Is Raising An Exceptionally-Intelligent, "Gifted" Child Difficult?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Watched a new TV show (Outmatched) last night about parents, three of whose four children are exceptionally intelligent. The parents are portrayed as, well, kind of dim, and in over their heads in parenting the little geniuses.

Similarly, on Young Sheldon, his parents and the parents of another gifted child also struggle with raising their little geniuses. In the case of the other family (not Sheldon’s), the parents actually got divorced, in part because of the difficulties raising their daughter.

I myself was a Gifted Child, although not exceptionally so – I was reading at a 9th grade level by 3rd grade, but I sure as hell wasn’t composing operas or solving advanced physics problems. I was put into my school district’s Gifted Program, until budget cuts killed it.

Nevertheless, I didn’t really give my mom any more fits than any other kid would have given their mom. I was a nerdy smart-ass, but Mom handled me OK.

Is raising an exceptionally-gifted child really all that challenging?

2

I admit I don’t know, but I can tell you this. It’s no picnic for the gifted child either.

Just sayin’.

3

In general, I think raising kids with a different baseline from your own presents challenges. I kind of know how to understand the challenges I’ve faced in life and it’s easiest to parent when my kids face similar challenges. But I just can’t wrap my mind around some of the things the kids do and those are the really tricky parenting moments. I’m not really inclined to believe that parenting an exceptionally gifted child per se is difficult, but I have no problem believing that it’s hard to raise a child who is very different from the parent.

4

For me, it didn’t cause any real problems at home. At least, not directly.

By 5th grade I was bored to tears with what my public school was offering me, by 6th grade I was pretty mouthy at school, and by 7th grade I’d found public education so far beneath me as to not be worth my attention. THAT caused problems at home, but being “gifted” in general didn’t.

5

Yes, and you don’t have to be on a different level than the child for it to be difficult. Gifted children understand things at a much deeper level, much earlier, than they are emotionally prepared to handle. They are able to read books that would just fly over the heads of their peers. And they are easily bored. Boredom to the brilliant child is exquisitely painful, so if you don’t keep them challenged, they begin to stultify.

The worst part though, is that you can’t really talk to anyone about it. Friends, family, and internet buds alike will all see it as a sneak brag and attack you unmercifully for daring to think that your child might be “better.” You just wouldn’t believe the vicious pile-ons. If you make the mistake of saying “no, it’s been quantified through testing, this is a real thing I’m dealing with” then it only intensifies. Both you and your child will then be either ostracized, or constantly jumped upon for every tiny mistake in order to prove that you’re not really so smart after all.

You are entirely on your own with this one.

6

Wow, that’s really sad to hear.

Did you have issues with your kids’ school failing her as well?

7

I can imagine it being quite challenging to raise a Sheldon Cooper - where the intellect so vastly outdistances the age/maturity. It also would be challenging if the parents lacked the intellectual, financial, or other resources to deal w/ the kid.

But lacking that, IMO it is no more challenging to raise a gifted child than a child at just abut any other level of potential/achievement. Of course, one would be foolish to expect the schools to provide sufficient challenge/stimulation. But - as with just about any kid - a responsible parent ought to be able to supplement the school education with tailored activities.

Also - consider what you consider the standard/goal. Quite often, it seems as tho people expect that a “gifted” child maximize their potential. It can be very challenging to have ANY kid maximize their potential. The “cushion” available to the gifted child is, even if they fall far short of what they MIGHT achieve, they still have sufficient skills and brain power to do all manner of jobs. At least in terms of earning potential and job availability, it is far easier to be smart than stupid.

8

Heh. I was about to say almost exactly that this is the part that is difficult. The “gifted” part, by itself, is lovely and not difficult (for us, at least, as both of us are geeks) at all. (Although being gifted often comes with emotional asynchrony, as others have noted, and that can be difficult. My daughter’s giftedness, I believe, is at least partially entangled with her Asperger’s/ASD, which is its own very difficult beast.)

But yeah, it’s trying to work within the system that can be really difficult. Older Raspberry Child started being bored in first grade, even. She’s in private school now.

9

I was gifted. I was reading Jules Verne at the end of first grade. My daughter is also. She got two PhDs.
I didn’t have any problems, and I don’t think she did either, because there was good support. A teacher saw me reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 2nd grade. I was sent to the principal, convinced him I wasn’t faking it, and was allowed to skip the reading instruction and read my own books after that. It helped that NY schools then were tracked, so I was with similar kids and was almost never bored.

I was on the board of a Gifted children support group when my kids were in school, and heard lots of talks. My conclusion is that the way to deal with gifted kids is to say yes, like in improv. If they want to do something weird (but safe) say yes, even if you’d never want to do it. In 9th grade I wrote a 25 page paper (it was supposed to be 2 or 3 pages) and my mother happily typed it for me. In 3rd grade my daughter wanted to do lots and lots of math problems, her teacher dug up more math workbooks for her.
I think it helps if the kid doesn’t realize he or she is gifted, and just thinks that what he does is normal.

10

My brother and I were both considered gifted as kids. My mother was also a special education teacher for about 15 years before switching to regular education.

She says hands down that dealing with us was far tougher than any of the special ed children, mostly because their challenges were relatively static, while we were always into everything, and always coming up with new and inventive ways to get into mischief that she’d never have anticipated. (one example is that in third grade, I was enterprising enough to get a Conan the Barbarian graphic novel with some topless women, and then took it to school, and charged the other boys a dime a pop to trace them. Mom never saw that one coming!)

11

I was a perfect angel and never gave my mom any trouble.

I mean, okay, I did decide to never do any homework again in the second grade, an oath which I held to through the remainder of elementary school. My mom tells of a teacher showing her his grade register (with the other student’s rows covered) - mine was entirely filled with zeros for every assignment, and perfect scores on every quiz and test.

This practice did less damage to my grades than you might think - I was still getting As and sometimes Bs. And I’m sure that all the anger and frustration my mom shows when relating the tale is just an act.

12

I can see that. Out of curiosity, how long do you expect to be able to keep up that facade?

13

I was a gifted child. It was fucking lonely and deeply, deeply boring. No one knew what to do with me. I spent my whole childhood being bullied, reading, drawing, writing, and taking long walks with my dog. I had a few friends, mostly in middle school and later. I wouldn’t wish my childhood on anyone. It damaged me.

I raised a gifted child as well. I had many siblings, and was lonely, she had no siblings, and also was lonely, but not as lonely as I was. At least she had parents who understood her, were pleased and interested when she read the Prose Eddas when she was eight, and constructed languages for denizens of planets she invented with enormous detail (she did her undergraduate work in linguistics).

Basically, if you “get” your kid, try your damndest to find ways of supporting your kid, and don’t get your stupid ego in the way – they will be fine. Or, as fine as anyone else anyway.

14

Lot of sneak bragging in this thread…

15

I knew the lil’wrekker was gifted or just very smart by the time she was 18mos old. I was given good advice, not to push her. Think well rounded child not just bookish.
I’m so happy I didn’t push. She pushed herself til nearly panic levels everyday. I pulled her out of more than one class because I thought it was unhealthy for her. She would test high and the school would want her in outragious situations. Example: a tiny 5th grade girl in a 9th grade algebra class full of 8th and 9th graders. Nope. She attended that class exactly one week. It was too much. She took algebra with her grade when she got in 8th grade. She did fine. Stepped up to higher math courses in relation to her age and class.
I encouraged outside activities. She did lots of things. And, now is a successful college student.

ETA: no sneak brag. The girl is smart as heck. And her ol’Ma is proud of her.
Except for her less than thrifty spending. Girl is dumb about money!!

16

It’s hard not to “sneak brag” when describing how things were different for somebody because they were brilliant.

17

Quite a while if no one goes nuts. After all, someone must get the best grades, why not you? It helps that exceptionally gifted kids are often clueless about their impact on others.
This is more true if there is a gifted community which I was lucky enough to have. If you are the only gifted kid it might go to your head. (I’ve seen that.) Having challenges that are still hard helps in the humility department.

18

Are we talking age 5 or age 15? I could imagine either qualifying as ‘quite a while.’

19

I neglected to mention, the lil’wrekker was a joy to have around. She was/is the sweetist person. I felt blessed to be her Mother.
She was easy to parent.

20

And there we have an illustration of one of the difficulties of dealing with giftedness. Heaven forbid you dare talk about it.

My son was, in the words of the pediatric neurologist who evaluated him, “twice exceptional,” which I think is probably pretty common. In other words, he was intellectually gifted but also had deficits (not exactly Asperger’s, but similar; his fine and gross motor skills were delayed, as were his social skills). So that was pretty hard.

When he was so young that his precocity hadn’t really played out yet and I was kind of excited to see how spookily smart he could be, I read an article on raising gifted children - and boy am I glad I did, because it set me straight early on.

The gist of the article (and it was an academic paper, not some junk-journalism piece) was that one reason that gifted children present particular challenges to raise because they are constantly told how smart they are by people around them, which completely messes with their self-esteem. Things are easy early on and so they develop a false sense of “I’m smart, I can do anything without trying.”

That puts them off making an effort, and they don’t learn, the way most kids do, to suck it up and work hard at things that don’t come easily to them. Instead, on those rare occasions when they don’t succeed without effort, they freak out and avoid the situation.

Now, that’s obviously not all kids or all situations. But it sure happened to my kid. We’d be walking down the street when a classmate would see him, point to him, and tug on the hand of whoever they were with and shout excitedly, “See that kid? That’s him, the one I was telling you about, that is so SMART!”

It was understandable, if unfortunate, when kids did it, but adults did it too, which was horrifying.

We constantly told our son that eventually even smart people have to work hard. Ultimate the message got through - he worked damned hard in college to maintain a nearly perfect GPA even in courses he didn’t care for. (Sorry again, there’s that pesky bragging.) BUT IT WAS VERY, VERY HARD to get him to the point where he understood that; he goofed off a lot in high school. I think not getting into the most prestigious schools he applied to was a wake up call.

I posted an anti-brag thread about him a few months ago. He was an utter ditz about getting signed up for his GRE subject test and only barely managed to maneuver his way out of missing his opportunities altogether. Smart kids can be dumb, just like any kid.