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If finding the right program or home schooling is what it takes to create stability, then by all means (not to imply people in this thread are doing any differently). But you can't obsess over failing to create an opportunity that you have no ability to deliver, if such opportunity even exists. If your child is happy and well adjusted, mission accomplished because it would take truly horrendous parenting to stand in the way of true genius.
Most schools are not structured in a way to keep profoundly gifted children challenged, well-adjusted, and happy. My 6-year-old usually thinks like a 9-year-old, but behaves like a 6-year-old. It is an incredible challenge to create stability and opportunity for such a child. It's not possible to just send her to school and let them take care of everything, like everyone else does. It takes a great deal of effort to allow a genius to reach her potential.
I know this from first hand experience as well, as I was a profoundly gifted child myself. My purpose in writing on this forum is to share with others who have a similar perspective, not to argue with those who don't.
Consider 99.99% is 1 in 10,000. In the US alone, there are over 30,000 such individuals.
That means there are approximately 304,969,500 people who aren't profoundly gifted and don't understand the issues that can come along for someone like that. And those 30,000 are spread out over about 3,000,000 square miles. That's about one profoundly gifted individual every 100 square miles.
It is important for a child in any category to have parents who are advocating for them and involved in their education. In fact, of the thousands of kids my husband has taught over the years, it is indeed those kids who do the best in school. If the kids parents are making sure that the education is meeting the needs of their child, you can almost guarantee that they are doing well in school, are well adjusted, and are happiest.
On the contrary, research has been done that shows that this and the opposite are also true. Adults who are profoundly gifted that had the opportunity to be taught at their level, were happier, better adjusted, more succesful adults. The adults who were unable to get those things accomplished for them were more likely to be depressed, unsuccessful, and extremely poorly adjust. Sadly, suicide rates were very high in the latter category.
And please, don't even bring up the social thing, socially the former children were better off as well. They had peers who could understand them intellectually and parents who were involved enough to make sure the interactions were appropriate.
And please, don't even bring up the social thing, socially the former children were better off as well. They had peers who could understand them intellectually and parents who were involved enough to make sure the interactions were appropriate.
I think I made it clear that the key issue is not the "best school" or "challenging" but getting them in a stable situation where they are happy. If that means home schooling or a particular program, then so be it.
Parents routinely over obsess about schools, soccer teams, you name it. My point about 30,000 profoundly gifted people in the US was to illustrate that only a small percentage of them turn out to be legit true geniuses who make substantial contributions to society, to say nothing of 10's of thousands more people who are "subject matter" PG but not well-rounded enough to be labelled as such. It is nothing more than a measure of potential, and quite likely a flawed measure at that. The point is - and not that people in this thread are doing that - but that many parents obsess about providing opportunity, when what really matters is just helping your child to be well adjusted.
But if you want to talk about suicide rates and depression, let's not ignore the role of over-obsessive parents and undue labels of unlimited potential. Potential is not a certainty of even the ability to become a true genius, and it's probably those types who (unfairly) are disappointments to themselves and their parents.
Sure, a PG child may be happier skipping a few grades or being homeschooled, but socially they may be teased and face exclusion (in "regular" programs as well). I think the latter can be far more damaging to their potential than not getting to read Shakespeare in preschool. One of the other posters said their child is still often a 6 yr old, and that's great - make sure you're letting your kid be a 6yr old and not pushing them to be the 10yr old genius in a 6yr old's body.
Last edited by ClarkGrisowld; 03-05-2010 at 12:44 PM..
I think I made it clear that the key issue is not the "best school" or "challenging" but getting them in a stable situation where they are happy. If that means home schooling or a particular program, then so be it.
Parents routinely over obsess about schools, soccer teams, you name it. My point about 30,000 profoundly gifted people in the US was to illustrate that only a small percentage of them turn out to be legit true geniuses who make substantial contributions to society, to say nothing of 10's of thousands more people who are "subject matter" PG but not well-rounded enough to be labelled as such. It is nothing more than a measure of potential, and quite likely a flawed measure at that. The point is - and not that people in this thread are doing that - but that many parents obsess about providing opportunity, when what really matters is just helping your child to be well adjusted.
But if you want to talk about suicide rates and depression, let's not ignore the role of over-obsessive parents and undue labels of unlimited potential. Potential is not a certainty of even the ability to become a true genius, and it's probably those types who (unfairly) are disappointments to themselves and their parents.
You make some good points about parents being overly obsessive being problematic, that shouldn't happen. But, they should be involved in the decision making proccess and they should be seeking out the best fit for their child. Otherwise, how would they find a stable situation?
Try to imagine the ten year old genius stuck in the body of a six year old. Then think what it would be like for them to have to enter kindergarten, because that's the stuff some of these kids face. Now think about a typical day in kindergarten: "Tommy stop eating the paste, okay class let's practice writing the letter A, this is the letter A it says ahh." And every day you get to learn a whole new letter and maybe a number or color. How long would it be before the PG child is requesting a padded room at the local institution? It would be torture! And it is not fair for the parents of a PG child to have to fight an uphill battle to get them moved up an entire grade, or if their lucky, two whole grade levels.
And, it is true that potential for genius does not guarantee success, but that, coupled with caring parents making informed decisions, true peers, a good support system, and the right mix of academia and social learning has a better chance.
And, it is true that potential for genius does not guarantee success, but that, coupled with caring parents making informed decisions, true peers, a good support system, and the right mix of academia and social learning has a better chance.
I fully agree. I don't think the parents in this thread are doing it, but too often it seems parents are focused on getting all the exposure and opportunities when all they can really control is getting their child in an environment to exploit that. I really don't believe there is anything you can do, within reason, to turn your potential genius into Einstein, and similarly I don't really think you can prevent that unless you are truly an awful parent.
Freakanomics examined this issue in depth. Granted, it was more about education in general and not PG specifically, but I don't know why the results would be any different. They found, once you control for all the other factors, that school choice has little impact on success. Not conventional wisdom, but intuitively it actually makes sense. Real learning and growth doesn't really start until high school or college, everything else to that point is pretty basic and something smart kids can easily catch up. And if you are talking truly gifted, most of those kids can pretty much pick-up the book or research and teach themselves. The real key is to keep the kids happy and keep their self-esteem up, everthing else will naturally fall into place.
Personally, I was actually pegged as potentially slow very early on. The actual problem was I couldn't read because I needed glasses, yet I remember being perfectly happy to go play with blocks while the other kids were working. So I'm not convinced the actual issue here is challenge or not being properly nurtured but rather some personality idiosyncrasies of the super gifted, which they probably have in common with some less gifted children. Certainly there are super prodigies who aren't tested and labeled and for whom these issues never materialize because they are naturally better adjusted. That isn't saying, of course, that the super gifted aren't more predisposed to suffer from boredom and inability to focus on topics beneath their level. But if you're super gifted child does fit in and is happy, I don't think I'd obsess over getting them into the very very best school and special programs because in the long-run accelerated learning doesn't appear to make a material difference.
Once again, my purpose in posting here is to communicate with parents of profoundly gifted children in Las Vegas who may locate this thread in the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ClarkGrisowld
Freakanomics examined this issue in depth. Granted, it was more about education in general and not PG specifically, but I don't know why the results would be any different.
This quote illustrates my point. Most people do not understand that educating the profoundly gifted is an entirely different subject. You cannot simply extrapolate what you know about general education or even gifted education, and think that it applies to the profoundly gifted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ClarkGrisowld
And if you are talking truly gifted, most of those kids can pretty much pick-up the book or research and teach themselves. The real key is to keep the kids happy and keep their self-esteem up, everthing else will naturally fall into place.
Parents of PG kids understand that it takes heroic effort to keep their kids happy, challenged, and socially balanced. It's simply not true that if you do nothing special, everything will be fine. They are likely to become bored silly, and/or socially maladjusted, because the normal school experience is harmful to them. Those who don't have PG kids don't understand this. It is outside of their realm of experience.
A budding Olympic athlete needs special training techniques and facilities in order to reach her potential. No one would ever argue that she could practice with the local high school team, and reach her potential. People understand this for sports, but not for education.
Similarly, even if you've coached a high school team, you know nothing about coaching Olympic caliber athletes. It's not even the same subject.
We are moving to the LV area in June and I am looking for quality gifted & talented testing for my 4 year old. Her Montessori school teacher has remarked that she constantly forgets that my daughter is only 4 because my daughter is so ahead in many areas. I was that kid who was sooooo bored in my regular elementary school and even the GATE like classes were not enough. My husband was put in special ed classes after being accused of cheating in math until they figured out he was doing all the math in his head. I don't want my daughter to have to suffer through that if we can avoid it.
Similarly, even if you've coached a high school team, you know nothing about coaching Olympic caliber athletes. It's not even the same subject.
And yet, Einstein turned out ok. Another PG kid grew up with every opportunity and support from his family and got a PhD from Harvard. His name was Ted Kaczynski.
The PG have the ability to teach themselves and get insights from research that no one else does or could teach them. You have to work really hard to destroy that ability, it's inate waiting to be unlocked by passion and motivation, which is something you have no control over because the timing has to be right, too. The potential Olympic athlete really does not have a similar ability, they usually don't have the skill to breakdown their technique or how to improve it. Even if there were videos and books on the subject, they are athletically gifted not necessarily intellectually gifted. And most Olympic stars had a highschool coach at some point (well, for sports played in HS). There are no special HS leagues for budding NFL, NBA and MLB stars. I strongly suspect if you could study the formation of a genius, you are not going to find any impact from this stuff once you control for all the factors (such as most are going to tend to come from better schools, not because that's a factor but because they tend to come from highly intelligent families who tend to be successful and tend to send their kids to the better schools).
Nowhere have I said that parents SHOULDN'T be focused on their child being happy and well adjusted. But I think the idea that you can push along the process of finding what they are passionate about finding that motivation is misguided at best. We are talking being labeled with the potential, but the reality is most do not have the inate ability to be a true genius, but just really smart. And, again, this says nothing of thousands of others who are PG in some areas but not rounded enough to meet the classic definition. Yet, somehow, math geniuses fight through the boredom of their early gradeschool math classes and still emerge to create breakthrough theories.
Last edited by ClarkGrisowld; 03-06-2010 at 02:00 PM..
There are many resources specifically on the profoundly gifted child. There are several parents in Las Vegas that have invaluable information on local education (public, private, homeschool) and local testing. If you have a profoundly gifted child in Las Vegas, you have two very clear choices:
1)privately email those with obvious experience with profoundly gifted children and receive support from those who SHARE your concerns or...
2)follow the advice of those without experience with profoundly gifted children. Don't do anything special. Just hope for the best.
Let's create a community supportive of the profoundly gifted, rather than arguing with those that deny their distinction. We will never convince the masses.
We are moving to the LV area in June and I am looking for quality gifted & talented testing for my 4 year old. Her Montessori school teacher has remarked that she constantly forgets that my daughter is only 4 because my daughter is so ahead in many areas. I was that kid who was sooooo bored in my regular elementary school and even the GATE like classes were not enough. My husband was put in special ed classes after being accused of cheating in math until they figured out he was doing all the math in his head. I don't want my daughter to have to suffer through that if we can avoid it.
I would be so appreciative of your advice.
Bronwyn
Great question. I believe I'm not allowed to post recommendations on this public forum, so I will respond privately.
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Profoundly gifted - an entirely different subject
