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Gifted Children's Needs |
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As their parents, teachers, friends or mentors, what do gifted children need? All children have many needs, and gifted children have special needs, so this is a huge subject. I'll list here specific needs that occur to me, and this will probably be a page I add to every time I update this site. At the most basic level, gifted children need to be able to socialise at least some of the time with other children of comparable intelligence to themselves. They need to be able to work in school at a level which challenges their intelligence. The amount of time in school which they have to spend bored needs to be kept to the minimum possible. (So far all these needs apply to all children; however, because gifted children are statistically unusual in the population, unusual measures may need to be taken for these very basic needs to be satisfied in their case.) It follows that the next need of gifted children is that people around them, their family members and if possible their teachers, understand that unusual measures may need to be taken for these same needs which all children have, to be met in the case of gifted children. Gifted children also need their families, schools, and society in general, to have a realistic understanding of what a gifted child is and is not. If a child is interested in learning ballet, or learning to swim, or wants a skateboard or a puppy, it is normal for parents to help the child follow that interest if possible, or to recognise the child's wish, but explain the reasons if it's not possible for it to be met. "I'm really sorry but you can't have a skateboard because you have brittle bones"; or "We can't get a puppy because it isn't practical when we live in a unit with no yard". Gifted children need a similar extent of help to follow those interests and wishes which can be followed, and have those which can't acknowledged and explained; however it may seem that gifted children are needing more than this, because they may have unusual interests which they have a driving desire to pursue to an unusual level. It's a matter of degree; the underlying principle is the same for all children, but it may not seem so if looked at superficially. Gifted children need still to have a childhood, and this can sometimes be very confusing to experience with them; the same child who at the age of 6 wants to investigate rigorously the effects of the two World Wars, at the age of 8 may be enthralled by Barbie dolls, or may still have a nostalgic interest in watching Sesame Street or Play School. One has a tendency sometimes to feel that because the child has advanced so far in so many ways, he or she shouldn't have the need of such childish things; but gifted children need to be allowed to enjoy childhood in the way they choose to do. In my experience there often seems to be an effect of "going back" to fill in childhood gaps, because at an earlier age the child was focused on forging ahead. Gifted children need to be allowed to progress through their childhood in unusual patterns if that seems natural to them. Gifted children almost always need help from an early age not to set too high or perfectionist standards for themselves, and when trying to help them with this, parents need to examine their own behaviour and try to be sure that they are not modeling that behaviour themselves. Setting one's standards in life near or at perfection is a damaging habit to get into, because noone can be perfect, and if one begins early to judge oneself as being acceptable only when one feels one has achieved perfectly or near perfectly, one is going to spend a lot of one's life unhappy. Perfectionism, in combination with other events which may well occur in life, is a risk factor for suicide. Correspondingly, gifted children need others to
be realistic about their performance. Perhaps fortunately in Australian
society, wary as we are of over-tall poppies, most parents are aware of the
dangers of pushing their gifted child. (Again, this corresponds to the
danger of pushing any child for the parent's benefit.) Gifted children
inevitably are likely to be involved in life in many highly competitive
activities; they may like to take part in Eisteddfods or competitions where the
very nature of the activity is to come as close as possible to perfection; they
may want to achieve entry to a tertiary course which in the current climate of
tertiary funding, requires near perfection in Secondary exams. Therefore
it's a very good idea to begin early in life to teach gifted children the
difference between normal life, and those exceptional focused, high-standard
activities - and to set an example in not mixing them up. On a fourth year
spelling test, it matters almost nothing if one achieves perfection or not, so
that the parent who mutters "Forty-nine out of fifty? What happened
to the other mark?" is setting a seriously bad example for a dangerous
personality trait. |