|
|
|
|
|
Articles from
October 2005
Highly Gifted Children
At one school where I was a gifted/talented resource teacher, Peter entered kindergarten literally being able to read anything. Unfortunately, his parents did not understand that he was still a five-year-old emotionally and let him read books like Frankenstein and Dracula. Since he was still at such a literal stage of his life, he believed that the stories were true and was very frightened by them. Peter was also a “walking encyclopedia.” He seemed to remember every fact he ever read. Peter had no intellectual peers in kindergarten. He skipped first grade. He had no intellectual peers in second grade. From a distance, I followed Peter through the years and heard that he had no one who resembled an intellectual peer until high school. Can you imagine how difficult this was for Peter and his family? He had no one with whom he could relate, and the students in his classes really wanted nothing to do with him. They found him to be a real oddity.
There are gifted individuals and there are highly (or even extremely or profoundly) gifted individuals. Peter was at least a highly gifted individual. While it may be a challenge to address the needs of gifted students, it is a much greater hurdle to address the needs of the highly gifted. These children may be particularly vulnerable because of their uniqueness. It is extremely difficult for schools to meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of these kids.
These children are often found as a result of extremely high scores on an individually scored IQ tests, generally above the 145 IQ range. Others may be prodigies in areas such as math, science, language and/or the arts. Profoundly gifted children can score in excess of 170 IQ.
There are resources that are available to parents and teachers of these students.
Exceptionally Gifted Children, by Miraca U. M. Gross is a 20-year study that reveals the negative academic and social effects imposed on gifted children by inappropriate curriculum and placement and shows clearly the long lasting benefits of thoughtfully planned individual educational programs.
Parenting Gifted Children
Parenting can be a tough job. Kids don’t come with an instruction book, and parents often feel that they have one chance to do this right and one chance only. For 11 years, I worked as a gifted/talented resource teacher in a public school that had an excellent academic record. Though it wasn’t a specialized school, it had a high number of gifted students. Frequently I would have very concerned parents call me. They wanted to talk with me about their sons and daughters and questioned many aspects of their students’ education. I would listen for as long as they wanted to talk and then ask the question, “Do you feel that your child’s needs are being met?” Inevitably their answer would be, “Well, yes, but I just want to make certain that everything is being done that should be done.” It was easy for me to address these issues because I knew the quality of the school and the teachers. (Of course, all of the schools where I worked were not as strong as this one.)
In addition to having concerns about school, parents also feel that they have only one shot at parenting at home. How can they know the best way to parent? Should they follow the same model that their parents used? Should parenting be different with gifted children? Should they be strict or liberal? Of course, there is no one right answer, but some theories, research, and opinions can be shared. A recent article, Critical, Demanding Parents Can Damage Gifted Children, appeared in USA TODAY. The article covered a panel discussion at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. Gifted kids were reported to be as mentally healthy as their less able classmates, but all bets were off if the kids had critical parents who demand stellar performance every day. That approach can create nail-biting perfectionists who fear taking risks and fall short of their potential.
While gifted children are not typically a problem for the family, they do offer some unique challenges, as was reported in A Review of Research on Parents and Families of Gifted Children. Parents, it was found, may become excited because a bright child can be a step up in socioeconomic status. This becomes a problem only when parents have inordinate expectations about their child's achievement. In fact, pressure from parents to achieve has also been cited as a cause of underachievement.
Different kinds of family dynamics yield different outcomes in developing talent. The role of stress or challenge in a family can certainly have an influence as is discussed in Parenting Practices that Promote Talent Development, Creativity, and Optimal Adjustment. “Parenting styles that help a child find his own identity, rather than prescribe it…aid in the development of talent, creativity, and good mental health.” “Parents also help children to succeed by allowing them to experience and cope with challenges and difficulties in their lives.” We often want to make life go very smoothly for our kids because we love them, but we actually help them to grow and become self-confident if we don’t try to protect them from every difficult event that occurs in life. It’s much more helpful to talk with them when there are challenges and help them to figure out how to cope, make the best decisions, and learn from adversity.
Gifted Children of Immigrants
I meet the most interesting people when traveling. Often this takes place in taxi cabs or shuttles to and from the airport. The most recent example was the taxi cab driver I had a few days ago. He had a “need to talk.” The man entered the United States in 1986 from Eritrea under political asylum. Eritrea is a small African country located on the Red Sea between Sudan and Ethiopia. Mostly, the driver wanted to talk about his children, ages 12 and 14. He was obviously very proud of them and their achievements. Each of the boys is at the top of his class academically. The father said that he and his wife work very hard to provide for their children financially and to instill in them the value of hard work and the importance of education. “After all,” he said, “education is the key to success.”
Why is it that this value is so strong in those who immigrate or are the first-born of immigrants while many students who are born here do not see the value of hard work?
In his article The Multiplier Effect, Stuart Anderson states, “Students from immigrant families seem acutely aware of the opportunity to excel that their parents gave them by immigrating to the United States.”
“An astounding 60 percent of the top science students in the United States and 65 percent of the top math students are the children of immigrants.”
If you saw the documentary, Spellbound, you know that a disproportionate number of excellent spellers are children of immigrants, or are naturalized citizens themselves.
While it is certainly helpful to be born with high intelligence, it is also necessary to have a strong work ethic to maximize that natural ability. Sometimes, I think, that we expect all the hard work to come from the school systems rather than from the kids. We are concerned that the schools are not providing enough for our children and yet we excuse our children’s lack of interest in pursuing educational goals themselves.
Perhaps those of us whose families have been in this country for generations can benefit from some of the strategies that work for many immigrant families.
Opportunities for Gifted Children
When flying into Chicago, sometimes I take a “ride share” taxi to get downtown. It’s about half the cost and involves waiting around five minutes until the taxi arrangers can find two other people going the same direction who are willing to share the cab. I did this last week. I was sitting in the backseat when the door opened and in entered a very good-looking African-American man, wearing a handsome navy suit and spit-polished shoes. He was very friendly and introduced himself as Lyndon. After saying “hello,” he immediately started working on his Blackberry, alternating the reading of email with making business calls. This went on for ten or fifteen minutes with him moving very quickly from one matter to the next. I grew exhausted just watching and listening to him.
Somewhere along the line, he stopped working and we started a conversation. I was fascinated by his story because it fit so well with the area of gifted education.
Lyndon grew up in a small, poor town in Texas. His parents did not have opportunities to go to college, and I’m not even sure they finished high school. Lyndon’s parents were only teenagers when he was born--too young, thought his grandparents--so he was initially raised by the older relatives.
In elementary school, Lyndon was hyperactive and always talking. According to Lyndon’s point-of-view, this caused him to be placed in a resource room for children with learning disabilities. He felt stigmatized. Somewhere a long the line, he had a teacher (we’ll call her Mrs. Johnson) who looked at him differently. She saw his strengths, not his constant distracting chatter. One day she pulled him aside and said to him, “I’m going to call your mother tonight. I can tell you’re a smart boy and I want to have you tested.” Through the advocacy of Mrs. Johnson, Lyndon was tested and found to be very bright and was placed in a magnet program for gifted students. Suddenly he saw possibilities outside his immediate environment. He skipped one grade in elementary school while in this magnet program.
When he was in middle school, Lyndon was invited to attend a special program on the East Coast for bright, under-privileged students. This led to him receiving a scholarship for a prep school for two years. I asked Lyndon how his parents felt about him going away to school. He said that he thought it was difficult for his mother, but his father was very supportive. When his father was in the military, he saw that there was “another world out there” and wanted to give his son the opportunity to experience that.
After some time, Lyndon missed his friends back home and decided to finish his final years at his old high school. When he returned to that school, he skipped yet another grade.
Lyndon went on to attend Brown University and then got a graduate degree at The University of Chicago. He is now a very successful business executive. All this happened because he was shown the possibilities of a different life and he had adults who made sure those possibilities could take place.
Lyndon is now married and has two preschoolers. Because of his experiences, he realizes that doors can be opened when one is exposed to the possibilities in life. He is making a concerted effort to give his children even more exposure than he had. He wants them to know many different types of people. He has them in an environment where they are already speaking two languages. He exposes them to lots of books and provides many enriching experiences.
Lyndon told me that he did some volunteer work recently with kids at Cabrini Green. The young people were shocked to see the car he was driving. They said it was the first time they had ever met an African American driving a Mercedes Benz who wasn’t a drug dealer.
By the way, Mrs. Johnson, the teacher who recognized Lyndon’s talents, still remains in his life. She was one of those special teachers who stayed in touch and was a guiding force. Mrs. Johnson “made a difference.” She attended his graduations from high school, college, and graduate school. She attended his wedding and the birthday parties of his children. She is a “part of his family” and very valued individual.
|
| | |