It is so hard for me to talk to people I know about this because I feel they think I am either overprotective/looking for things to worry about, or just bragging about how great I think my child is... Sometimes I wonder if he really is gifted, then shouldn't a teacher or doctor have noticed it and be the one telling me?
Well, thank you for any help any of you can provide to me.
Leah
I can speak to the issues of medical doctors, since I've been asking around. LOL! Pediatricians generally tend to feel that "gitedness" is a diagnosis that belongs to the psychologist, and is "outside" their area of expertise. Plus, the training tends to help folks focus on diseases, and things that are wrong - not different developmental paths.
As for teachers, lets do a little "thought experiment" - an obvious oversimplification, but I believe it's worth considering -
Since giftedness only occurs 2 in 100 kids, or less, depending on how you define it, and lets say it takes knowing 5 other gifted children well before a teacher starts to see the girtedness pattern, so a preschool teacher assigned to 10 children per year would take, on average, 25 years before he or she was ready to start talking about "hey, did you notice that your child is gifted?" An elementary teacher with 20 kids/year would only, on average, start seeing the giftendess pattern after 12 years.
You probably can count between 5 and 10 gifted family members without too much effort. So who are you going to look to for reassurance?
When my son was in 2nd grade, wearing his teacher out, the school psychologist called me in for a "little chat" with the classroom teacher, who was a kind and caring woman with 20 years experience. The psycholgist was suggesting that there was an ADHD problem. She walked over to the classroom teacher, who was sitting, bend over, squeezed the teacher's upper arms lovingly, and said: "Mrs X has been teaching class for 20 years, and she's successfully taught a lot of children with ADHD, and she's never seen anything like you son."
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Of course I believed them, and went on a long and expensive goose chase to find out "what was wrong with my son." Eventually we got IQ test result that qualified us for the Davidson Young Scholars Program - about one out of a thousand - so, 20 years, times 20 kids/year, that 400 kids over a lifetime of teaching. Yeah - it was true, she had probably never seen a kid like my boy. Didn't mean that there was something wrong with him! Did mean that there was something wrong with the fit between him and his classroom.
Even our local psychologist, who did the testing and gave his opinion afterwards didn't make much of the scores. Later, when the public school district folks said, "We checked, and there is good news, we have lots of bright kids just like your son at the Middle School, I called him back to see if maybe I was making too much of a big deal over my son's scores - there are plenty of kids I've met since then that are much more extreame academically - and he said that my son's score were the highest he had ever tested. All I can do is be grateful that the Davidson's are committed to getting this information out there and that I somehow bumped into it.
So - keep being skeptical - keep asking questions - keep reading, the "Davidson Database" link on your left takes you to lots of articles one can read.
Do look into preschools, particularly of school that have an elementary (or more) school attached. Talk and listen to what the heads of school have to say after they have observed him.
Here's an article to start with for the purposes of knowing what to document. When you go for formal testing you'll want to be able to share this information with a tester.
http://www.educationaloptions.com/preschool_gifted.htmOne option is to get testing right now. (be sure it's with a tester who is well versed in gifted children) - Another is to look around for a different school. Another is to see if you can met other parents through your state gifted association. Please don't worry that your child "might not" be gifted - all everyone wants is for EACH child to find a way to be their "best selves" - it's probable that people who know about gifted will be very useful to you in knowing how to parent your child.
BTW - I won't laught at you for worrying that your 3 year old isn't reading! But I will take the opportunity to laught at myself. My son wasn't even at the level of "Magic Tree House" books until a good way into 1st grade - but he would listen to my reading very "above-expected" books to him for all long as I had breath left. We found an OT who was trained in "Sensory Integration" to be very useful, even at age 7, which is late, for the "extra sensitivities" that seem to go along with Giftedness for some children.
As for the anxious, thin-skinned part - we been there also. Some of it is stress from being in "poor fit" environments. Some of it is his personality, and some of it is from having "too much information/not enough experience." I made sure to "protect" him from news, Disney feature films, anything upsetting as much as I could.
I read Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka and that helped, and I also reccomend The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder, Revised Edition by Carol Stock Kranowitz and Lucy Jane Miller and The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun, Revised Edition: Activities for Kids with Sensory Processing Disorder by Carol Stock Kranowitz.
I guess I believe the bottom line is that I would try not to worry about if your child is or isn't gifted, instead I would focus on making his world "gifted-friendly." If you are spending some time with "regular" 3 year olds, and seeing big differences, then look into what "people who know Gifted" know, ok?
