What the Highly Gifted Need
Exceptionally gifted children have two primary needs. First, they need to feel comfortable with themselves and with the differences that simultaneously open possibilities and create difficulty. Second, they need to develop their astonishing potential. There is a strong internal drive to develop one's abilities. Keeping the gifted student from that form of development may lead to emotional challenges.
One gifted author wrote, “Throughout the parenting years, it is wise to keep in mind that the healthiest long term goal is not necessarily a child who gains fame, fortune, and a Nobel Prize, but one who becomes a comfortable adult and uses gifts productively.”
When the School Will Not Change
When parents seek to meet with educators and school administrators with information and documentation for the gifted, in a spirit of cooperation instead of confrontation, offering suggestions and help instead of attacking, some positive changes in normal methods usually result. Sometimes, however, schools may refuse to make changes for a child. When this occurs, parents have limited choices. One is to meet with district level school administrators, superintendent, school board members or other upper level school officials to seek a positive outcome that may include other parents. This may take time and a building of knowledge of how educational systems operate, but the time put into this task is often well spent and meaningful.
Home schooling may be another option. For many highly gifted children, home schooling is a nearly an ideal solution if the parents have the time and means to adventure into this method of teaching. Each state has its own home schooling regulations, policies and procedures. Home schooling is seldom an easy choice. When both parents and the single resident parent must work, it may be impossible. Some parents and children find the level of togetherness difficult to manage. Others cannot avoid pushing and demanding too much. Home schooling may be a positive choice, however, if the parents and child have a positive working relationship and enter into this form of education on agreeable terms. Parents interested in exploring this option should contact their child’s school district or the State Department of Education in their state.
Child Social Development and Emotional Needs
Highly gifted children may have trouble establishing fulfilling friendships with people of their own age when there are few or no other highly gifted children with whom to interact. As a high school student told his mother, "I can be that part of myself that is like my classmates, and we get along fine. But, there's no one I can share the rest of me with, no one who understands what means the most to me." For most highly gifted children, social relationships with age peers necessitate a constant monitoring of thoughts, words, and behavior.
One of the greatest benefits of the talent searches proliferating in colleges across the country is the chance for highly gifted children to spend time with others like themselves. For 3 weeks in the summer, children who qualify (by scoring high enough on the SAT or ACT in the seventh grade or earlier) attend class on a college campus with other highly gifted children. Rather than feeling like oddballs, they suddenly feel normal. Lifelong friendships may form in a matter of days. Many summer program participants consider the social interaction as valuable as the classes.
What else can you do to help highly gifted children find friends? It helps children to understand that there are different types of friends. They may play baseball, ride bikes, and watch TV with one person, talk about books or movies with another, and play chess or discuss astronomy with another. Some of these friends may be their own age, some may be younger, or more often, older. Only in school is it suggested that people must be within a few months of each other in age to form meaningful relationships.
Gifted Children, Top Web Parenting Articles February 12th, 2008
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