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Advice from a former "gifted" childOct 16 '01 (Updated Oct 23 '01) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Don't shun opportunities for them to excel - but stay away from excess praise that will only expand your child's ego.
When reading over the other opinions on this subject, I noticed that they were all written by parents or relatives of gifted children. While I know they have many valuable insights, I think a little extra can come from someone who has actually been there. I guess in that case, that would be me. As an elementary school student I always saw myself as "average." I figured that all my classmates did similarly in each subject, and that I wasn't any brighter than anyone else. To be honest, there isn't much competition academically in first or second grade. In first grade I wondered why the other reading groups used the "kindergarten book" (it was actually the first grade level book - I had just used it in kindergarten), but that was my only clue that I was seen as being different. (Looking back it's kind of funny - my boyfriend was awestruck watching a video of me when I was five - spouting the results of the presidential election in between singing songs and telling jokes.) Then third grade came around - and my first standardized test. My teacher called my parents in to discuss my scores, and my mother came home and told me "Mrs. Monroe says you're very smart." We were moving to a different school district after that year and I later learned that my teacher was concerned that my scores would be overlooked at my new school since they use a different test. She gave my mother copies of the scores, urging her to bring it up with my new school. My new school district had a program called "TAG" (Talented and Gifted) and students who scored in the 99th percentile would attend class one day a week with about 9 or 10 other children at a different school. From the moment I started TAG I loved it. While I always received very good grades in school, I hated going. But every Wednesday my mother would say "It's TAG day" and I would jump out of bed. In class we would do everything from research to playing games - but with no tests and no homework. Everything was engineered to expand our abilities and our creativity. The classes had 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in it, and I never had a problem getting along with anyone. And despite what someone would expect, the students in my regular classroom didn't have much of a problem with it either. I was never picked on because of being in TAG (though I was picked on because I was short, and had glasses) and people rarely mentioned it. Of course, they were usually taken aback for a little while when they discovered that the class had no homework, no tests, no grades, and I didn't have to make up any work I missed in my regular class. I think my class would have treated me differently if they had seen me in my other classroom. Because it was at a different school, I simply wouldn't be in the class one day a week. The students at the elementary school that it was held at were a different story. They would stare at us, whisper, or sometimes just ignore us. On the playground they would never play on the same peice of equipment we did, and once a boy in my class was pushed away from a drinking fountain and told "Taggers aren't allowed to drink here." I think this stemmed from the fact that we were obviously segregated from the rest of the school. We came on different buses, and stayed in a different kind of classroom. While there's nothing you can really do about how other children will treat another child that is labeled gifted - you can do something about how that child will react. First of all - my father would always say "Who's the smartest person in your class?" and I would yell "Me!" While this sounds like a great ego booster - kids who are gifted don't need ego boosts about their intellect - this just gives them big heads. This also gives them a farther distance to fall later on. When I hit middle school my dad would ask me this same question - and in a much larger pool I was no longer "the smartest." Then I was left saying "Not me" and reminding myself that I wasn't. My advice is to treat a gifted students' abilities the same as you would anyone elses. You can praise - but don't overpraise with high expectations. This praise also led me to look down upon the other students in my class, and to believe that it was okay to flaunt my grades and my test scores, thinking that being "the smartest" was a title I should proudly display. I have no regrets about my parents placing me in the gifted program - it was the best part of my elementary school experience. I do regret the fact that they made a big deal about it. Instead of saying, "You are so smart - you get to go to a special class," I would tell a gifted child, "Just like some students go to a class to learn to play a musical instrument, you are going to a different class to learn new things." With this approach you can expect your child to stay grounded while still striving to succeed.  |
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