Any parents of gifted and talented (GT) children?

Question

I need some advice please help. My son is 9 and is in GT. He has always made good grades. However he has made several B's this year,...which isn't like him at all. He makes comments about how much homework he has daily. Says he feels like he is being punished for being very intelligent. I have tried to tell him that I was in advanced classes myself and that he should be proud. However it doesn't seem to be helping. Any help is much appreciated.

Momma2min,....He is a perfectionist too. He is in designated GT classes. This is his first year in GT but he was nominated once before but we moved and not sure if they had him in GT in that school. As they don't say anything to the parents around here when a child is chosen. You basically have to call the school and find out who is GT teacher. He is in forth. I just don't feel he is putting his best effort into it like he was before. Not that I am pressuring him because of the B's,...because I am not,...but because he really feels like he is being punished. Put it this way he has about 5 to 6 pages of homework a day. Sometimes more. Even most weekends he has homework. They are not at all easy on them however. If homework isn't turned in on time they get a zero.

It makes it even harder in a way because I was always in advanced classes. (2 to 3 years ahead in all classes) So it plays on my judgement with his education I guess. Even alot if not most of the work he has right now is too easy for him. But he gets picked on by students for being intelligent. I try and tell him that he needs to not worry about what other students think.

Luv my,.. Oh he does have a loving and caring and happy personality. I have had teachers tell me that he was one of the most caring students they have ever taught. We do alot together, vacations,movies, game rooms,...pretty much everything he likes to do we try to do it to encourage him and let him know we are proud of him. He tells me MANY times a day momma I love you. He is my life and a great child also. I just want to give him the opportunity to fulfil his dreams of being a paleontologist , doctor or vet.

Answer 1

teachers don't want him to get bored so they keep challenging him. (and the 'no child left behind act' doesn't help any)
i have a gifted/talented nephew. he was bored with the homework because it was something to waste his time and energy. he already knew what the teachers were trying to teach him. he is an 'indigo child'. once my sister read up on it , it made so much more sense to her.(the lightbulb went 'on') she wishes she would have known about indigo children when he was young so she could have helped him more.
find out what he's interrested in and allow time for it.

Answer 2

I have a GT son and expect that when she is older, my youngest daughter will probably be designated GT as well.

First off....make sure you aren't emphasizing grades too much. A "B" is a good grade! As long as he feels that he put forth his best effort to earn it. If he was always scoring perfect before this, maybe he was never being challenged before this. Personally, I'd rather see my son challenged and getting "B's" than not challenged and scoring perfectly. A child who is challenged is going to be more engaged in the work and actually learning something.

A lot of GT kids are perfectionists. (Mine is!) Maybe that is why he is upset? He needs to learn that it is OK to not be perfect, to not have ALL the answers and to make mistakes every now and then.

Is he in a dedicated GT classroom, a pull-out program or a regular classroom? How well do you think his teacher(s) understand the needs of GT students?

How much homework does he have? He should have about 10 minutes per each year of school. (So if he's 9 - 3rd grade would be 30 mins and 4th grade would be 40 mins.) My son can be S-L-O-W so I allow about 2x what it should take to complete the work. Then.....you take it away! Don't let the whole night become about homework. This is what my son's teacher, principal and dean have suggested!

Talk to your son. What is it that bothers him about his homework? Is there something he doesn't understand well? Look over the assignments....do they seem to have a point or are they busywork? Sometimes teachers get the idea that they are "challenging" their GT kids by giving them MORE work like the rest of the kids are doing instead of giving them work that is on their level. (In other words, they get an extra 10 math problems instead of math work that is more to their level.) This happens often when the child is in a regular classroom instead of a dedicated GT classroom.

Talk to your son's teacher. Find out how she feels about how he is performing in class. Are there any areas she feels he isn't performing up to his potential?

Is this his first year in the GT program? Maybe he is having problems adjusting. This is my son's first year and we've had some struggles with homework. In the past, he's never really had to study because he already knew everything. Now he actually needs to study but hasn't developed good study habits from the past years when all the work was too easy.

Some books on gifted kids that might be helpful:

When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers: How to Meet Their Social and Emotional Needs by Jim Delisle, Ph.D. and Judy Galbraith, M.A.

Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind by Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D.

Stand Up for Your Gifted Child: How to Make the Most of Kids’ Stregths at School and at Home by Joan Franlin Smutny

Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds: What You and Your School Can Do For Your Gifted Child by Jan & Bob Davidson

And a great link -
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/

Answer 3

Stop trusting the schools. Trust your son.

Here's a great quote from Carl Sagan:

Britain has produced a range of remarkably gifted multidisciplinary scientists and scholars who are sometimes described as polymaths. The group included, in recent times, Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, J. B. S. Haldane, J. D. Bernal, and Jacob Bronowski.

Russell commented that the development of such gifted individuals required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizzare.

Because of the strong pressures for social conformity both by the government and by peer groups in the United States -- and even more so in the Soviet Union, Japan, and the People's Republic of China -- I think that such countries are producing proportionately fewer polymaths ....


Particularly today, when so many difficult and complex problems face the human species, the development of broad and powerful thinking is desperately needed. There should be a way...to encourage, in a humane and caring context, the intellectual development of especially promising youngsters.

Instead we find, in the instructional and examination systems of most of these countries, an almost reptilian ritualization of the educational process ....

----

I remember feeling punished for being intelligent. In my 20s, I had to struggle to claim this gift that had caused me so much trouble and made social interactions so challenging.

When you homeschool a child, they still have to face that being gifted means having fewer peers in certain areas. However, because homeschoolers (excepting christian homeschoolers) are not into categorizing and pigeon-holing kids, your son can learn to love his gifts and reach teen years feeling whole instead of hobbled.

Answer 4

Give him a break from heavy schoolwork, let him have some fun. If he is musical or sporty, let him spend time doing that. My daughter (now 21) is gifted and she was exactly the same...her grades went well down and she said the same. I left off the extra work (after talking to her school) and she started playing an instrument. Not only did she become very proficient in the violin, her grades also went back up again and she made no more complaints about the level of work she was doing.

Answer 5

He's probably already burned out. Help him to find some other things that can fullfill him. Fun is just as important to a well-rounded individual. You can be as smart as God but if you don't have a personality to go with it, you won't be successfull in life as a whole. I'm not saying grades aren't important. I just think maybe if you help him have fullfillment in other ways he will focus less on the negatives of school and maybe his grades will go up naturally

Answer 6

School is no place for a gifted child. Unschool your child. Let him be free before schools destroy him.

He's learning totally stupid things in this program - like you get a zero for homework not being done. so, the grades, as usual, do not reflect his knowledge.

homework for 9 year olds is wrong and for GT kids, homework at 9 is just plain stupid.

I've been unschooling our two sons for 14 years. Our 9 year old is brilliant (like the older) and highly motivated to learn. Unschooling means we assign nothing, use no curriculum, just support our kids learning goals.

Our 9 year old plays alot, reads alot, discusses history, science, and politics, loves math, begs for math problems (which we give him, of course) and is always asking to learn new things.

School fails kids. School will ruin your son's gifts. I don't know why school is done so badly, but it is.

btw, why should be be proud of being in advanced classes? you're playing into the corrupted morality and thinking of schools. he is who he is, he doesn't need artificial rankings, categories, programs to give him worth.

did you see the recent study decrying homework for kids his age?

please don't ignore what your son is telling you. take him out of school and let him unschool. you'll never regret it and he will be grateful all his life.

Answer 7

Ok, Im not trying to be rude with this answer. But do you think maybe you are putting to much pressure on him? A grade of B is not terrible. He is 9 years old, let him be a kid.

Answer 8

i'm a gifted student, and i know how he feels. don't pressure him to do great in every thing he does, because he'll feel like he shouldn't have to do it. it's completely normal for a GTS to get B's sometimes...c'mon, he's only human. check his homework, see if that's what's really making his grades fall

Answer 9

All children have gifts and talents. Maybe not in booksmarts but in other areas. If he cannot handle the advanced class maybe he is not as gifted as you choose to believe and needs to go back to the regular classes.