Hi, everyone!
This is my first post on this forum. Please be gentle.
This is pretty similar to the recent �how do you know?� post. My son is currently in kindergarten and has been assessed at a second grade level across the board (reading and math). I realize that he may not be considered "profoundly gifted" by Davidson Institute standards, but he is the most academically advanced child in his class. My question to other parents of gifted children is how hard do you push (and you can use any other word you may find more acceptable - "encourage," "motivate," etc.) your children to "reach their full potential"?
I was a gifted child myself, and this idea that I had to �reach my full potential� caused me quite a lot of misery as I was growing up. I recall one confrontation with my mother where I screamed that I wished I had been born stupid because of all the pressure they put on me. Nothing less than an A+ in every subject would do. I would get in serious trouble for even an A-minus. As a consequence, I felt that it bred in me a fear and laziness. In high school especially, I would only choose electives in which I knew I would earn an A, because anything less would land me in a lot of trouble. I felt that I wasn�t free to explore things that might interest me, because I wasn�t free to fail � or at least not immediately excel.
Given all that background, I�m trying very hard to strike a balance with my son. He goes to a language immersion school, which has been such a blessing. He is so happy to be learning a different language, and his teachers have been wonderful about differentiating the work for him. He is pulled out three times a week to go to the first grade class for reading. He receives first grade math homework, as well as more challenging homework for reading and writing. The major feature of the language immersion model is that all subjects other than reading and writing are taught in the new language. I may otherwise have requested that he be pulled out to a higher grade for math, but he won�t understand the language in the upper grades.
The challenge of the new language is keeping him pretty engaged in school, but otherwise, he is starting to recognize how easy the math in particular is for him. Even the first grade homework is pretty much busywork, and a whole week�s worth of homework takes him about 10 minutes to do. However, I hesitate to ask for even more challenging homework for a few reasons. First and foremost, almost all his academic knowledge has been self-taught. He�s had a fascination with numbers since he was two, and he has somehow learned how to add and multiply multi-digit numbers on his own with very little assistance from me. So I don�t know how complete is math training has been up to now. I would hate to ask that he be further advanced just in case there are concepts he never bothered to learn.
Secondly, there is a part of me that wonders, why shouldn�t I give him a break? Why shouldn�t his giftedness be, well, a gift? If someone is taller than average, we don�t artificially move shelves higher so they constantly have to reach. Why should I make things tougher for him (and me) than they need to be, especially while he�s so little? I don�t think my son is ever going to enjoy having to stop what he�s doing to do homework, but at least right now it�s easy. If it becomes more difficult, I think I�d have a bigger battle on my hands. I�m up for it if it becomes necessary, but should I do it while it�s not? On the other hand, there is the whole concept of, �With greater gifts come greater responsibilities� that I think my parents in particular believed.
How do other parents find that balance? At this age, he has enough and varied interests to keep him engaged in the world around him. I don�t think he�s feeling like he�s missing out on anything at this point by having easier academic work, so he�s not exactly clamoring for more challenging material. I just want to make sure I�m doing what I should to nurture every aspect of this wonderful child.
Thanks so much!
