parenting a gifted child
By Dr Stephen Tommis, Ex-Director, NAGC (The National Association for Gifted Children)
being 'gifted' isn't always easy | so what is giftedness? | is a gifted child an advantaged child? | help and info
being 'gifted' isn't always easy
Add the label 'gifted' to a child and a whole range of preconceptions kick in to judge what that child is like. Some will see him or her as a 'little Einstein' and others as the product of pushy parents. Most will regard the gifted child as fortunate because they have been blessed with abilities above the norm and will not understand why there is a fuss about the way gifted children are educated and parented. When resources are scarce and the government places priority emphasis on so many categories of children why should those who are gifted have more? Besides, surely, a gifted child will always do well?
Gifted children may get a poor deal because we live in a culture that can struggle to accept 'difference' and finds celebrating success very difficult. It is useful, also, to think of this from the child's perspective. He or she has an intellect that is far more developmentally advanced than their social and emotional needs. Peer group mixing can be very difficult. Work in the classroom can be painstakingly slow for the gifted child but they must keep their head down because they might be seen to be arrogant and precocious. So bullying is not uncommon. A fast worker is often told to 'do more questions', more of the same, but repetition of the same concepts when these were grasped from the beginning is anathema to a brain that picks up ideas quickly. If teachers do not understand how a gifted child thinks and works, boredom sets in and all too often the child resorts to bad behaviour, for which they are punished. It is no wonder that a young gifted children can find their world very confusing at times. Add to this that many gifted children can also have a learning difficulty (dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory retention problems etc) and the difficulties for a gifted child can increase.
So, there can be pressure on both the child and the parents to cope with all the issues surrounding being gifted.
what does giftedness mean?
No two professionals will agree entirely on what giftedness means and parents searching for common areas of agreement can be forgiven for finding the search difficult.
gifted means being different
To understand highly gifted children it is essential to realise that, although they are children with the same basic needs as other children, they are also very different. If we just gloss over their differences we risk doing serious damage to these children, for the differences will not go away or be outgrown. They affect almost every aspect of these children's intellectual and emotional lives.
The microscope analogy can be a useful way of understanding high intelligence. 'If we say that all people look at the world through a lens, with some lenses cloudy or distorted, some clear, and some magnified, we might say that gifted individuals view the world through a microscope lens and the highly gifted view it through an electron microscope. They see ordinary things in very different ways and often see what others simply cannot see.' (Linda Silverman).
This heightened perception can work in different ways for different children. For those with outgoing personalities there can be a degree of precociousness, even arrogance. Those who are less confident may acutely feel this sense of 'being different' and do all they can to reduce it to fit in with 'normality', thereby not fulfilling their potential and achieving at levels below their optimum. For some, grasping what others cannot see, or for whom understanding is less rapid, can lead to boredom, frustration and inappropriate behaviour. In all these case there are challenges for parents, teachers and the child who sees conforming to the norm as a major peer requirement.
gifted means having asynchronous development
Asynchronous development, or uneven development, occurs in the gifted when advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This uneven development (asynchrony) increases with higher intellectual capacity. This means that gifted children develop cognitively at a much faster rate than they develop physically, emotionally and socially, posing some interesting problems. For example, conceptual ideas forged by nine-year-old minds may be difficult to reproduce on paper by hands with a motor skills age of five or six years. Quite often the quality of handwriting in a young gifted child lags behind the cognitive level at which the child is thinking. Nevertheless, our preoccupation with assessment of the written word means that this child may be labelled as having a special educational need – a misdiagnose of the real needs of the gifted child.
Furthermore, advanced cognition often makes gifted children aware of information that they are not yet emotionally ready to handle, particularly over moral and ethical issues. They tend to experience all of life with greater intensity, rendering them emotionally complex and very vulnerable to dilemmas as they grow in awareness. There are no 'developmental norms' for gifted children and comparisons with children of the same age become meaningless; they have more advanced play interests and often are academically far ahead of their age peers. In most cases, the brighter the child, the greater will be the asynchrony and potential vulnerability.
Read on for details of relevant organisations, websites and reading.
