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    #214469 04/18/15 05:43 AM
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    After my tangential sally into foodie territory, I feel that I owe you all an actual bona fide gifted Ed post...

    Interesting article on aiding development versus pushing:-

    See article here

    Last edited by madeinuk; 04/18/15 11:22 AM.

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    What an excellent article! Thanks for sharing.

    Acceleration is the placement of students in subjects ahead of where they would be in the regular school curriculum.
    To provide clarity and not make acceleration seem arbitrary, if I were the author I might change this one sentence to read: Acceleration is the placement of students in subjects ahead of where they would be in the regular school curriculum based upon chronological age alone, when the student's readiness and achievement appear to be beyond the regular curriculum and more closely match the advanced curriculum.

    Favorite snippets from the article include the suggested practices to grow strong and self-reliant children, among them:
    Quote
    vital skills, provided by open-ended and imaginative play
    and
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    only one person in life who is truly worth besting — themselves


    P.S. Thank you for your tangential sally into foodie territory. It makes me want to head to the forest primeval for some chips with my CHIP. I believe the DC would find that nurturing. smile

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    I sort of like the title - I was hoping for some sort of existential foray into the existence of 'the exactly', some unknown point that all perfectionists aim to achieve, or maybe some kind of ideal IQ/EQ...or maybe that ah ha moment that sparks in the minds of divergent thinkers when the universe unfolds some mystery to them. wink

    But thank you for the article, madeinuk - I think using 'child-led' vs. 'parent-led' teaching/learning to describe the difference between nurturing and pushing is an accurate and appropriate one. DH and I have always believed that our main job is to expose our kids to everything and anything, knowing full well it might not interest them. If something sticks, awesome (and sometimes leads us down a rabbit hole of intense depth and intrigue.) If not, that's totally ok too. But it has always been important to us to follow DS5's lead. (I mean, it's not like we could actually get him to do anything he didn't want to do ANYWAY. At least, not without a whole lot of fuss and fighting that no one wants to spend their time on. Cue in this morning's ridiculously long attempt - and eventually semi-success? - to get DS and his little brother to clean up the lego (and magnet and toy kitchen and car and book and scrabble tiles...) explosion that was our living room. :P

    Last edited by Marnie; 04/18/15 10:01 AM.
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    I like the term "child led,'" though I may interpret it differently than the OP's link intended or by others here. IMO, the term means in the child's best interests, not because the kid wants to.

    I've been thinking a lot about this idea, especially in context of the Genius Denied mantra (parents don't push gifted kids; gifted kids pull their parents). That mantra bothers me. Not all gifted kids are that self-motivated. I suspect that in most people (even very intelligent ones), assiduousness has to be developed, meaning that there are times when an authority figure has to say, "You have no choice. Do it."

    IMO, putting too much faith in the gifted-kids-pull idea implies that a kid isn't gifted unless s/he's always or mostly pulling. In my experience, that's just not true, and it leads to distortions about what it is to be very intelligent. Sure, my kids can be self-motivated, but it's not the rule (yet; I hope it will be in the future). I see my job as helping them become that way. So I put them into situations where they're outside their comfort zones --- places where they wouldn't go by themselves, or would leave quickly if left to their own devices. My goal is to help them learn that there are some very difficult tasks that they can do if they try hard enough, and that the trying part isn't always enjoyable.

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    But your objective is not to create masters of a (musical/athletic/academic/etc.) skill, but to create the character traits of persistence, discipline, and self-awareness necessary to master themselves.


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    Exactly, aeh. This is not an easy task with PG kiddos, because the entire world seems to conspire against parents in their attempts to offer appropriate challenge to such children in time for those things to matter to their child's developmental arc.

    The activities that DD has engaged in have never been things that mattered a great deal to DH or I. We're not the least bit invested in them-- they are vehicles for DD to learn certain life skills, and to learn about herself.

    But she often doesn't see it that way-- much to our dismay, when we encourage persistence, she often responds by telling us that WE care more than she does about {insert activity}, and that WE have an expectation of mastery...

    It's a highwire act with a kid like this. She's NOT particularly self-motivated (well, okay, she is-- but she's still not really grown out of her dilletante impulses which were a lot more 'fine' in a 6yo 3rd grader than they are in a 16yo college student, if you see what I mean).

    She's NOT an autodidact. (Yet).

    She has no idea how to "struggle" for mastery-- so she won't. She does what is easy because it is easy, and isn't really very passionate about anything in particular, but likes most things well enough, and mostly-- likes novelty.

    That rage to master that is much-touted as a gifted trait? VERY limited, in my experience, and "master" is a polite euphemism for "until it gets unpleasant or to be much work, and then I'm outta here..."

    Does that mean that she isn't really gifted??

    I'd offer up her learning arc as proof positive that it isn't so. She is mind-boggling when she truly puts that brain of hers into top gear. (I've not seen that often-- maybe two or three times in her lifetime-- but it NEVER fails to impress. Everyone.)

    When she DOES really want something, she does go after it with a vengeance. It's just that she hasn't found anything academic that really lights her up that way enough that she is willing to keep going when the going gets tough (and by "tough" I mean-- no longer so intuitive that she doesn't need to practice). At least not for long. It's not for lack of exposure, either.

    She'd rather dabble and be "excellent" (for a beginner or one without training, or with limited training) than achieve genuine mastery. It's a bit aggravating, because she is incredibly promising at so many different things. It's hard to know when to hold her feet to the fire, so to speak, and force her to follow through. frown






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    Interesting discussion. I would agree with Val and HK that gifted kids DON'T always pull towards an academic goal. DD has learned quite well in her short life that she doesn't NEED to give it her all to do well in school, and I am currently trying to remedy that and find greater challenge for her. Otherwise, I worry she won't develop EF skills, learn to study, or really ever give most tasks more than a tiny portion of her effort. When SHE wants to learn something she is spongelike, intense, and super-motivated...but she will not always have the luxury of choosing her schoolwork (nor should she, quite frankly, or she'd have a very odd development at this point). She might not always have the luxury of choosing her WORK at a job for that matter, so I see this as a necessary life skill that needs to be developed.

    While I certainly loathe the idea of pushing a kid into super-stress as described in the article...some gifted kiddos need a nudge to develop a work-ethic. Because SO MANY things come very easily to them.

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    mine doesn't pull much either. He puts a lot of effort into soccer and mine craft and reads a lot of non fiction as well as fiction but he doesn't sit down and do hard maths without assistance (though he does wish maths was harder at school). But I didn't either, I just suffered school in silence and read lots of historical fiction. Even gifted 7/8 year olds can't be expected to run their own education. Some do, yes but I don't believe most do. I push a little but I don't think 15 minutes a day maths when it took you 3 minutes to do your homework is unreasinable or unusual.

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    Except for time on the piano which I have studiously avoided formal lessons on so as not to kill the fun my DD is not that much of a puller.

    Given her druthers my DD would rather just play Minecraft or curl up with a good book instead of learning Algebra or Latin but I still insist on her doing those things. As other have stated more eloquently already, I need my DD to stretch herself and to learn that some things just have to get done because these are life skills.

    She still gets to whatever she wants to do everyday - it just happens after she has done what she needs to do first.

    'Work first play later' is something that I want her to internalize.

    I do not see any of the above as pushing with a capital pee as much as insistent nudging. Now the dad in the film Shine - he was a pusher...


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    I have to agree with madeinuk and say my DS was not that much of a puller, but in his case more of a negotiator.

    We did online schooling for K-12 because I believe in letting him learn at his own pace, but I'm not a big supporter of skipping material. So when he would zoom through some classes and drag others out, he would eventually get too far out of sync and I would offer the "insistent nudging" to get him back in sync.

    This worked until he started college (at age 13, his choice) at which point he decided that he wanted complete control of his life. I couldn't dictate, I couldn't nudge, I got extremely frustrated, but my wife would back me off and over the last 4 years our relationship has changed to a mentor/mentee relationship.

    Now he's 17 and graduating next month in Computer Science from one of the largest public universities. Not with the perfect GPA that I wanted but with a pretty good GPA considering his active club and student government activities. I wanted him to go straight to grad school, he decided to take a job with grad school later. But, overall I'm extremely proud of his decisions even if they're not the decisions I would have made in his position.

    I think what we have to understand is that these children do have the ability to comprehend the results of their education at a much earlier age. While we can nudge them in the beginning at some point they will become independent and decide what is important to them. To stay in their lives we have to make the adjustment or we'll lose out on staying close to them.


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