WARNING - POST CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
What do you do when people, ADULTS, kind of mock your child for their choices?
Way back in the beginning of the summer, Oldest did a creative writing camp that she loved. LOVED. Right up her alley in how it fit her personality.
At the end of the week, she had sharing day. Husband attended and was amazed by her diction, projection, creativity and confidence.
That evening we all went to the pool and one of the Moms there said, "Hey, Missy, what kind of camps does Oldest do? Sports?"
I said, "No, she actually just finished a writing camp. It was an awesome one."
"Riding camp? Like horses? That's so cool!"
"No, actually, writing camp. Like creative writing."
"GET THE FUCK OUT. You put your child in a writing camp? In the summer? What kind of kid is she?" Laughing.
"Well, actually, she loved it. It plays to her strengths. She's a very creative girl."
"Yeah, but. We just do sports all summer. I wouldn't THINK of putting my kids in academic camps. But whatever works for you!" Laughing, while walking away.
Is it any wonder kids try to "hide" their giftedness? Why parents of gifted kids downplay it, hide it themselves and therefore send the message to their own child that their brainpower is something to be embarassed by?
This notion that if your kid's involved with sports it's something to sit around with other parents, talking about it, strategizing about it, lamenting about the "travel schedules" is so tiresome to me. I sit and listen to parents do this and sometimes they turn to me and say, "What sport is Oldest in?" As if that's the only thing worth talking about when it has to do with your child. No wonder I feel isolated.
I think I need to start a Parent Support Group for Gifted Children. I wish SENG's educational materials could be had without attending a weekend conference that requires flying halfway across the country.
Thank goodness for the internet and the "gifted friends" I've made through that.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Have You Hugged Your Gifted Child this Week?
This week is National Gifted Education Week. I'm not sure why it's in July, but no matter! Here are my suggestions for ways to "hug" your gifted children this week:
Get to know the SENG website. Supporting the Emotional Needs of Gifted Children is oh, sooooo important. Plus yours truly has an article on the site! And I didn't even have to pay them to put it there!
Get to know Davidson Institute for the Gifted website. Lots and lots of resources for parents seeking answers about gifted kids.
Do a #gtchat with Deborah Mersino on Twitter! Really, what are you waiting for? If you really, truly want to feel connected to other parents who totally get it, do this. Find Deborah here. Do you know how much these have grown since she started them in January? This is helping the gifted advocacy fight really move forward!
Hoagie's Gifted.
Prufrock Press.
Ohio Association of Gifted Children. Parent Day is in October - check the site and go! What a great way to connect with local gifted parents. And the guest speaker, while not publicly announced yet, is sooooooooo awesome. Like I own his books awesome. Like I am going to trip over myself when I meet him awesome. Stay tuned, Ohioans.
This is a brief thumbnail of the resources out there. I am still partial to that good old-fashioned thing we call reading books on the subject, but my book list is too extensive to reproduce here today.
And drumroll, please . . .
What's the most important way to hug your gifted child this week?
Hug your gifted child(ren).
Get to know the SENG website. Supporting the Emotional Needs of Gifted Children is oh, sooooo important. Plus yours truly has an article on the site! And I didn't even have to pay them to put it there!
Get to know Davidson Institute for the Gifted website. Lots and lots of resources for parents seeking answers about gifted kids.
Do a #gtchat with Deborah Mersino on Twitter! Really, what are you waiting for? If you really, truly want to feel connected to other parents who totally get it, do this. Find Deborah here. Do you know how much these have grown since she started them in January? This is helping the gifted advocacy fight really move forward!
Hoagie's Gifted.
Prufrock Press.
Ohio Association of Gifted Children. Parent Day is in October - check the site and go! What a great way to connect with local gifted parents. And the guest speaker, while not publicly announced yet, is sooooooooo awesome. Like I own his books awesome. Like I am going to trip over myself when I meet him awesome. Stay tuned, Ohioans.
This is a brief thumbnail of the resources out there. I am still partial to that good old-fashioned thing we call reading books on the subject, but my book list is too extensive to reproduce here today.
And drumroll, please . . .
What's the most important way to hug your gifted child this week?
Hug your gifted child(ren).
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Super Sunday Series - Friendship and Bullying
Welcome back to the Super Sunday Series - where I speak to all topics gifted and how they relate to your child's well-being. Please click on the tab above if you want to discover more about the Series and its topics.
This week we conclude our exploration of Friendship, which has grown exponentially since it began in January. Today is week 5 - Bullying. Week 1 gave you resources to help, week 2 talked about where to find friends and week 3 talked about making friends. We explored Developing Close Friendships in week 4.
I believe gifted children are particularly prone to bullying. They don't fit the mold. They often can't read social cues. They have an advanced sense of justice that may lead other kids to dislike them. Watching for bullying signs and equipping them with the tools to handle it is one of the most important things you can do to for your gifted child.
Michele Borba, in her book The Big Book of Parenting Solutions, has a sentence under each topic called the "change to parent for." With bullying, she says the change to parent for is "[y]our child learns to defend himself, feels safer and more confident, and is less likely to be targeted by a bully." Page 323.
Barbara Coloroso wrote an excellent book called The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander. Colorosa identifies three types of bullying: verbal, physical and relational. Page 15.
"Verbal bullying can take the form of name-calling, taunting, belittling, cruel criticism, personal defamation, racist slurs, and sexual remarks." Page 16.
"Physical bullying is the most visible and therefore the most readily identifiable form of bullying," but accounts for less than 1/3 of incidents reported by children. Page 16.
Relational bullying is diffcult to detect, and "is the systematic diminishment of a bullied child's sense of self through ignoring, isolating, excluding, or shunning." Page 17. "Shunning. . . joined with rumor . . . is a forceful bullying tool [as] both are unseen and hard to detect." Id.
If you suspect that your child is being bullied, Colorosa's book lists some Do's and Don'ts: (found on pages 132-134):
DO:
- Express your support in words like "I am here for you," I believe in you," "you are not alone."
- Assure your child it is not her fault.
- Help him learn the things he can do.
- Report it to a school personnel.
DON'T:
- Minimize, rationalize or explain away the bully's behavior.
- Rush to solve the problem.
- Tell your child to avoid the bully.
- Tell your child to fight back.
- Confront the bully or bully's parents alone
Colorosa also lists antidotes to bullying:
- Strong sense of self.
- Being a friend.
- Having at least one friend who is there for you.
- Being able to successfully get into a group.
pg 137.
Of these antidotes, I've written about #2 and #3 with this friendship series. With #1, you might find some ideas here at one of my Super Sunday posts. My posts on perfectionism, for example, talk about internal dialogue and how that contributes to your sense of self. #4 has an entire chapter devoted to it in Good Friends are Hard to Find. Well worth the buy.
We have not seen bullying at our house - yet. I think Oldest will be at high risk for certain bullying - especially relational. She just doesn't have that social savvy some kids have (which I've talked about before as well).
Truthfully, friendship and its nuances could be its own blog and we could spend many more weeks discussing friendship difficulties. But I'm ready to put it to bed for now, reserving the right to come back to it at a later date. Unless YOU have a specific question or topic about friendship you'd like to see. Let me know.
Disclaimer #1 - I have no agreements, sponsoships or income from any of the authors mentioned thus far in my series. These are just great books, well worth the investment, that I want to share with you.
Disclaimer #2 - I've slept approximately 5 (broken) hours the last two nights. This post is not my best work. Sorry. Sleep will return (it better) soon, as will the caliber of my Super Sunday Series.
So how about you? I think it's no surprise that I'm a worrier when it comes to parenting. Are you? Do issues like bullying keep you up at night? Have you had experience with it yet? How did you handle it if so?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Super Sunday Series - Friendship - Week 2
Welcome back to the Super Sunday Series, where I talk about the many facets of giftedness in your children and how to best help them. If you have a question or a topic you would like to read about, please leave it in the comments. Thanks so much! This week is the second week of Friendship. Last week, I gave you several resources to read.
How do Gifted Kids make, and more importantly, keep friends?
"Peer relations can be a challenging balancing act as relationships progress through different stages . . . [g]ifted children, by definition, are different from the norm, and this undoubtedly influences their relationships with others in many ways."
A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, Page 188.
This quote, from my gifted Bible, the Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, sums it all up for me. Childhood and adolescent friendships can be a challenge under any circumstances. When you add giftedness into the mix, a whole new layer of complexity occurs.
Let's face it. Gifted children, at their worst, can be arrogant, bossy, rude, intense little perfectionists who can't read social cues. They can be riddled with contradictions and self-doubt because they want to make friends but have no idea how to do it.
Friendship is so important, however. Even the biggest introvert needs to have someone they can call friend. And we, as their parents, need to help them, or create pathways to friendship as much as possible. We can't assume they'll "figure it out" or "get it." For all of their brilliance, friend making is an area where they can have big challenges.
And in our house, this talk couldn't come at a better time. Oldest has been crying daily over her feeling of not having any friends. She bawled all the way home this past Wednesday, asking to be home-schooled because of her feeling of being "poked at" and "bossed around" at school (her words). From what I can gather, she feels like kids won't leave her alone in the classroom (making it look like she does, indeed, have firiends), but that outside, kids are bossy and insist on doing the games "by their rules, and don't listen to her at all." And really, whether she "has" friends or not, she FEELS like she doesn't right now, and it's tearing her up. Which means it's tearing me up.
Finding Friends
The book Good Friends are Hard to Find makes a strong case for how families today don't "make time" for friendships to develop. Whether it's from work obligations, over-scheduled kids or other commitments, children don't seem to have a lot of "time" to develop friendships. Page 9. The author, Fred Frankel, suggests that you make a list of the times your child is available for friendship growth. He says to take into consideration things like dinner hour and that weekends have more time built in.
In our house, for example, "friendship development" COULD occur on Mondays (4-6), Thursdays (4-6), Fridays (4-6), Saturdays (2-5) or Sundays (noon -5). That's a total of 14 hours/week. So we definitely have "windows of opportunity."
Both books, A Parent's Guide and Good Friends are Hard to Find suggest "places to look" for friends for your child. I'm relying on the Parent's Guide's more expansive view. According to the Guide, gifted children often find friendships with older children, or even adults. As a matter of fact, your gifted child may have different friends for different skill levels.
Oldest, for example, may develop friendships with children younger in gymnastics because she's at the same level as beginners. Many children her age have moved onto the intermediate level, so her "peer group" in that instance might be a younger child. Conversely, in her Suzuki Piano lesson group, she has connected with several children older than she is - in part because she aspires to play like them.
The Guide to Gifted Children stresses that a person shouldn't limit their gifted child's choices based on location or age, which contradicts Good Friends are Hard to Find. Good Friends encourages looking for friends in local groups and playgrounds.
My thought is that for gifted kids, looking only at local groups and playgrounds will pose some challenges because gifted kids may not find "peers," only kids who are their age (which doesn't necessarily equal a peer for a gifted child).
This week let's start by Finding Friends. Determine what your "windows" are for playdates and write it down. Then think about all of the places or activities your child is a part of so that you can start thinking about possible friendship opportunities. In our lives, for example, we could look at school, gymnastics, piano, our street or at a writing class Oldest just joined. As I listed above, she has 14 hours a week of playdate time.
And from personal experience, I say it's OK to be choosy on your child's behalf. If your gifted child has intensity, perfectionism, difficulty with self-control, it's OK not to welcome poor friendship choices into his/her life. Please don't think that a series of posts about finding friends means you should take anyone who comes along. I'll touch on this more in a couple of weeks.
For an inspiring look at several gifted parents, educators and advocates talking about something that impacts this very subject (the social and emotional needs of gifted children), take a look at this transcript from Friday's #gtchat on Twitter. The best way to watch is with your pause button. Well worth it. One of my favorite quotes - "help your Gifted Child find his/her tribe." Powerful, isn't it? And so important.
So, next week, let's talk about Making Friends. And do you have any ideas about Finding Friends that I've missed? Please share - we can all help each other.
***In the writing of this post, I realized that trying to cover Finding, Making, AND Keeping Friends in one post is a little much. I want to be able to do all of these topics justice and keep you all interested (ie: not make them too terribly long).***
Tomorrow - Happiness - week 4.
How do Gifted Kids make, and more importantly, keep friends?
"Peer relations can be a challenging balancing act as relationships progress through different stages . . . [g]ifted children, by definition, are different from the norm, and this undoubtedly influences their relationships with others in many ways."
A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, Page 188.
This quote, from my gifted Bible, the Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, sums it all up for me. Childhood and adolescent friendships can be a challenge under any circumstances. When you add giftedness into the mix, a whole new layer of complexity occurs.
Let's face it. Gifted children, at their worst, can be arrogant, bossy, rude, intense little perfectionists who can't read social cues. They can be riddled with contradictions and self-doubt because they want to make friends but have no idea how to do it.
Friendship is so important, however. Even the biggest introvert needs to have someone they can call friend. And we, as their parents, need to help them, or create pathways to friendship as much as possible. We can't assume they'll "figure it out" or "get it." For all of their brilliance, friend making is an area where they can have big challenges.
And in our house, this talk couldn't come at a better time. Oldest has been crying daily over her feeling of not having any friends. She bawled all the way home this past Wednesday, asking to be home-schooled because of her feeling of being "poked at" and "bossed around" at school (her words). From what I can gather, she feels like kids won't leave her alone in the classroom (making it look like she does, indeed, have firiends), but that outside, kids are bossy and insist on doing the games "by their rules, and don't listen to her at all." And really, whether she "has" friends or not, she FEELS like she doesn't right now, and it's tearing her up. Which means it's tearing me up.
Finding Friends
The book Good Friends are Hard to Find makes a strong case for how families today don't "make time" for friendships to develop. Whether it's from work obligations, over-scheduled kids or other commitments, children don't seem to have a lot of "time" to develop friendships. Page 9. The author, Fred Frankel, suggests that you make a list of the times your child is available for friendship growth. He says to take into consideration things like dinner hour and that weekends have more time built in.
In our house, for example, "friendship development" COULD occur on Mondays (4-6), Thursdays (4-6), Fridays (4-6), Saturdays (2-5) or Sundays (noon -5). That's a total of 14 hours/week. So we definitely have "windows of opportunity."
Both books, A Parent's Guide and Good Friends are Hard to Find suggest "places to look" for friends for your child. I'm relying on the Parent's Guide's more expansive view. According to the Guide, gifted children often find friendships with older children, or even adults. As a matter of fact, your gifted child may have different friends for different skill levels.
Oldest, for example, may develop friendships with children younger in gymnastics because she's at the same level as beginners. Many children her age have moved onto the intermediate level, so her "peer group" in that instance might be a younger child. Conversely, in her Suzuki Piano lesson group, she has connected with several children older than she is - in part because she aspires to play like them.
The Guide to Gifted Children stresses that a person shouldn't limit their gifted child's choices based on location or age, which contradicts Good Friends are Hard to Find. Good Friends encourages looking for friends in local groups and playgrounds.
My thought is that for gifted kids, looking only at local groups and playgrounds will pose some challenges because gifted kids may not find "peers," only kids who are their age (which doesn't necessarily equal a peer for a gifted child).
This week let's start by Finding Friends. Determine what your "windows" are for playdates and write it down. Then think about all of the places or activities your child is a part of so that you can start thinking about possible friendship opportunities. In our lives, for example, we could look at school, gymnastics, piano, our street or at a writing class Oldest just joined. As I listed above, she has 14 hours a week of playdate time.
And from personal experience, I say it's OK to be choosy on your child's behalf. If your gifted child has intensity, perfectionism, difficulty with self-control, it's OK not to welcome poor friendship choices into his/her life. Please don't think that a series of posts about finding friends means you should take anyone who comes along. I'll touch on this more in a couple of weeks.
For an inspiring look at several gifted parents, educators and advocates talking about something that impacts this very subject (the social and emotional needs of gifted children), take a look at this transcript from Friday's #gtchat on Twitter. The best way to watch is with your pause button. Well worth it. One of my favorite quotes - "help your Gifted Child find his/her tribe." Powerful, isn't it? And so important.
So, next week, let's talk about Making Friends. And do you have any ideas about Finding Friends that I've missed? Please share - we can all help each other.
***In the writing of this post, I realized that trying to cover Finding, Making, AND Keeping Friends in one post is a little much. I want to be able to do all of these topics justice and keep you all interested (ie: not make them too terribly long).***
Tomorrow - Happiness - week 4.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Gifted Twitter Chat Friday
I'm pleased to announce a Twitter Chat for this Friday at Noon, EST. I strongly encourage you to "attend." It's been coordinated by one of my Gifted Advocate Heroines - Deborah Mersino (on Twitter @DeborahMersino, blog Ingeniosus). The hash tag is #gtchat.
You can even vote for your topic in advance, and I encourage you to do so.
Please join Deborah Mersino and many others on Friday at Noon - Twitter - #gtchat. If you can't make it then, it will be done again on Friday at 7pm. Her blog will also contain more information this week - check it out at Ingeniosus. Or drop me a line, I'll keep you posted. Or follow her on Twitter. You won't be sorry.
Let's do everything we can to stop gifted myths and misconceptions. Let's become stronger gifted advocates in 2010. Let's help our gifted children receive the best possible chance they can have in life - they are our future.
Join us.
P.S. You can also see this post at High Ability, the OAGC blog.
You can even vote for your topic in advance, and I encourage you to do so.
Please join Deborah Mersino and many others on Friday at Noon - Twitter - #gtchat. If you can't make it then, it will be done again on Friday at 7pm. Her blog will also contain more information this week - check it out at Ingeniosus. Or drop me a line, I'll keep you posted. Or follow her on Twitter. You won't be sorry.
Let's do everything we can to stop gifted myths and misconceptions. Let's become stronger gifted advocates in 2010. Let's help our gifted children receive the best possible chance they can have in life - they are our future.
Join us.
P.S. You can also see this post at High Ability, the OAGC blog.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Super Sunday Series - Looking Backward and Forward - All in One Post!
Welcome back to the Super Sunday Series - a little place where I talk about the terminology and educational aspects of raising gifted children and how it translates into day to day living with your gifted child(ren). I'm SO excited for 2010 and what I have planned for the Series. This week, however, I'm buying myself a little time to plan.
I've put handy links to all of the 2009 Super Sunday Series posts this week, with subjects, in one handy place today, for your ease of handy reference. No thanks necessary. Just become a follower or subscribe to my RSS and we'll share the love that way. Thanks. Can't you just feel the love already?
Check it out and within each link you will find all of the references I've used, because Heaven knows I didn't come up with all of this intellectualism all by myself:
Birth of the Super Sunday Series - where I introduced the SSS. Hence the zany birth reference in the title.
Why we IQ tested so young (not Super Sunday, but relevant) - Look for SSS this year with more information about IQ testing, including the importance of not thinking it's too important.
IQ - Part I
IQ - Part II
Traits of the Gifted Child - It's a laundry list and it's not comprehensive, but it does get you started.
Verbal Skills, Curiosity and Memory - Where I delve a little deeper into these traits common to the gifted child.
Perfectionism - I - Perfectionism can be painful and difficult, especially when practically every member of your family suffers from it. Part One of Two.
Perfectionism - II - Tips for keeping the ravaging claws of perfectionism at bay. Part Two of Two.
Asynchronous Development - One of the fascinating aspects of gifted to me - it's kinda like having a college major - at 5. You are very strong in certain areas, but not across the board.
Overexcitabilities - Gifteds seem to be predisposed to overexcitabilities in one or more areas. You can find an exploration of all of them below. Once I started understanding these, life in our house started getting so much more manageable.
Sensual
Emotional
Imaginational
Psycho-Motor
Intellectual
Holidays and Your Gifted Child - Where I advised you on surviving the holidays with as much fun and as little upheaval as possible. Then I didn't follow any of my own advice!
Routine
Transitions
Sleep
Nutrition
The rest of 2010's Super Sunday Series will be more informative - I hope! I have the whole year planned out, without an order yet, I'm still working out those kinks. And if you have something you want to hear about, place an order! I'm totally open to talking to you about what YOU want to hear, not just what I want to wax philosophic about.
Next week in the Series - cycles. Do you have them? Not THOSE - does your gifted child cycle through various behavior patterns on a regular basis? I'll let you know what they're like here and then you can tell me.
Tomorrow? My own personal Happiness Project for 2010. Can't WAIT!
I've put handy links to all of the 2009 Super Sunday Series posts this week, with subjects, in one handy place today, for your ease of handy reference. No thanks necessary. Just become a follower or subscribe to my RSS and we'll share the love that way. Thanks. Can't you just feel the love already?
Check it out and within each link you will find all of the references I've used, because Heaven knows I didn't come up with all of this intellectualism all by myself:
Birth of the Super Sunday Series - where I introduced the SSS. Hence the zany birth reference in the title.
Why we IQ tested so young (not Super Sunday, but relevant) - Look for SSS this year with more information about IQ testing, including the importance of not thinking it's too important.
IQ - Part I
IQ - Part II
Traits of the Gifted Child - It's a laundry list and it's not comprehensive, but it does get you started.
Verbal Skills, Curiosity and Memory - Where I delve a little deeper into these traits common to the gifted child.
Perfectionism - I - Perfectionism can be painful and difficult, especially when practically every member of your family suffers from it. Part One of Two.
Perfectionism - II - Tips for keeping the ravaging claws of perfectionism at bay. Part Two of Two.
Asynchronous Development - One of the fascinating aspects of gifted to me - it's kinda like having a college major - at 5. You are very strong in certain areas, but not across the board.
Overexcitabilities - Gifteds seem to be predisposed to overexcitabilities in one or more areas. You can find an exploration of all of them below. Once I started understanding these, life in our house started getting so much more manageable.
Sensual
Emotional
Imaginational
Psycho-Motor
Intellectual
Holidays and Your Gifted Child - Where I advised you on surviving the holidays with as much fun and as little upheaval as possible. Then I didn't follow any of my own advice!
Routine
Transitions
Sleep
Nutrition
The rest of 2010's Super Sunday Series will be more informative - I hope! I have the whole year planned out, without an order yet, I'm still working out those kinks. And if you have something you want to hear about, place an order! I'm totally open to talking to you about what YOU want to hear, not just what I want to wax philosophic about.
Next week in the Series - cycles. Do you have them? Not THOSE - does your gifted child cycle through various behavior patterns on a regular basis? I'll let you know what they're like here and then you can tell me.
Tomorrow? My own personal Happiness Project for 2010. Can't WAIT!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Super Sunday Series - You know your child is Gifted when . . . verbal! Curiosity! Memory!
Today's Super Sunday Series spends a little more time on 3 gifted traits that I published in the non-exclusive laundry list a few weeks ago.
They are strong verbal skills, intense curiosity and an unusually good memory. The Survival Guide for Parents of Gifted Kids by Sally Yahnke Walker, Ph.D. (see? I do look at other books besides my oft-quoted ones!), discusses these succinctly and with great examples. This was my first book on "gifted" and it's a wonderful introduction for people trying to figure it all out. I bought it when Oldest was 3.
She says the following about these three traits:
1. Strong Verbal Skills.
I include these three in one post because I find them inter-related. Their descriptions in the book are all similar. Kids with a good memory or intense curiosity tend to be really verbal about it.
So how do these traits apply in our house? In an inter-connected, hand in hand way. :)
Strong Verbal. A lot of places you read talk about this trait as an either/or trait. Either your child starts talking extraordinarily early and at a very high level, or your child may not speak at all until one day he starts speaking in full sentences.
We have one of each in our house. Oldest had less than 6 words at 18 months of age. By 21 months, however, she was speaking in 6-8 word sentences. Youngest's speech development was much more consistent, but still rapid. At her two year appointment, while the nurse was asking this question:
"Does she speak in at least 2 word combinations that you can understand?"
Youngest was asking me THIS question:
They are strong verbal skills, intense curiosity and an unusually good memory. The Survival Guide for Parents of Gifted Kids by Sally Yahnke Walker, Ph.D. (see? I do look at other books besides my oft-quoted ones!), discusses these succinctly and with great examples. This was my first book on "gifted" and it's a wonderful introduction for people trying to figure it all out. I bought it when Oldest was 3.
She says the following about these three traits:
1. Strong Verbal Skills.
If your child is like most gifted kids, she probably possesses a motor mouth that rarely shuts down. These kids also tend to have sophisticated vocabularies that sometimes alienate them from their peers who don't understand the big words. . . . Bright children not only hear and understand big words, they can also apply them in the correct context. Page 49.2. Intense Curiosity.
Gifted kids are hungry for knowledge. They are trying to find information about their world. Some of them want to know all about everything. They can be like grasshoppers, jumping from subject to subject, interest to interest. Other gifted kids want to know about one specific topic at a time. They become the resident experts on that topic. Their questions can be endless. From the minute they wake up until they collapse, their minds are at work, trying to make sense of their world. Even at lights out, their questions continue. You'll notice this even when they're very young. More than one parent has put it this way: "My child is like a sponge, trying to soak up everything." Pages 45-46.3. Unusually Good Memory.
Gifted and talented kids generally have excellent memories, which they frequently put to good use by reminding their parents of things they may have forgotten (or wished to forget). Page 48.
I include these three in one post because I find them inter-related. Their descriptions in the book are all similar. Kids with a good memory or intense curiosity tend to be really verbal about it.
So how do these traits apply in our house? In an inter-connected, hand in hand way. :)
Strong Verbal. A lot of places you read talk about this trait as an either/or trait. Either your child starts talking extraordinarily early and at a very high level, or your child may not speak at all until one day he starts speaking in full sentences.
We have one of each in our house. Oldest had less than 6 words at 18 months of age. By 21 months, however, she was speaking in 6-8 word sentences. Youngest's speech development was much more consistent, but still rapid. At her two year appointment, while the nurse was asking this question:
"Does she speak in at least 2 word combinations that you can understand?"
Youngest was asking me THIS question:"Mommy, is Docker X coming in ta give me dat shot?"
It's pretty funny to hear that sentence coming out of this little body.
Intense Curiosity. Intersestingly, we did call Oldest the sponge for many years, even before reading this book. It was the only way to describe her. There were places we would go and things we would do where she would get this look in her eye that you knew she was drawing it all in, and I do mean all, to process and then come back to us with questions later. She wouldn't hear us, she would see nothing but what she was watching or listening to. Plus, I've shared some of her learning obsessions. She's a "become the expert on one thing at a time" girl. Remember, she hit a child who put the wrong "Wonder Pet" behind the wheel of a submarine when she was 4 years old. This, coming from the girl who never hits anyone.
Unusually good memory. Both of my kids have an unusually good memory. We also call Oldest the Computer and she doesn't like it. Not at all. It might be the perfectionist in her, feeling like she might not live up to the standards of a computer, but it might also be based on a more "kid-like" fear - that thinking of herself as having a brain like a computer might make her "not real." So we mostly do it behind her back now - good parents that we are! She remembers everything, everything! There are things she regurgitates to me that I might have said 6 months earlier - and she can recall it verbatim! The book states you have to be careful what you promise your child because they will bring it back to you months, or even years down the road and it's so true here!
So I think that does it for my exploration of gifted traits - for now. Please click on a recap of all of them in one tidy bundle if you missed any.
Tell me - what is your child's most prevalent gifted trait? Can you narrow it down? I don't know that I can. Part of the complexity of giftedness is its multi-faceted surface, right? Which doesn't even go into the deep oceans of their "little" brains. If I had to choose a couple for Oldest though, it would be perfectionism and memory. But then I want to add asynchronous development and verbal skills as well. Hard to decide and I'd love to hear from you!
See you tomorrow for my FINAL NaBloPoMo entry. I'll give a little review of what I think of good ol' NaBloPoMo, which, if you don't know, is blogging daily for a month - no matter what.
And in December the Super Sunday Series will focus on giving your child a chance at success during the "most wonderful time of year." We're talking basic necessities, people. It will be applicable to all kids, not just giteds.
See you!
Missy
So I think that does it for my exploration of gifted traits - for now. Please click on a recap of all of them in one tidy bundle if you missed any.
Tell me - what is your child's most prevalent gifted trait? Can you narrow it down? I don't know that I can. Part of the complexity of giftedness is its multi-faceted surface, right? Which doesn't even go into the deep oceans of their "little" brains. If I had to choose a couple for Oldest though, it would be perfectionism and memory. But then I want to add asynchronous development and verbal skills as well. Hard to decide and I'd love to hear from you!
See you tomorrow for my FINAL NaBloPoMo entry. I'll give a little review of what I think of good ol' NaBloPoMo, which, if you don't know, is blogging daily for a month - no matter what.
And in December the Super Sunday Series will focus on giving your child a chance at success during the "most wonderful time of year." We're talking basic necessities, people. It will be applicable to all kids, not just giteds.
See you!
Missy
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Super Sunday Series - Week 2 - "You know your child is gifted when . . . "
Last week in the Super Sunday Series, I gave you the broad overview of "gifted kid traits."
This week I promised to delve into some of the traits. Bring it home a little, humanize it.
Let's start with asynchronous development. To me, this is one of the biggest hallmarks of gifted children, these huge GAPS in abilities. In A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, the authors say "intelligence and knowledge are simply not the same as emotional maturity, understanding, or wisdom." Guide, pg. 122. Further, they break it down into three categories:
Carol Fertig goes on to say the following about asynchronous development:
Maybe this is why many gifted programs don't start until 4th grade in elementary school? Just a thought.
In our house, the biggest asynchrony we see is in the abilities, or #2 above. Oldest couldn't write, at all, until between 4 and 5. At school, she had mastered the alphabet and was starting on Easy Reader Books, but when she was asked to write her name, sometimes the tantrums she had would be so forceful that at minimum she would lose playground time - sometimes I got a call from school. The teacher thought she was being stubborn - the truth was she just couldn't do it. And that, as you gifted parents WELL know, is unacceptable to a gifted kid - it makes them self-destruct when they think they can't do something they should be able to do - especially at 4 when they don't yet have emotional maturity to handle it better, even if just a little bit.
Her conferences are in two weeks. I'm cuirious to see how her math level and reading level compare. Last year, at mid-year, she was at 5th grade for reading and 1st grade for math. HUGE difference. I can't imagine if we had her in a public school, trying to get her language needs met, and I feel so much empathy for those of you who do have this struggle.
The other big one we see here is academic "age" being so much more advanced than emotional age. Oldest, as I have mentioned, was completely computer proficient by age 4. She could navigate her way through Google to "her" sites and get anywhere in any particular site she wanted - even before she could really read the stuff, she just had a good instinct with it.
I completely take this for granted, by the way. Two nights ago, she came to me crying in the middle of the night because she'd discovered a "movie so scary I can't even talk about it, Mommy" on the Kiki Strike website and it was haunting her at 3am. I just assumed if she was reading Kiki Strike at school, then it wouldn't have "keep you awake" stuff at night on the website. Because if something's on a site that she's allowed to go on, she will find it. Period.
Though she has all of these abilities, she has the emotional maturity of a 7 year old (sometimes younger, too, I suspect, depending on what's going on in our lives, time of year, etc). Things she can handle reading because she can are not necessarily going to be things she can handle emotionally.
And finally, "interpersonal asynchrony," where the child doesn't fit into the world around her. We see this in certain venues - a club we belong to tends to be very rough for her in the summer. She thinks very differently from the kids there and ends up in tears or fighting quite often. She has no CLUE how to "play the game" socially. And a lot of these kids, while nice, have a different level of Social Savvy that she doesn't have.
Her school environment is great for her - Montessori - it truly does have the potential to change the world, one child at a time. Plus her fellow Suzuki kids tend to be on the same playing field as her. It's amazing to see how seamlessly they blend together at the recitals when they don't even know each other - all age levels! So different from other places we go where she doesn't know people.
So this is asynchronous development and it's longer than I thought. I'm going to save my other planned "stuff" for down the road.
Next week? Perfectionism, though I've been avoiding it because I'm afraid I won't get it right.
Get it? Avoiding doing something for fear of failure? Perfectionism in a nutshell. We'll talk about the positives and negatives of it next week.
See you!
This week I promised to delve into some of the traits. Bring it home a little, humanize it.
Let's start with asynchronous development. To me, this is one of the biggest hallmarks of gifted children, these huge GAPS in abilities. In A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, the authors say "intelligence and knowledge are simply not the same as emotional maturity, understanding, or wisdom." Guide, pg. 122. Further, they break it down into three categories:
- Emotional and intellectual maturity - where you "have the intellect of an older child, adolescent, or even an adult, but have age-appropriate emotional development.
- Asynchrony of abilities - saying the "brighter the child, the more widespread her abilities . . . it is common for a young gifted child to be frustrated that her fingers will not do what her mind wants them to do.
- Interpersonal asynchrony - where the child "doesn't fit into the world around her."
Carol Fertig goes on to say the following about asynchronous development:
Asynchronous development is uneven development academically, physically, and/or emotionally. A student might be a whiz kid at science, but can't throw a ball; or she may read years ahead of her classmates, but perform at grade level in math.Raising a Gifted Child, Carol Fertig, Prufrock Press, 2009, pg. 32. She also notes that asynchronous development is particularly difficult at the K-3 grade levels because these ages are not "mature enough for independent work." Id.
Maybe this is why many gifted programs don't start until 4th grade in elementary school? Just a thought.
In our house, the biggest asynchrony we see is in the abilities, or #2 above. Oldest couldn't write, at all, until between 4 and 5. At school, she had mastered the alphabet and was starting on Easy Reader Books, but when she was asked to write her name, sometimes the tantrums she had would be so forceful that at minimum she would lose playground time - sometimes I got a call from school. The teacher thought she was being stubborn - the truth was she just couldn't do it. And that, as you gifted parents WELL know, is unacceptable to a gifted kid - it makes them self-destruct when they think they can't do something they should be able to do - especially at 4 when they don't yet have emotional maturity to handle it better, even if just a little bit.
Her conferences are in two weeks. I'm cuirious to see how her math level and reading level compare. Last year, at mid-year, she was at 5th grade for reading and 1st grade for math. HUGE difference. I can't imagine if we had her in a public school, trying to get her language needs met, and I feel so much empathy for those of you who do have this struggle.
The other big one we see here is academic "age" being so much more advanced than emotional age. Oldest, as I have mentioned, was completely computer proficient by age 4. She could navigate her way through Google to "her" sites and get anywhere in any particular site she wanted - even before she could really read the stuff, she just had a good instinct with it.
I completely take this for granted, by the way. Two nights ago, she came to me crying in the middle of the night because she'd discovered a "movie so scary I can't even talk about it, Mommy" on the Kiki Strike website and it was haunting her at 3am. I just assumed if she was reading Kiki Strike at school, then it wouldn't have "keep you awake" stuff at night on the website. Because if something's on a site that she's allowed to go on, she will find it. Period.
Though she has all of these abilities, she has the emotional maturity of a 7 year old (sometimes younger, too, I suspect, depending on what's going on in our lives, time of year, etc). Things she can handle reading because she can are not necessarily going to be things she can handle emotionally.
And finally, "interpersonal asynchrony," where the child doesn't fit into the world around her. We see this in certain venues - a club we belong to tends to be very rough for her in the summer. She thinks very differently from the kids there and ends up in tears or fighting quite often. She has no CLUE how to "play the game" socially. And a lot of these kids, while nice, have a different level of Social Savvy that she doesn't have.
Her school environment is great for her - Montessori - it truly does have the potential to change the world, one child at a time. Plus her fellow Suzuki kids tend to be on the same playing field as her. It's amazing to see how seamlessly they blend together at the recitals when they don't even know each other - all age levels! So different from other places we go where she doesn't know people.
So this is asynchronous development and it's longer than I thought. I'm going to save my other planned "stuff" for down the road.
Next week? Perfectionism, though I've been avoiding it because I'm afraid I won't get it right.
Get it? Avoiding doing something for fear of failure? Perfectionism in a nutshell. We'll talk about the positives and negatives of it next week.
See you!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Super Sunday Series - You know your child is gifted when . . .
Welcome back to the Super Sunday Series! This week I'm stepping back to the basics of giftedness. Today begins a study of "gifted signs." I chuckle as I say this because the scope is quite large. There's no real "cookie cutter" version of a gifted child, which is why schools have so much trouble meeting their needs, I'm sure.
That being said, however, I've amassed a laundry list of "signs" from the following three sources. Raising a Gifted Child by Carol Fertig, The Survival Guide for Parents of Gifted Kids by Sally Walker, PhD, and A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children by James T. Webb, PhD, Janet L. Gore, MEd, Edward R. Amend, PsyD and Arlene R DeVries, MSE.
All of these books have commonalities about what "is gifted." It would be nice to say "you know it when you see it" but I don't think you can. All of the reasons I started researching books about gifted kids had little to do with her ability to read Charlotte's Web between age 4 and 5. It was that, combined with all of the quirky, challenging personality characteristics that sent me down the research road.
So, away we go!
Some signs of the gifted child, according to these three books:
Two-thirds of the population are considered to have "average intelligence," or an IQ between 85 and 115. The other one-third falls evenly at each end of the spectrum, 16% below 85 and 16% above 115. As a general rule, to be considered "gifted" from an IQ perspective (because there are other ways to be gifted, not dealt with in this post), you need to have an IQ greater than 115:
From 115-129, you are considered mildly gifted.
From 130 - 144, you are considered moderately gifted.
From 145-159, you are considered highly gifted.
From 160+, you are considered exceptionally gifted.
And Profoundly gifted is upwards of 180.
Only 2% of the ENTIRE population has an IQ higher than 130. That's 1 child for every 50 students (though some research says it's more like 1 in 40) with an IQ over 130. Hoagie's Gifted does a great job explaining what an IQ in the 130's means vs. 160 in terms of behavior. Because the higher your IQ gets, the more difficulty you have being able to be "mainstreamed." You think so radically different from your age peers, that they can't really even be considered your peers.
Lots of research talks about how parents downplay their child's giftedness, or underestimate how smart their gifted child actually is. I find an interesting dichotomy with that.
I think people who have merely bright kids overestimate their child's intelligence and parents of gifted kids underestimate it. Why? This is my personal opinion only, but I believe the aspects of giftedness that are really hard (see the past 5 weeks of the Super Sunday Series as examples) make you think you must be wrong about having a gifted child in the first place. Because until you do the research and discover that all of these extreme personality traits are, in fact, the gifted "normal," you think you can't possibly be right about having a gifted child. No one that smart could be that extreme, correct? Incorrect.
So, in conclusion this week, I've listed some comparisons between "bright" kids and "gifted kids" to show how experts differentiate them. (printed, with permission, from Carol Fertig's book, Raising a Gifted Child, pg 5, see above for the link):
Bright Kids Gifted Kids
Know the answers Ask the questions
Are interested Are highly curious
Are attentive Are mentally & physically involved
Have good ideas Have wild and silly ideas
Work hard Play around, test well
Answer the questions Discuss in detail, elaborate
Listen with interest Show strong feelings and opinions
Learn with ease Already know
Needs 6-8 repetitions for mastery Need 1-2 repetitions for mastery
Understand ideas Construct abstractions
Enjoy peers Prefer adults
Grasp the meaning Draw inferences
Complete assignments Initiate projects
Are receptive Are intense
Copy accurately Create a new design
Enjoy school Enjoy learning
Absorb information Manipulate information
Are technicians Are inventors
Are good memorizers Are good guessers
Enjoy a sequential presentation Thrive on complexity
Are alert Are keenly observant
Are pleased with own learning Are highly self-critical
So there you have it, some guidelines to get you started if you're not sure about your child. They're not perfect and a wealth of information exists online about this for further reading. Great books too. Especially the ones I've referenced today. Well worth the buy.
Next week, I'll dive into some of the characteristics at the top (like what asynchronous development means, for example). See you then! Happy November!
That being said, however, I've amassed a laundry list of "signs" from the following three sources. Raising a Gifted Child by Carol Fertig, The Survival Guide for Parents of Gifted Kids by Sally Walker, PhD, and A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children by James T. Webb, PhD, Janet L. Gore, MEd, Edward R. Amend, PsyD and Arlene R DeVries, MSE.
All of these books have commonalities about what "is gifted." It would be nice to say "you know it when you see it" but I don't think you can. All of the reasons I started researching books about gifted kids had little to do with her ability to read Charlotte's Web between age 4 and 5. It was that, combined with all of the quirky, challenging personality characteristics that sent me down the research road.
So, away we go!
Some signs of the gifted child, according to these three books:
- Strong verbal abilities
- Unusually good memory
- Intense curiosity
- Wide range of interests
- Asynchronous development
- Interest in experimenting
- Strong imagination,
- Creativity
- Sense of humor
- Motor skills delay
- Need for reason and understanding
- Impatience with others and/or with themselves
- Longer attention span
- Complex thinking
- Awareness of or concern with social/political problems and injustice
- Sensitivity
- Intensity
Two-thirds of the population are considered to have "average intelligence," or an IQ between 85 and 115. The other one-third falls evenly at each end of the spectrum, 16% below 85 and 16% above 115. As a general rule, to be considered "gifted" from an IQ perspective (because there are other ways to be gifted, not dealt with in this post), you need to have an IQ greater than 115:
From 115-129, you are considered mildly gifted.
From 130 - 144, you are considered moderately gifted.
From 145-159, you are considered highly gifted.
From 160+, you are considered exceptionally gifted.
And Profoundly gifted is upwards of 180.
Only 2% of the ENTIRE population has an IQ higher than 130. That's 1 child for every 50 students (though some research says it's more like 1 in 40) with an IQ over 130. Hoagie's Gifted does a great job explaining what an IQ in the 130's means vs. 160 in terms of behavior. Because the higher your IQ gets, the more difficulty you have being able to be "mainstreamed." You think so radically different from your age peers, that they can't really even be considered your peers.
Lots of research talks about how parents downplay their child's giftedness, or underestimate how smart their gifted child actually is. I find an interesting dichotomy with that.
I think people who have merely bright kids overestimate their child's intelligence and parents of gifted kids underestimate it. Why? This is my personal opinion only, but I believe the aspects of giftedness that are really hard (see the past 5 weeks of the Super Sunday Series as examples) make you think you must be wrong about having a gifted child in the first place. Because until you do the research and discover that all of these extreme personality traits are, in fact, the gifted "normal," you think you can't possibly be right about having a gifted child. No one that smart could be that extreme, correct? Incorrect.
So, in conclusion this week, I've listed some comparisons between "bright" kids and "gifted kids" to show how experts differentiate them. (printed, with permission, from Carol Fertig's book, Raising a Gifted Child, pg 5, see above for the link):
Bright Kids Gifted Kids
Know the answers Ask the questions
Are interested Are highly curious
Are attentive Are mentally & physically involved
Have good ideas Have wild and silly ideas
Work hard Play around, test well
Answer the questions Discuss in detail, elaborate
Listen with interest Show strong feelings and opinions
Learn with ease Already know
Needs 6-8 repetitions for mastery Need 1-2 repetitions for mastery
Understand ideas Construct abstractions
Enjoy peers Prefer adults
Grasp the meaning Draw inferences
Complete assignments Initiate projects
Are receptive Are intense
Copy accurately Create a new design
Enjoy school Enjoy learning
Absorb information Manipulate information
Are technicians Are inventors
Are good memorizers Are good guessers
Enjoy a sequential presentation Thrive on complexity
Are alert Are keenly observant
Are pleased with own learning Are highly self-critical
So there you have it, some guidelines to get you started if you're not sure about your child. They're not perfect and a wealth of information exists online about this for further reading. Great books too. Especially the ones I've referenced today. Well worth the buy.
Next week, I'll dive into some of the characteristics at the top (like what asynchronous development means, for example). See you then! Happy November!
x2
