One of the most frustrating things for me is current edu-fad trends in my home country around "developmentally appropriate" approaches to schooling... And then having developed this whole amazing sounding "Developmentally appropriate" pedagogy, referencing varied speed of development in each child, discussion ends with directly substituting age for stage/development...

The child should be allowed to do "developmentally appropriate" puzzle tasks... This child is 5 and this box says 4-6, so they can do this puzzle! Never mind whether the child was doing puzzles for 2 year olds or adults last week, before the "developmentally appropriate" curriculum was introduced...

Miraca Gross's book covers social/emotional/moral development in the EG/PG cohort she study and concludes that (to varying degrees) these areas were also significantly advanced in her subjects. This was one of the most profound things for me in terms of wishing I had read her book earlier.

With regard to my own child, for whom I read Miraca's book, when there were social difficulties in Gr1 we visited a psychologist. They quite clearly stated that our child was showing unusually advanced social/emotional awareness/behaviour for age (ie considering their own role in things going wrong at school and attributing partial blame to themselves, which was very unusual for age). Sadly this observation didn't lead to the psychologist giving any particularly constructive advice about the situation "You're at a good school and there is no point changing, I see families change and change and it doesn't help, they'll be fine eventually". I regret not taking at different path at that time.

Edit to add: The point of my rambling post is I do believe that there is evidence that gifted children can move through developmental stages faster. Mine have. But no I don't think there is much awareness of this, or certainly not practical application of the awareness. It seems like this reality can be acknowledged and then implications ignored all in one interaction.

Last edited by MumOfThree; 03/27/20 05:49 PM.