Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "Social necessities" beneficial or detrimental?

I tend to agree with you (recognizing that there are many families for whom this is not an option). The consistency is also exceptionally important with bright children, as they will, among other things, be more likely to a) find a way to split caregivers with different practices; b) lose respect for one or more adults in their system; c) feel stressed and insecure from having to negotiate multiple, contradictory sets of norms for behavior.

I endorse aquinas' post above. Age-peers are often detrimental in social development, not helpful, and that's particularly true in the t-stages (toddler and teen).

Toddlers are only just venturing out into the social space, and have no idea about norms, boundaries, etc. So if you place toddlers together, it becomes a group social experiment, based largely on ignorance, and develops in ways that can't be predicted (though you can bet on hitting being involved at some point). The ideal is that children come into the experiment having already been given a solid grounding in acceptable social behaviors, and the best source for that is the parents. And the best way for parents to teach that is through engaging in child-led play.

As aquinas has indicated, young children tend to gravitate towards playing adults, even strangers. I don't understand it, but I've experienced it many times. DD has acquired a good number of playmates at the park who initially expressed no interest in her, but tons in me.

I wanted to let this go, but for some reason, I just can't.

Women can have such a difficult time regarding family life: we're supposed to have children/not have children/not have too many children, breastfeed/not breastfeed, work/not work, and so on. There is no one right way of raising kids, and one of the mantras on this forum is that there is no single right approach with gifted kids. For example, not all of them have to be with their parents wherever possible to thrive.

I want to work, I like to work, and I have something to offer. That's okay. My kids loved daycare, and that's okay too. They thrived there. It was a warm, loving environment. My eldest loved preschool. That's okay, too.

My son went to a play based preschool/daycare. (I worked at the time.) There was NEVER any homework for any of the kids and very little emphasis was made on formal school work. Kids were never sat down to fill out worksheets, although they spend plenty of time drawing, coloring, using scissors. And those 6 months away from K, a few more skills we worked on to make sure they were K ready. I was very happy with what my son did there, he had a lot of choice of activity, there were other kids and lots of time to run around outside. My son could read at 3, and we primarily worked on this at home. At school they knew he could read, so they encouraged him to take books off the shelf to read to himself. All kids were encouraged to do this even if they were only looking at the pictures. The key to this place was the teachers. They are wonderful and have worked with the preschool kids for over 20 years.

To the original poster. Trust your instinct, if this is not going well it's probably not the right environment for your son. There are probably other options to help him get peers involvement. Or other preschools. Sometimes what looks the best to us from the outside doesn't end up being the right solution for our own children. Good Luck.

Like everything, your results may vary, but ODS had (PG by test results), for the most part, an excellent Montessori experience. He started going to an accredited center at age 18 months (half days to start, 3/4 days at age 4). It provided him with a nurturing, independence-supporting environment where there was nearly unlimited variety in the materials (wooden toys through mathematical learning tools) available to him. Given how quickly he runs through interests (master world maps, check, let's go on to something new), that was wonderful. :-)

There was a lot of focus on gentle support, being kind and respecting others. He learned a great deal, not just academically, which likely would have happened and was happening at home, but about friendship. The mixed age groups worked quite well for him (he is rather asynchronous, meaning at that time he needed silly friends as well as advanced ones). There was a bit of an unusual situation in his primary years, with four other boys who are almost certainly from moderately to perhaps highly gifted. They were supported in advanced through materials/content as quickly as they could.

I doubt that a more traditional preschool would have worked at all for him. That's likely what led us to Montessori, as the other schools just didn't seem likely to fit him.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply and provide a wealth of insight for me as a parent.

I would like to balance out my post a little bit as I was obviously too gung-ho to present my son's academic capabilities and failed to shed some light on him as an individual. My husband and I were fairly quick to have him tested at an Early Steps program to check for behavioral/learning disorders. These tests were done around 20 months and he did not fall under the scale for asperger syndrome/autism.

He loves his trucks, cars & trains. Enjoys singing songs (most recently "Im a Little Tea Pot" and "BINGO"), sidewalk chalk, coloring/painting, bubbles, play-doh, playing kick ball and t-ball and riding his tractor. We have had him in swim classes, Gymboree Play & Music classes, library reading groups, and he has a small handful of friends.

All of my son's play and learning is self initiated - he brings me the puzzles & magnet letters and says "Open please". I find that although he plays as I expect him to, his desire to learn trumps everything.

In most ways, he is every bit of what you expect and hope a 2 year old to be. In other ways, he is not - not at all and this is not a negative, but a positive.

We did not request homework, nor to put him in a higher class - The higher level work was provided to us by the school on Day 2. The teacher explained to me that he is reading out loud to the class. They explained that the homework is for us to complete at home so at school he can focus on "fitting in". I do fear his boredom with his age group's curriculum may create a problem.

We are "ecstatic" to work on his homework, because HE enjoys it. When/if he says no, we move onto what he wants to do at that time. We believe he has flourished because of his own desires and initiatives. We had a nanny, but again the pressure of "he has to be socialized" by everyone (from grandmas, to pediatrician, to other moms) is why we explored a day school.

Does sending him for 3 hrs a day to school give him the opportunity to play with his peers a positive or is the separation anxiety or poor behaviors exhibited by some children going to impact him negatively? Run of the mill day care did not go well on previous attempts, so we are happy that we found a curriculum based day school.

The feedback some have provided is invaluable. I feel as though we are in a catch 22.

If learning is what he loves to do most, am I taking that away by dropping him off in a class where I know (and he knows) he is sitting through topics he has already mastered?

I don't think 2yos need to be in a serious, full- or half-day program for social development, though I don't think a well-run program harms them. By 4 or 5, if your child will be going to K, he or she should learn how to function in a classroom setting--wait turns, line up, be quiet when an adult is speaking, and get along and share with other children. (Well, even if not going to K, IMO--but it is not so necessary yet.) A 2yo can get some early social exposure in a lot of other ways, so no NEED for preschoo, but yes, find ways to socialize somehow, occasionally, anyway.

As someone who raised 2 very bright and in one case hyperverbal toddlers, I would say that they really benefited from being around other kids, even if at first they did not seem to. We learn from other humans, and from contact with other humans. Yes, even when some other kid is throwing a block at your kid's head. Of course, sometimes there is a poor fit, with another child or a teacher, or a poor environment.

We had a nanny, but again the pressure of "he has to be socialized" by everyone (from grandmas, to pediatrician, to other moms) is why we explored a day school.


Honestly, we got a lot of that kind of pressure, too. I drove myself nearly round the bend trying to find somewhere that WOULD take my then-3yo for preschool, in light of her food allergy situation.

We got put on waiting lists, our applications got lost, and we otherwise walked away from preschools thinking "OY-- just-- no."

We never found one, and while my mother-in-law was pretty convinced that this meant enmeshment at the very least, and probably sociopathy down the road, I'm pleased to report that my daughter (who was similarly appalled at what was considered "age appropriate" conduct on the part of agemates) seems to be empathetic, kind, and generous at 14. Moreso than some of her peers who were "properly" socialized.


Remember, your goal is to produce a functional adult at some point down the line, not to be produce a 5yo who can fit in with all of the other five year olds at kindergarten.

With HG+ children, all too often that particular option is just never on the menu to begin with, so energy spent trying to make it so is really just WASTED effort.

I'm also going to gently suggest that given your child's age, you should look at the "homework" thing and ask if there is a BETTER way to be spending that time-- these are years that you won't get back, and they are wondrous. He has time for homework and externally-directed academics later. Developmentally, there are windows for play and exploration that will not be open for much longer, however...

my only concern would be that the TIME spent doing homework sent home by the preschool might be displacing family time that could be spent on something else-- something that might still be academic in nature, but would be what HE chooses, not what someone else offers. Does that make sense?

Val, with respect, I didn't say any of the things you're purporting my message implied.

All I've suggested is that raising preschool aged children is subject to both attentional constraints and agency problems, both of which are minimized under a stay-at-home parent model (either mother or father--both can be parents!--this isn't a women's issue, it's a family issue.)

On the first front, it's just a mathematical reality that someone with one or two children can pay each child more attention than a group-based caregiver with 10 or more charges. The time they spend with their child(ren) means they develop a deeper understanding of their child(ren)'s personalities and needs, and they can rally the resources required to meet those needs, be they interpersonal or otherwise, in a timely fashion (or at all).

Regarding agency problems, paid caregivers are subject to moral hazard. Whereas a parent has a duty of long term care--and the psychic (attachment), attentional, and financial incentives not just to avoid risk, but to optimize outcomes-- teachers and other caregivers face a shorter time horizon. This creates a misalignment of incentives between the child and the caregiver and results in developmetal outcomes that fall below the optimal opportunity set generated by the presence of an at-home parent. Even if a caregiver of identical quality to the parent is available, the outcome for the child will be inferior to a SAH parent model just by dint of moral hazard, assuming rationality on all sides.

Now, all of that said, life is full of trade-offs, one of which is financial. For many families who NEED two incomes to put food on the table, the cost to the child of malnourishment or living in a violent neighbourhood that could otherwise be avoided by earning two incomes might outweigh the advantage of SAH parent. Many very good parents who would prefer to stay home cannot.

Another possibility is that the parent-caregiver care quality differential is relatively small, (thanks to a great caregiver, a low-quality parent, or some combination of both), such that the caregiver experience is approximately--though not precisely-- comparable to the parent experience. As a decision based on gross family-level utility it may well be an optimal outcome for the family for both parents to work, which I suspect is your case (thanks to a great caregiver).

None of this implies that children cannot thrive in a well-matched paid care setting, but it does say there are non-zero intra-family trade-offs in utility being made under paid care that don't exist under a SAH parent model.

Incidentally, Deb Ruf advocates SAH parenting wherever possible for gifted preschool children based on her clinical experience in her 5 levels book. I'm inclined to borrow her book from the library to go to her source material on that matter to refresh my memory.

OP: sorry for the hijack! If this line of commentary continues, I'll cut my responses into a new thread and Val and I can duke it out in our own thread. Although Val and I often come at issues from different perspectives, I enjoy chatting with her and, for selfish reasons, didn't want to miss this opportunity.

Howler and squishys skirt a point that I'll make explicit: these kids learn so blazingly fast at this age that almost no un-personalized environment will be well-adapted to their interests or needs for long, socially or academically, so don't count on school to push him. (Not should it at this age, I'd argue!) Far better to let him find his own learning opportunities through play. Pleasure is the name of the game.

The academics simply can't be avoided. If our kids want to learn something and material so much as tangentially related to the topic of interest is within 1,000 miles, they'll learn it. Provide the material as requested, scaffold, and support.

I say this as the woman whose son spends 95% of his day smashing trucks together, and who read spontaneously before 2.