Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Parenting arms race article

I know a guy who has admitted out loud that he's trying to coach an extra ten points into his precious little snowflake so that the kid will meet the requirement for the local gifted program. This poor kid gets a lot of helicopter tigering from the parental units. But they are molding him into an Achiever (tm). There is definitely parental ego involved in this process.

Given that so few teachers have serious training in giftedness and LOGs, it's hardly surprising that they don't believe parents of HG+ kids when we tell them that differentiation isn't enough or that a single-grade acceleration in subject x isn't enough.

While it's reasonable for parents to want to help their kids do well, it isn't reasonable when their methods cause other children to be deprived of an appropriate education. This is precisely what happens when the uber-preppers in places like New York and elsewhere coach their kids so that they can stretch their toes onto the magic cutoff line. The result of this approach, as we all know, is that either 1) there are lotteries to get into these schools, and the students who get in aren't all gifted or 2) everyone who meets the minimum gets in, but the student body has a lot of kids who aren't truly gifted.