Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hello

Just came across this forum and I wanted to drop an introduction since this seems to be a resource I can use. I have a 5 year old son who is profoundly gifted. He is currently attending a Montessori school and is currently in the 6th grade. His academic potential is amazing and somewhat scary. The wife and I are unable to see any plateau or slowing down of his ability to learn that we are now seeing frustration in our boy as his academic and intellectual age is overwhelming his emotional age. We are not pushing him but he seems to be driven to learn and learn and learn.

He is a bright, overt and charming boy who stands his ground with the older kids he is in school with and feels that he is not treated as the adult he feels he is here at home and at school.

To add to this, his younger brother is also showing the same signs as my oldest at about 6-9 months behind his elder brother at that age.

So I have found this place looking for answers to some of the questions we have on how best take care of our boys.

"Take care of" in what sense? Academically? Emotionally? Socially?

Welcome!

All of the above. Looking over the articles, read how other parents have dealt with situations instead of re-inventing the wheel ask a few questions hopefully we will always try to apply the best p;ossible solution to things as they arise.

Like how to deal with the tantrums, how to deal with building his self-esteem and a good work-ethic when he encounters things that are "hard" when most of his academic life he has had the luxury of learning come to him. The teachers have projected him to be ready for high school (academically) when he is between 7-8, so where do we take him then?

Those type of questions

Welcome

Welcome! I can totally relate, I have a DS5 that is PG as well and it certainly is a challenge. He is in a public school system but is overall working mostly between a 5th grade to 9th grade level. He is an amazing child, but I can relate in that the knowledge and the speed at which he gets things is quite overhwhelming at times. He is a very academically driven child too. We had him in Montessori for pre-k last year and it was a good fit in some ways, but their program was only 3-5 so he clearly exceeded most of their materials and weren't able to keep him challenged (especially in Math). But it was a good experience. Also have a DD2, who is clearly gifted but very different than DS5 so it is hard to say what will happen with her. Eager to hear more about you and your family. Have you applied to DYS? It sounds like your DS would enjoy meeting other similar children. Everyone is different obviously, but it is nice for HG/PG kids to meet other kids that can keep up with them and they can play games and things with. I think it helps them to not feel like something is wrong with them just because they are different.

Links here:
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifted-education/

Ganesh Sittampalam is also one to look at as evidence that it's possible to be a mathematical prodigy and still grow up nice and normal! He's remarkable in having been educated at school in most subjects, but also doing a maths degree "on the side" finishing at the age of 13.

CFK,

TY for the link. I have read the article and there are a lot of similarities with my son to Tao. The early reading benchmarks are similar (and thankfully our daycare teacher confirmed what we were seeing). She facilitated an curriculum for our son with sight word books and basic phonetics @ 2 - 2 1/2.

We enrolled our son into Kumon @ 3 1/2 (still attending daycare during the day) since it was 2x a week for an hour which was long enough for him. They started him @ Level 7 in english/reading and math and by the end of the 1st year he was @ Level C in both and we had to leave Kumon. Our son complained the program was not going fast enough and the headmistress honestly said that they could not provide what he needed. Our son posted 7th in Math for all of Canada/US/Mexico for his grade group [ PRE-K -2 ] and 9th place in English.

We put him in traditional pre-kindergarten school and informed them about our son (now 4 1/2) and let them know he could read
40-50 pages at a setting and could do addition/subtraction/multiplication/division and limited abilities with fractions. They said they were eager to see what a child like that would do and would work with us but at the end after many calls to the office and disruptive behavior, were asked not to bring him back for the same reasons he left Kumon.

We had his IQ tested (pre-school test since he was not 6 yet) and enrolled him into a Montessori school who said they could provide an environment for him. He was started as a 3rd grader there and it has been almost a year and he has just started 6th grade last month in all subjects.

He does the same homework, schoolwork and tests as his academic peers and except for writing (stories, paragraphs and such), he scores very well.

The other thing to note is that he possesses a innate ability to play the piano. He has been playing now for 9 months and we are looking for a new teacher for him since he has outgrown the 2 teachers we have found for him with them saying they had nothing left to teach him and that he needed time and an advanced teacher to take him to the next level (Sonatina, Sonatas, etc ...)

His favorite love is math and when he is by himself , he will be string numbers together in some formula in his head. I would say that math is his primary language. He has a couple college algebra books in his room that we works on by himself and let us proudly know that he understood why 1/4 = 4 to the -1 power.

We are kinda of hesitant to go forth with that since he is only five and is one grade away from junior high. We would like him to be a kid awhile longer.

After reading the article, we are considering getting him a math mentor. The wife works at the college there as the office manager for the math and sciences department and we have a math professor who is a good friend and loves our son. Surprised we did not think of that before.

When he does go to high school, the college where my wife works, here offers college courses for high school students, who qualify, that count as both high school and college credits .. so we will pursue that when he is ready.

Gratified,

We don't put up with the tantrums either. Unfortunately our son has a dad who was an ex-drill instructor (DI) and I have restrained going Army on him becuase he is very sensitive and he is only 5 but a lack of respect and a lack of integrity are 2 things I really don't put up with and he knows it.

He was in a chess club for a bit but did not like the trash talk he got from the older kids when he played them so he is on a self-imposed sabbatical from that.


He was in Tai-Kwon-Do and racked up a few belts in a short amount of time but the school would not let him advance to the adult classes becuase of his age (4 @ that time) and size. He does soccer on the weekend and is good at it and he has fun which is most important.

I know what you mean about the asynchronicity and we will just help him the best we can. I work with the teachers to coordinate our efforts to show a united front both at school and at home. He has learned to be very manipulative.

The grade advancement was based on his ability to pass the qualifying exams for the grade set by the school not by advice or waivers.

Our son has to earn the grade and it has to be all subjects just like the other kids have to. Our son seems to excel at everything thrown at him (science, math, reading, spelling, history, geography) except for writing (stories, paragraphs, essays, etc ..).

His lack of real life experience seems to bite him in this subject, but we work with him on his weekly writing assignments and the teachers do take into account his age in this subject. They are impressed with his handwriting and his mastery of sentence structure, grammar and punctuation.

As for your last piece of advice. He will be getting his own iTouch with audio books on various subjects so he can listen to what moves him at the time. We are building his own library based on his interests and I am a bit of a PG myself (I tested 144 @ age 11) so I can hold my own when he has his questions although I am more of history, geo-politics, economics and constitutional theorist myself then the hard sciences and math guy but I have taken 2 years of physics and 4 years of college math.