whatever gifts they’ve got.

But it’s true, the very best things in MY life were things that I (even as a little kid) engineered for MYSELF. I was so not the gifted kid MY parents expected.

Still, that Suzuki violin thing beckons - limiting factor being, at this point they’re likely to bash each other (and me) with whatever object is handy. Ds likes to play “chop-chop”.

However, my daughter - she draws LOVELY portraits. You can really tell who they are, honestly.
I have taught her NOTHING about how to draw.

22

I have come to believe that talents don’t need to be “developed” - or rather, talents are inherent - if you don’t develop them now, they won’t go anywhere, they will be there when she is old enough.

If she loves to draw, she will draw. Her skills will develop - self directed. When she is older, someone can teach her to further develop those talents, but at a young age, she is better off in a self discovery process.

Don’t stifle the gifts, but you don’t need to worry about them going away. And, if she is truly gifted, they will be there when she is 90 and has time to pick up a paintbrush - think Grandma Moses.

Make it a chore (“time to practice now”) and you may kill the passion that needs to go with the talent in order to be truly successful at something.

23

I have a friend who teaches violin to small children–Suzuki style, with modifications. Her comment is that if you take a 3 or 4 year old and give them violin lessons for 2 or 3 years, and then compare them with a 6 year old who has had a month or two of lessons, you will be hard-pressed to tell which child has been learning longer. So much lesson time with the very small is spent teaching them to stand still, and hold the violin properly, and various other things which an older child will have learned elsewhere.

Now, she gets quite a bit of her income from teaching the small children of impatient parents, and she enjoys it–with some caveats about particular children–or particular parents. But still, while I think there are talents which if not encouraged when young will never florish, I’m not sure that that means that they must be encouraged before kindergarten.

24

I’ll tell you what to do. Go read that new book, Overachievers. It will make you want to do the exact opposite–you’ll want to go live out in the country and let your kids run around all day long and never send them to any school, ever. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, here’s my thing: little kids do not need classes, or fancy videos, or “brain-enhancing” CDs, or lessons in anything whatsoever. They need, first, YOU to sing songs, answer questions, and play outside. Then they need blocks and sticks and pillows and paint and old clothes to dress up in. And of course lots of books and library trips and storytime (says the librarian). Give them academics when they ask for it, and not before.

And I also second the thing about not forcing them to read nothing but classics. It is so important to let kids choose their reading material (and hobbies, etc.). Let a kid read nothing but Dickens, and he’ll probably hate reading. Let him read junk series and comic books and whatever he brings home from the library, and he’ll most likely enjoy Dickens when he’s ready. (I refused, as a teen, to read anything that was labeled a ‘classic’–I read them all in college and adulthood, still doing it–voluntarily this time.) Of course, at the same time, you’re reading aloud really good things to your kids, and they’ll really enjoy that. Make sure to read aloud for the next several years–too many parents make the mistake of quitting that habit once their kid can read.

This rambling is probably not very useful, but it’s what I always want to tell those parents in the library who are trying to get their 8-yo kid who hates reading to check out Treasure Island instead of Captain Underpants. (Read *Treasure Island *aloud!)

25

Well, first there was this indigo glow about him…

26

everyone keeps telling me my son (turning 2 nxt wk) is very intelligent for his age, his speaks 8-10 word sentences, he knows his numbers up to 16 but won’t recite when you ask him, he grasps some complex concepts very easy (usually by second explanation, e.g., electricity, surgery, heart functions), he’s manipulative in a good way, for now! And though he’s in daycare only twice a wk for few hours, I’ve observed that he doesnt enjoy playing as much with the toddlers in his age group–he prefers much older kids… he can tackle a 6-year old in 2 secs flat! Often older kids (4 - 6) get physically exhausted from this toddler less than half their size! His teacher and other teachers have told me that he’s advanced compared to the others in his age group, as well as some in older group… nearly all of the other kids in his group don’t have more than 3-word vocabularly, my pedi said today that typically 50 words by 2, but my son is close to 178 words… is my kid average and other kids are slower? When i think of gifted kids, I imagine 3 year olds mastering Mozart on the piano or violin. And I’m not in the most educationally progressive community, he’s still too young to be in the educational system, so who can test him, and when?

27

OK, I’ve only got about a minute, since I’m supposed to be finishing making dinner. But I really think that we, as a culture, spend too much time obsessing over our kids’ achievements and trying to mold them into super-kids (and thus, get them into Harvard and wealth and success!). We all need to relax and let our kids be children who develop in their own time. It can be really tough to fight against this idea we all have that our kids need to be enriched from birth on. But hey, remember what it was like when we were kids? I watched Scooby-doo every day for about 8 years, and my brain didn’t melt–an Elmo video or two can’t possibly do worse than that.

Now, I say this as an academically-inclined homeschooler who has gone classical–I make my 6-yo learn Latin, for pete’s sake. (It’s fun, I promise, we’re having a great time.) And I plan to have them read lots of classics–just age-appropriate ones that we can enjoy together. BUT I also think it’s hugely important, much more than Latin, to let my kids run around and have a lot of free time to do whatever they want to do.

OK, another pointless ramble from Dangermom who has too many opinions on this topic and not enough time. Anyway, Spoleto, you can get your kid tested, but there’s not really much point at age 2. Just give him a good time and worry about the testing later, when it will be more important. He does sound quite gifted, but not incredibly so–my kids were probably talking that much too.

28

My twin sister and I both have doctorates. We were the “smart” ones compared to our other siblings. We were the goody-goodies that never got put on punishment and always had walls full of awards and trophies.

But neither of us were labeled “gifted”. Not by the school, not by our parents. We were told we were smart, bright, and talented. But there was no big ole golden Gs stamped officially on our foreheads. We were put in classrooms based on our abilities, not because of our test scores. No one ever thought to test our IQs because we never gave them a reason to. And our parents never requested them to.

They didn’t need to know our IQs before they bought us books, took us to museums, or put us in music lessons. My sister and I didn’t need our IQ scores to tell us that we were fantastic artists, scientists, and writers. We spent our summers reading encyclopedias, playing Trivial Pursuit, and writing stories. We played with our micro- and telescopes just as much as we did our ventriloquist doll and Monchichi. We wrote articles in the school paper and illustrated books for the kids lucky enough to be in the gifted program. We got As in our honors and AP classes, and earned all kinds of accolades at the end of each school year. We did all these things without being gifted or having parents who were worried about us NOT being gifted. Maybe our IQs were really in the gifted range and we succeeded despite not being especially challenged or stimulated. Or maybe we were just regular kids who just always believed in our talents and abilities…because there was no around to tell us not to.

I guess what I’m saying is that talents and abilities show themselves, in their own way and time. You’re setting yourself for disappointment, I think, if you start waiting for them. They may reveal themselves now or twenty years from now. And I would also not worry so much about recognizing giftedness. Most kids who are labeled as gifted, IMHO, are not really all that different than the kids who are merely above-average. It’s just that the former tend to have parents who care about that kind of labeling. Encourage and stimulate your children no matter what their apparent intelligence is, and you can’t go wrong.

29

This is really excellent advice. Both my kids were officially gifted, and I spent quite a few years on the board of our districts support group for parents of gifted kids. I was gifted as a kid too, in first grade I went from Dick and Jane to full Jules Verne books without ever having to read stuff in the middle.

At home, the main thing is to let kids explore where they want to explore. The speakers we had said that gifted kids often want to dive deep into a subject. This might mean reading all the dinosaur books in the library, or all the Hardy Boys books. It’s all good. The best thing my mother ever did for me was to get the librarians let me have access to books well above my supposed grade level. I don’t know how she knew to let me have these books without my ever thinking that there was anything unusual about what I was doing.

In our district the magic word is differentiation. The teacher is supposed to treat each kid in class differently. One thing the GATE adminstrator pushed was no busy work. If a kid knows all the spelling words on the pretest, give him some interesting homework not homework designed to teach the words. If she can do 50 math problems perfectly, don’t give her another 50, give her something enriching. They also didn’t believe in teaching the next year’s work, but in enriching this year’s work. They also were adamant that a gifted kid should not become a teaching assistant - he needs his own work, and should not spend time he could spend exploring teaching other kids.

This is all easier said than done, and it involves knowing what goes on in class sometimes and in being an advocate for your kids.

They also said that being gifted is no guarantee of success. There are a lot of gifted dropouts. It definitely helps to have enough skills to answer weird questions, or, better, teach your kid how to do research and explore.

30

I’ve got four of them - no doubt due to Ms. Plan B’s gene’s, not mine. Not much to add to what’s been said above, but I’ll answer the OP questions and throw in two anecdotes.

What were the early signs?

Pre-school teachers saying things like “your daughter is really smart.” Everything else we thought was normal since since we had nothing to compare it to.
How did you adjust your parenting to meet their needs?

We didn’t; we kept doing what we were doing since it seemed to be working.
Was it difficult to maintain reasonable expectations?

Easy for me since I never took it too seriously. It doesn’t seem too likely to me that one day one of them will wind like Ender, responsible for saving Western civilization from aliens or Islamists, and they’ll screw up one thing and all the generals will be shouting at me: “If only you had made her take calculus before tenth grade, then we would’ve won.” So it’s really not too important to me, either their potential or how much I cultivate it. Also, we’ve always had a feel for how much our kids are working. And if all else fails, the teachers are pretty good at pointing out when the kids are lazy.

Anecdote # 1: An older and wiser friend once said to me: The kids are gifted programs are not necessarily smarter, but they are meaner. I think that’s about 75% true and worth noting.

Anecdote # 2: One of my friends had always done very well in school but is kind of perpetually depressed and never realized how smart he is. When his first son started school he got rave report cards and my friend had the same reaction; thought that every kid got straight As. Then his second son went to the same school and got lots of Bs so he realized that his older son was pretty bright. As it turned out the older son graduated Cornell, the younger one graduated Harvard.

31

Gifted child or not, you have to constantly adjust your parenting techniques. When our kids were young, they shifted personalities about twice a year. One week we’d be playing games with a happy, friendly kid – a few weeks later, we had a moody brat on our hands.

I’d agree with keeping them stimulated. When they get bored with school (and it’s not just gifted kids who get bored with school) encourage them to explore something on their own – whether it’s reading, art, music or chess problems.

One thing I’d add is to keep them socialized with other kids. Too often I’ve seen kids (hell, I was one of them) who got so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they literally never learned how to interact with others.

32

Going over all this, there seems to be one theme that rings true for any parent everywhere: flexibility. Letting a child’s interests lead them, possibly with gentle nudging, always will be key. They’re fascinated with dinosaurs? Take 'em to the new exhibit downtown. Want to be an astronaut? The planetarium could be fun! Will the fascination last? Who knows and who cares, so long as it’s not too wildly expensive. The two worst phrases could be “That’s too advanced for them” or “That’s too beneath them”.

I was reading Goosebumps, Jurassic Park and a history of the Byzantine Empire at the same time while in fifth grade. What did my parents do? Bought me a frequent buyer card to Waldenbooks and never once suggested I shouldn’t be browsing outside the young adult’s section. In fact, I don’t really remember ever purchasing something in that section at all, because that’s what libraries were for. Because of my parents’ participation and support, reading and history have become lifelong passions starting at the age when I could physically shove my older brother off my mom’s lap, hit her upside the head with a cardboard book, and shout “READ!”. We actually have one of those incidents/tantrums on video at home, a fact that I’m sure will come back to haunt me at some point.

33

I’m not sure why anyone would even worry about “testing” a kid for “giftedness” (whatever tham means). Especially a 2-year old.

IMO, the best thing you can do with a kid is spend time with them. Talk with them. It sounds simplistic, but I think it is hard to overrate the value of having the whole family sit down to dinner - and conversation - together.

Also, talk to the kids honestly, and answer any question they ask as fully as you can - or show them where to look it up.

Read to them, even well after they have learned to read themselves, and make up stories.

Expose them to various things through books, travel, museums, sporting events, theater, etc. And when they express an interest in any particular thing, see how you can help them explore that interest through reading, local organizations, etc.

But don’t let them imagine that they are not able to ignore their basic obligations. Should they make a committment to something - say a season-long park district class in tumbling or art - tell them that you expect them to exert a good effort for the length of the course. When it is over, if they never want to study art or tumbling or whatever - fine.

Its not exactly rocket science.

34

I was a gifted kid, learned to read at three, blah blah blah. I didn’t talk voluntarily until almost four and I was ALWAYS frustrated. I remember the frustration more than anything. I couldn’t physically say the words (because I was young and not fully developed) so I didn’t, which frustrated my parents (because they knew I was bright and just wouldn’t talk).

I will say this. Patience is absolutely the thing I needed to learn most. I’m working on it now (I’m 27) and it’s taking lots of hard work to not rage at folks who don’t get things as fast as I do. I also get extremely angry with myself if I don’t learn a new skill immediately or if I make a mistake. Do your best to instill the “mistakes are okay” and “patience is a virtue” stuff in any kid, but especially one who is very bright and picks most things up immediately.

35

If you are a parent of a gifted child, all I have to say is PUT ON YOUR SEATBELT!
They are hard little boogers to raise!..but so insanely beautiful it’s all well worth it.

36

I wonder if people confuse “early-bloomer” with “gifted”. Your child may start reading at age 3, but that doesn’t mean he’ll constantly be ahead of the curve. I had great drawing abilities when I was seven, but by high school lots of kids had caught up to me and I stopped being so remarkable. Funny, that was also the time when I started to lose interest in drawing and began to develop other talents.

37

That is very true. Our district doesn’t label until the middle of first grade, and then they will consistantly revise the labels during their careers. The reason? Kids develop at different rates. Gifted is not just “being ahead of the curve.”

38

I think so. I was reading out loud my first day in kindergarden, drawing detailed sketches of things/people/places from memory, consistantly number one or two in math class, daydreamed through half my classes while scoring A’s up until about grade 6 when everyone else caught up. Coincidentally my grades starting going down at the point! Now I had a lot of family problems which eventually caused me to drop out at the age of 14 but I think I took for granted that i was smarter than the other kids when I was just a bit of an early bloomer.

I do get a laugh from people’s reactions when they find out I dropped out at 14 because I am constantly asked what I studied in uni so hopefully I’ve not turned into too much of a dummy!

39

Both of my children are. My daughter was testing at an 11th grade level in the 5th grade. I was woefully unprepared and uneducated as to how to handle not the intelligence part, but the emotional part.

My son had similar test scores. Both children, despite their gifted status, were more comfortable and emotionally suited to stay in the grades they were in, and have social interactions with kids their own age.

I chose not to have them skip grades. One thing I regret is not being very educated regarding gifted kids and how smart they are. One thing I’m glad I did, was to never ever baby talk or talk down to them. I read to them, and encouraged them both to read and I answered as many questions as they wanted to ask when they were little and in the “why” stage. If I didn’t know an answer, the smartest thing I did was to say “I don’t know, let’s look it up”.

With my daughter this meant library or bookstore trips, with my son Woo hoo, the internet had arrived!

If I had it to do over again? I think I would still avoid the skipping grades thing, but I would become much more educated regarding their intelligence and how to encourage and help them grow.

40

I was labeled as “gifted” early on. I was also once tested for dyslexia/other reading disabilities, because I refused to pay attention in reading group. (I was just bored; at that point I was reading about six grade-levels ahead of myself).

I can’t agree enough with “let them do what they want.” Kids need variety and need fun, and while chess/violin/calculus/etc might be fun, it’s usually not something they can share with their peers. Throughout elementary school, I at some point pestered my parents that I wanted to do/play the following: soccer, softball, martial arts, acting, painting, writing, violin, horseback riding, girl scouts, swimming, pottery, and drums. With the exception of drums (which we simply couldn’t financially afford without giving up something else), my parents let me try everything on the list. Some things were great and I just kept going (eg, martial arts, writing, violin). Others, I lasted a season or two before losing interest (eg, softball). A couple things I went to one class, realized I sucked at it, and wanted to quit right away (eg, acting, painting, pottery).

Don’t let them quit just because something is hard. I think a lot of “smart kids” get used to school being so easy, they just coast through with minimal effort. Then when things get hard, they A) suffer serious academic consequences (as I did) and/or B) don’t want to bother. I don’t mean force them to keep doing it for years, but if they sign up for that acting class, they should tough the session out.

Granted, I’m not a parent, have no intentions to ever be a parent, and did in fact turn out mentally deranged, so you may want to take the above with a grain of salt.