Identifying and Supporting Your Gifted Child

Gifted children thrive with enrichment programming.

The content of this post comes directly from our recent webinar on the topic of giftedness, featuring expert information from our collaborator, Ann Smith, of the Gifted Support Center in San Mateo.

In the following post, we’re going to cover a range of topics under the heading of “giftedness,” including the following:

  • Gifted 101 - what does being “gifted” mean?

  • Characteristics of giftedness

  • Identification of giftedness

  • Selecting a school

  • Supporting your gifted child at home

  • Classroom advocacy

  • Enrichment options

Gifted 101

Most states and districts model their definition of giftedness from the very first federal definition established in 1972 in the Marland Report. Definitions have evolved since then, but most include a few commonalities, such as suggesting that gifted and talented children have demonstrated abilities that are significantly advanced compared to other children of the same age, experience, and background.

Children might be gifted and talented in any domain, such as music, math, or dance. Some gifted and talented children have the potential to perform but aren’t demonstrating this potential. It’s important for gifted children to have the appropriate support to develop their potential.

 
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A lot of schools and districts have definitions but they won’t necessarily have programming set-up to support gifted children. There’s no federal law or mandate for serving gifted and talented children so each state has to determine its own laws, and each district bases their policies to reflect state legislation and policies.

Characteristics of Giftedness

Giftedness can start appearing at a very young age, starting when children are infants and might display unusual alertness. Often gifted children are very quick learners and have an unusually large vocabulary for their age. They may have an advanced understanding of word nuances, metaphors and abstract ideas.

Many gifted children enjoy solving problems, and they’re often self-taught when it comes to reading and writing skills as a preschooler. They may exhibit intense, deep feelings and reactions and be highly sensitive, and have a strong sense of idealism and justice at an early age.

Gifted children tend to have longer attention spans and may become easily pre-occupied by their own thoughts (daydreamers!). They will learn basic skills quickly and don’t need a lot of repetition to learn. They ask probing questions and either have a very wide range of interests or often have an extreme focus in one area at a time.

Gifted kids are very curious and like to experiment with doing things differently or putting ideas together that aren’t typical. They have vivid imaginations and may desire to organize people and things through games.

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Identification of Giftedness

It’s important to identify giftedness early to help support the appropriate school setting and educational supports that will nurture gifted children to reach their full potential. Early identification will improve the likelihood that gifts will be developed into talents.

Those who conduct testing for giftedness (such as the Gifted Support Center) will collect both quantifiable, objective data (cognitive ability tests, academic achievements tests, etc.) and more qualitative, subjective data (nominations, teacher observations, portfolios, etc).

Selecting a School

Schools should offer a variety of services specific to the child’s strengths, readiness, interests, and abilities. Some good questions to ask include the following:

  • Does your school raise learning goals when a child is ready? If so, how?

  • Does your school monitor progress throughout the year? If so, how?

  • Does your school allow certain students to accelerate in their learning? If so, how?

The research is clear that acceleration can be very good for a child’s social, cognitive and emotional growth if done in the right way. However, it’s important to understand that simply putting a child in a higher grade-level classroom may be problematic if that child is not socially prepared for being in a class with older children. Parents should look for the ways schools enrich, differentiate, and provide flexibility in their learning.

Pacific Preparatory offers the maximum amount of flexibility for gifted learners because we offer individualized academic programming.

Many gifted children experience out of sync development, which can be challenging especially on a social-emotional level.

Many gifted children experience out of sync development, which can be challenging especially on a social-emotional level.

Supporting Gifted Children at Home

Because gifted children might display greater maturity in some domains over others, they might be at greater risk for specific kinds of social-emotional challenges if their needs are not met. This might include heightened awareness, anxiety, perfectionism, stress, issues with peer relationships, and concerns with identity.

It’s important that parents keep in mind that gifted children often experience asynchronous development, which can mean they will be far advanced in some areas (such as cognitively) but still remain relatively similar to their peers (or even behind) when it comes to emotional maturity.

To support gifted children at home, parents can collect resources around their child’s interests and try to find peer groups who share similar interests and/or abilities.

Classroom Advocacy

Parents of gifted children should work to develop a mutually supportive relationship with their children’s teachers and be understanding but firm in requests for flexibility around accelerating learning as needed. Ideally, the teacher, child, and administrative staff at the school will work with parents to come up with a plan that will accommodate the child’s learning needs.

Resources:

In addition to Pacific Preparatory, Tutor Corps, and the Gifted Support Center, parents of gifted children may consider the following resources for support:

Please contact us to learn more about how Pacific Preparatory can support your gifted child.

Quality EducationPacific Preparatory Staff