LESSONS I LEARNED FROM FAISING A PROFOUNDLY GIFTED CHILD: PART 1

Let me begin with an apology to my oldest child: I’m sorry for all of the mistakes I made trying to navigate the waters of raising you!

I have several children whom God has blessed with great giftedness. But I’m pretty sure I made the most mistakes raising my oldest since I had no experience at parenting, let alone parenting a child who at age four was determined to be profoundly gifted! (See my previous post, “Why I Cried When I Learned My Child Was Gifted.”)

However, we learn from our mistakes. And in a quote attributed to a wide variety of speakers and writers, we are given the following great advice:

Learn from the mistakes of others. You’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself.

So to help you parents of profoundly gifted children (IQ of at least 145) learn from my many mistakes as an imperfect mom, let me share the first five lessons I learned from raising a profoundly gifted child.

1. Life will not be “normal,” but that’s ok.

Only 13 children out of 10,000 have an IQ of 145, and if your child, like mine, scores higher than that, it is even more rare. It’s not realistic to expect that a child so far from the norm will be like most other children. Your child will think differently and have different interests than most children. He or she will probably also have some “overexcitabilities” common to gifted children. (See my next post for more information on those.) So childhood will look different. Rather than wishing for a more “normal” childhood, embrace your child’s uniqueness and go with it. Enjoy the journey! Your child will be happier as a result, and so will you.

2. Placing a profoundly gifted child with others the same age won’t automatically bring about socialization.

Socialization is often tough for profoundly gifted children. Two reasons for this are that  they tend to be introverts—often deep in thought and imagination—and they have different interests than their same-age peers. I was often advised to keep my daughter in the grade level of her same-age peers or, at the most, let her be accelerated no more than one grade ahead for the sake of socialization. But whenever we put our daughter in a class with peers her age, socialization didn’t come naturally. She would hang back from the rest of the group on the playground or say nothing during lunch conversations. We spent years coaching her on how to join in. Finally, one day when she was 12, I asked her if she had followed my advice that day and joined in during the lunch conversations. She replied, “It doesn’t work. They want to talk about fashion and TV shows. I want to talk about algebra!” That was a very educational moment for me. This lead to the next thing I learned…

3. Listen to the advice of people who truly understand giftedness.

Unfortunately, not all teachers, professors, counselors, and doctors do—in fact, I believe most don’t truly understand it. Until that conversation with my daughter, I had tried, on the advice of a college professor of education, many different options to keep her with peers who were close to her in age. The results were very little success in the area of socialization and a lot of frustration for her academically as she sat through class after class being taught things she already knew. (Imagine yourself spending all day, every day—for months—being taught things you know such as the alphabet, how to count to 100, and how to write letters. Wouldn’t you be extremely bored and frustrated with the situation?)

Finally, one spring day I called the person in charge of gifted programming for a large public school district nearby. I described my 12-year-old daughter, who at the time had been accelerated just one year to 7th grade. The first thing she said was, “Why in the WORLD isn’t she in high school by now?” When I told her about the advice on keeping her around peers her age for socialization, she explained that socialization is different for profoundly gifted students—that my daughter would more naturally have just a few close friends, each one sharing an area of interest with her, and that was fine. But she needed to be placed academically where she could learn. Both my daughter and I wished I had gotten that advice from an expert years before. The next year, still at age 12, my daughter started high school and was much happier.

4. Gifted students are actually considered “at risk” students.

“At risk” students are those who have a higher likelihood of not graduating from high school. This may sound odd, but often their needs for individualized educational accommodations are ignored. As a result, they spend years in classes that do not challenge them and feel incredibly bored and frustrated, as my daughter did for the two years before we had her jump ahead into high school. Students who spend their school years bored, not learning new things, may be less likely to feel that completing school is valuable. Also, if a child has gone through many years of school with all subjects being incredibly easy, he or she may not learn study skills and how to persevere through challenging classes. When classes do finally become challenging, such as in high school or even college, he or she may not know how to handle those classes, so the risk of dropping out is greater.

This is one of many reasons that it is so important to provide for the individual needs of gifted children throughout their school careers. According to the 1972 Marland Report (officially the Education of the Gifted and Talented: Report to Congress), “Gifted and talented children are, in fact, deprived and can suffer psychological damage and permanent impairment of their abilities to function well which is equal to or greater than the similar deprivation suffered by any other population with special needs served by the Office of Education.” Gifted children need our support!

5. Let your gifted child pursue his or her own passions and be creative.

I think this was one of the few things I did right while raising my children. Children will learn with enthusiasm when they are allowed to pursue areas of interest to them. In the case of gifted children, they may have a lot of passions throughout their childhood—passions that will keep changing. Remove obstacles to pursuing those passions. Let them “test out” of basic academics so that they will have more time to be creative and explore areas of interest. Provide them with the resources they need in their interest areas, and don’t worry if those interests change as they grow and mature. The knowledge and love for learning they will have experienced along the way to achieving their dreams will make the exploration all worthwhile.

In my next post, I’ll share five more things I learned from raising a profoundly gifted child. I pray that learning from my mistakes will be a blessing to you on this journey!