Idle thoughts on being “gifted”

Note: What follows is a loose sorting of thoughts on the subject of giftedness. All opinions expressed in this post are subject to change upon receipt of further information. Today’s ideas may be tossed by tomorrow.

As part of my resolve to focus more on the needs of the kids, I have borrowed some books to read. I have long resisted doing any research into the special needs of gifted kids because I believe that all children have special needs. It seemed irrelevant to study about giftedness when I just needed to pay attention to my kids and figure out what they needed. I continued in this opinion even when Kiki’s teachers kept trying to give me literature, or send me to seminars, or show me websites. I was quite stubborn. I did not want to subscribe to the idea that some kids are gifted while others are not. This week I caved and did some reading. The first thing I figured out is that “gifted” is merely a category descriptor for a set of behaviors and needs. “Gifted” does not mean better. A gifted child may actually cause far more chaos than joy in a family that doesn’t know how to deal with their behaviors.

I wish they would pick a different term than “gifted.” It’s as if this small subset of the population has been given a super special present that no one else gets to have. The fact that I am part of the subset makes me alternately glad and guilty. I resolve the feelings by making sure that I use my abilities to make the world a better place. Another part of me has a hard time believing in the whole concept of giftedness because it doesn’t seem rare. My whole family is highly intelligent. Howard’s whole family went through gifted programs. And now I am a parent and I have to discern the needs of my kids. As I was reading about the characteristics of gifted kids it was like browsing the behaviors of my children. Gleek has that. Patches and Gleek both do that. Oh there’s Kiki. This one is Link. On and on. These are supposedly diagnostic descriptions of gifted behaviors but I find myself thinking “doesn’t every kid do that?” Am I so accustomed to oddness that it seems normal to me? Am I weird? Rare? I don’t feel like I am. I don’t feel like my kids are. It all seems…normal.

In order to meet the educational needs of my kids, I may have to endure putting them in gifted programs. We did that with Kiki and it was miserable. On the other hand, if I’d listened to her teachers and studied more about typical gifted behaviors, perhaps it would have been a better experience. Assuming I already know the answers is typical for gifted people. Apparently I’m susceptible to the faults of the category as well.

Have I mentioned that I dislike categories? I don’t like thinking that I fit into one. I don’t like thinking that my kids fit into one. Categories seem limiting, confining. They are like little boxes. Labels and descriptors are better. They attach without impeding movement.

Ack. All this is me spinning my wheels to no point. Tomorrow I read the book about actually managing the problem behaviors typical in “gifted” children. That one may have some useful applications rather than just high theory that makes my head hurt with contradictory emotions.

10 thoughts on “Idle thoughts on being “gifted””

  1. My biggest problem as a gifted kid was perfectionism coupled with procrastination. Well, I take that back–boredom would be top on that list. My small-town school only gave me extra busywork in the so-called “challenge” program, and thought that would make up for lack of AP classes later in high school. That just gave me more work to avoid. So I think there’s definitely something to investigating what a gifted kid needs, because it will be hugely different from the needs of a kid who learns at a different rate, especially when it comes to school programs.

  2. What book(s) are you reading? I’m curious. Not to argue with you or them, but because I’d like to read them myself.

    I came to *hate* that Gifted label after a while. When the teen years hit, and the ego-boost wore off and the pride got beaten out of me, it felt like the only thing being Gifted was good for was getting a lot of extra work dumped on me, a lot more *harder* work than others got, and being made to feel guilty for “not properly appreciating the gifts God’s given you”. Nothing less than straight A’s was acceptable, because after all, you’re Gifted and this stuff shouldn’t be a problem. 97% wasn’t acceptable, because if you’re that close you’d have gotten 100% if you’d applied yourself. Don’t you dare take regular history instead of AP history. If you’d just apply yourself, you have the brains — you just don’t want to do the work. And so on. It was so UNFAIR!

    I really resented the Gifted label after a while, and more than once deliberately flunked tests or assignments purely as rebellion.

    But, I had a LOT of emotional issues back then, it wasn’t all Gifted making me miserable. ‘Gifted’ was merely the intellect, after all … it had nothing to do with actual *maturity*, particularly emotional maturity. My maturity level was no more advanced than the rest of my age group, no matter how many years advanced the tests said I was in reading, math, comprehension, reasoning. I think that emotional maturity facet is something that is overlooked even today by people dealing with Gifted children (or those at the other end of the chart).

    The “gifted” label had an additional dark side for me: it prevented my dyslexia from being properly diagnosed. I read constantly, anything and everything, and I regularly had problems with jumbled letters and spelling new words correctly for a while (i.e., until I’d memorized the correct spelling and ignored what my eyes told me).

    So when I’d stumble while reading, it wasn’t taken as an indicator of Something Wrong. It was a sort of validation of how smart I was and how I constantly pushed myself: “Well that’s only to be expected, it IS several grade levels above her” proud statements. They’d ration my reading hours, made certain there was extra lighting, nag me about my posture — it *couldn’t* be something *wrong*, after all I was GIFTED. There were a couple of eye exams, but they were expecting to find “she just needs glasses”, and dyslexia wasn’t very well known back then. Also, I am blessed with a very mild case that doesn’t greatly interfere with things. Give me a few extra moments to get additional ‘views’ and I can read an eye chart as well as anyone else. (by the time I was diagnosed, dyslexia had become somewhat of a fad)

    Gosh, I’m rambling. It’s sleeting outside, so I don’t have to go to work tomorrow, no need to get to bed on time 🙂

    I had it better than my high school boyfriend. He was officially labeled as the opposite end of the scale from Gifted, held back several years and kept into special classes … when in reality, he’s smarter than I am. He simply had very, very severe visual issues (technically, he’s legally blind) that were not properly diagnosed until 8th or 9th grade because it was assumed his reading problems were due to his obvious intellectually-based learning disability. Back then the cruel kids called it retarded. So when he was finally getting proper medical attention and glasses/monocular prescriptions and tutoring, and his intellect allowed to blossom … he had to deal with all of that emotional baggage AND leapfrog about 4 years of reading and math in 1 to catch up with the rest of us (and quickly surpass).

    If I had to be misdiagnosed due to a label, I’ll take my experience with “Gifted” over his experience with “Mentally delayed” any day of the week.

    BTW, in both cases it was teachers with training in “ignore the previous diagnosis — what ELSE might cause this?” type assessments, and dealing with the emotional issues of outlier kids like us, that made the difference.

    And I agree with you about believing in the whole concept of giftedness and it not being all that rare. It’s more than just being bright, and so many areas in which one can excel while being “merely normal” in others.

  3. I think that it is extremely important for you to get your children into gifted classes, if such are available in your area. If I hadn’t had that option in high school, I doubt I would have made it to university. I would have dropped out long before then, from sheer boredom.

    Up here there’s occasionally been a lot of controversy over whether or not gifted classes should be offered. People who are against them point out that gifted teens don’t do any better (or worse) than their peers once they reach higher education. Those people are missing the entire point. Gifted classes are needed so that gifted children STAY IN SCHOOL and I can’t emphasize that enough. It’s not an elitist issue. It’s a desperate need for better content than ordinary classes can provide.

    I hope too that your kids’ teachers will understand that the way to teach gifted children is not just to give them more work. They need creative outlets, and they need to be learning things which interest them, once they’ve finished with their regular schoolwork. I had an excellent math teacher in grade nine who knew this. We finished the provincial curriculum in about three months, and then got to explore other things. We learned matrices, researched the lives and findings of mathematicians … hmm, and played poker at the back of the class 🙂

    You are right that lots of problems can come with giftedness. Remember that your gifted children are not “better” than those around them — but they are different, and they will have different needs and issues than other children. They will need more challenges (not more busywork).

    Here are two websites that you might peruse:

    http://www.giftedservices.com.au/index.html

    and

    http://www.beingsmart.ca/ .

    The first contains web resources dealing with giftedness; the second is a book. Both are probably worth a look.

  4. lots of long comments, eh?

    I read a magazine article about gifted kids and it said that the government spends WAY more money trying to bring below average kids up to average level than they spend money on helping gifted kids reach their potential and keep them in school. It was appalling to read that more gifted kids drop out of school than from any other “catergory”.
    It’s also interesting from my own experience… I LOVE learning, I’m interested in everything! I got straight A’s in the subjects I really loved and math, well, it’s math. (even though I got D’s in Algebra it wasn’t because I didn’t understand the concepts) I believe if I’d had information and guidance and encouragement, that I would’ve totally skyrocketed with straight A’s (hrm, I don’t even remember if my highschool had AP classes.) hmmm. I’m sure there’s a good reason why I always carried two books to read with me during school.
    With my son… We’ve always known that he’s a smarty pants kid. : )
    I’m so happy our school has an ELP class. BUT, it’s only for 2 hours a week. For those 2 hours he doesn’t get teased about being a nerd and he gets to be around other kids who are curious and use big words like he does. IF I wanted to drive around every morning and afternoon (making our schedule even MORE busy and take him away from all his friends (and all the bullys) I might be able to find him a full time ELP class.
    The article talked about a school for gifted kids that was an experiment. It sounded wonderful. Gifted doesn’t mean smart in every subject and so, this school had Gifted classes and regular classes. Some kids were smarter in the language arts and took gifted English classes, and then took the regular math classes.
    I wish schools could get out of the dark ages (and pay teachers more) and have gifted and regular classes in all the subjects. My son is gifted with words and thinking and with his hands in building mini-lego robots that can transform into something else! But, math is kind of hard. And he seems to fall in the other category of SMART but LAZY. (ah, the I know it already attitude…?)
    My daughter is already showing the signs of being an artist and a storyteller/writer.
    I bet more kids could be identified as gifted (at least in one subject) if their parents cared and tried and encouraged and helped.
    For us, every moment is a teaching moment. Hey look a robin! They aren’t around during the winter… etc. Passing on the love of learning.
    I think that’s really important.
    I feel sad for the really smart kids who have parents who don’t have books in their house and don’t like learning.
    ANYWAY. So, what to do? Seems that I need to research too.
    I am thankful for the comment from the perspective of a gifted kid growing up… I’ll remember that. 🙂
    Let us all know what you figure out. Maybe we can compare notes? 🙂

  5. The book I read is called Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults by James Webb, Edward Amend, Nadia Webb, Jean Goerss, Paul Beljan, and Richard Olenchak. The primary focus of the book is to talk about various psychological and learning disorders, how some gifted people are misdiagnosed as having them when they don’t and how other gifted people don’t get diagnosed when they should. Your story could have come straight out of the chapter on learning disabilities.

    The book I haven’t read yet is called Guiding the Gifted Child by James Webb, Elizabeth Meckstroth, and Stephani Tolan. The website I haven’t perused yet is http://www.sengifted.org.

  6. Thank you for the website references. I’ll add those to my list of places to do research.

    You have good points about gifted programs, but please be aware that not all gifted programs are created equal. If the program is a bad fit for the child, they may thrive better in a regular classroom. Kiki was in a gifted program that was a bad fit for her. After two years she emerged feeling like a stupid failure. This year she is in normal junior high classes and has totally blossomed in self confidence and capability. It is so good to see her happy again.

  7. Re: lots of long comments, eh?

    The system you describe with gifted classes and non gifted classes in each subject is not likely to be found in a public elementary school. But it can be found in public junior high and high schools.

  8. Stephanie Tolan wrote a fiction book about gifted children. I own it. It wasn’t very good, but knowing that she’s a scholar in the field explains a lot. It was psychologically interesting, but the plot was abysmal.

  9. I also had ELP (gifted) classes through elementary and Junior high. The elementary classes did so much for me. One day a week I would go to ELP class which combined kids from 3 or 4 different elementary school. I had the same teach for all 4 years (and she had several of my brothers as well).

    One of the most important things I learned in those classes was how to learn. How to find the answer to a question myself rather than just waiting to be taught something. As has been mentioned, the “gifted” label can mean many things and for me it was about learning to learn. Rather than continue to blather on (it is 11:30 and I have to work tomorrow) I’ll just say that if you have any questions about what it did for me feel free to email me at kitborden at good old gmail.

    On the other side however, one thing that I did not learn in school, gifted or regular classes, was how to work hard when I didn’t want to. If I was interested in something then you couldn’t stop me, but if I wasn’t pulling your own teeth without anesthetic would have been preferable to sitting down and working on stuff for more than 5 minutes. Busy work (copying spelling words and stuff) was the worst. But I was smart enough to get away with it. Essays written the night before they were due, homework finished on the bus to school, procrastination of all sorts. It wasn’t until I graduated from grad school and got a job in the real world that I found myself required to sit down and work on something for hours on end whether it was fun or not. And as much as I like engineering as a whole, the day to day stuff can be rather blah. 🙂

    Having read your posts for a while now I don’t think that you would miss this (and my parents tried too), but just a reminder that “gifted” classes can fill some very important whole for some people, but they may leave other hole untouched. the best guide for a child’s education is a caring and conscientious parent such as yourself.

  10. After re-reading my comments this morning it is obvious I also didn’t learn to type well in school either.

    Which is why I always had my parents proof read my late night essays. 🙂

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