Parenting a Gifted Child E-Book

50MINUTES

• Herausgeber: 50Minutes.com
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: Health & Wellbeing
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Change is only 50 minutes away! Find out everything you need to know about parenting a gifted child with this straightforward guide.

Giftedness is often viewed as a blessing, but in some ways it can also be a burden for gifted children and their parents. Indeed, gifted children face a range of specific problems, from a lack of stimulation and motivation at school to difficulty relating to their peers, who do not understand that they simply think differently. Fortunately, these challenges to not have to hold your child back, as thoughtful, tailored support and guidance will enable them to make the most of their talents, appreciate what makes them different and thrive in all areas of their life.

In just 50 minutes you will be able to:
• Identify the key indicators that suggest that your child might be gifted
• Support your gifted child in their education and encourage them to make the most of their abilities
• Learn about the potential social and educational difficulties facing gifted children and take steps to counter them

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Leseprobe

Parenting a gifted child

Understand your child and help them thrive

Problem: it is tempting to think that having a gifted child will make your life easier, but often this could not be further from the truth. With this in mind, how can you resolve the range of problems facing gifted children and those around them?Aims: to understand giftedness in order to support your gifted child at home and at school so that they can make the most of their talents.FAQs:What are the steps to getting my child officially classified as gifted?What teaching methods and alternatives to school are there for gifted children?What are the signs that a child has high intellectual potential?Does my child absolutely require psychological support?Are the parents and siblings of a gifted child necessarily gifted as well?Should I be worried if my child only socialises with other gifted children?Are gifted individuals more at risk of depression?

The term “gifted” refers to individuals whose intellectual abilities are far above the norm, although there is no single fixed definition of giftedness and definitions of the phenomenon vary between cultures.

Whatever definition is used, gifted children often struggle with the fact that some people expect them to be an all-knowing genius because of their abilities, in line with common preconceptions and images in the media and some films (A Beautiful Mind, 2001; Pawn Sacrifice, 2014; The Tournament, 2015).

However, the reality is far more nuanced than this simplistic assumption. Giftedness is much more than an IQ (intelligence quotient) of above 130: it is also a range of emotional and behavioural traits that set gifted children apart from their peers. Gifted children tend to feel more intensely and work differently, which can have a significant effect on all aspects of their lives, not least on their relationships with others.

If you think that your child might be gifted, or if they have already been classified as gifted, you probably have a lot of questions or are unsure how best to support their education.

The challenges of raising a gifted child include answering their existential questions, finding a school that can accommodate their particular needs, dealing with the fear of being seen as arrogant or pretentious by other parents, and handling jealousy from their siblings.

Learning more about giftedness and the tools at your disposal will enable you to tailor your child’s education to their abilities and provide them with the best possible guidance throughout their childhood and teenage years. This will allow them to feel supported, fit in with their peers and make the most of their potential.

What is giftedness?

A series of differences

While every child is different, with their own personality, favourite games and struggles, so-called “gifted” children have a number of distinctive characteristics that you should be able to observe in your child. In this section, we will examine these characteristics.

If you believe that your child may be gifted and they display at least three of the following characteristics, you should look into the matter further. However, you should exercise caution when analysing these indicators, as the presence of one of them does not necessarily mean that your child is gifted.

With very young gifted children, parents will often get the impression that they are struggling to keep up with their child rather than the other way around. The child will frequently try to direct their parents’ attention to their surroundings by asking questions that may seem disconcerting for their age.

Gifted children tend to be drawn to many different activities and switch between them rapidly, not because they have a short attention span but because they want to explore and because of their particular way of thinking: one idea quickly leads to another and they make connections that not everyone can see. They are very lively and observant and have trouble sleeping. They typically start talking very early (or at a later age than usual, but at a high level) and walking earlier than the average age (specifically, they may start walking at around a year old and talking before the age of two).

Later on, the intensity of your child’s emotions and the level of sensory stimulation they experience may be surprising to you. For example, a gifted child may find sounds that other people consider normal to be too loud. They are also likely to notice more details and try much harder to understand their surroundings by touching objects or memorising smells that other people miss.