Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Academic "red shirting" - are they really gifted?

I find this topic kind of interesting that many people 1) get accused of hothousing and 2) care that people think that they do it. Let me preface I've never been accused of it, but I kind of wish I had been challenged. I feel like I'm missing out (just kidding of course).

I never, ever went about teaching my kids to read. My MIL did try with my eldest though when she was about 4 and I was embarrassed that she was sitting DD on her lap trying to point words out in books to have DD parrot them back. I, on the other hand, read and sang a lot of songs to her. She didn't read to me until K - but quickly progressed (basically, once I pronounced a tricky word, she subsequently remembered it and was progressing fast through the grade levels. She moved from not reading to reading 7th grade material in 2 years). She also draws parallels between books or other information she takes in. It's really cool to watch those connections being made.

My second dd self-taught. Truly. One day she couldn't read and the next day she's reading to me Green Eggs and Ham (though she spent an inordinate amount of time making up her own stories based on the pictures in the book). She was 4.5 at the time. She's not quite 6 (September birthday) and will be going into K and finished her first chapter book (dinosaurs before dark). She's not a voracious reader, but she'll read at least one book or chapter a day (well, I must amend she reads to herself on the toilet a lot - will take a stack of books in there, but as far as reading a lot out loud to me, not so much). But she is still becoming quite fluent for not having to work hard at it. She'll take a stab at quite complicated vocabulary words and often gets them correctly the first time around. Other times of course she needs a hand.

Had it not been for her selective mutism, I would have probably been alright to push for early entrance. But that would not have helped her anxiety. She simply wasn't ready. But I always viewed this holding back a year as a negative, not a positive. I don't know. Maybe because it to me seems that way because it could be interpreted as being "held back" because you repeated kindy (even thought that's not the case). I didn't realize until recently that this was seen as a "good thing" for any kids unless they weren't academically ready.

But aside from that, I do show my kids lots of things. I don't force anything into them, but whereas many parents might do crafts for their kids, we study nature and we do science experiments and I provide lots of math materials and math games to play with. The older ones occasionally teach the youngest one her letters (they pretend play "school" with her).

My dd5 comes to me with her dry erase board and says, "mom, lets do math". So, do I tell her "no"? Of course not. So I draw her picture with some addition problems (three flowers + four flowers = ?) and she fills in the number sentence. Then she says to me, "okay mom, it's your turn to answer". And she'll laugh as she draws me 7 flowers plus 12 flowers and thinks she can stump me. Not that she's far ahead in math, because right now she isn't.

In fact, she tells me she's worried that she doesn't "know math", and seems to not believe me much when I tell her that the teacher will teach her what she doesn't know. My guess is though she'll pick up the patterns because she's great at seeing where patterns exist. She just doesn't know that's what she does and that will work out to her advantage. I just have this feeling that, like with reading, she'll just "get it" and will adapt rather quickly.

My oldest 7 comes to me in first grade and says "mom, can you teach me multiplication?" because she hears about it from her teacher. Do I say "no"? Of course not. I go buy a pack of flashcards and a workbook - not to quiz her on them, but so I can show her with manipulatives using the cards (because I don't like my handwriting). So, I pick an "easy" math problem, like 3*3 and set it up three rows of three objects. I show her that 3*3 is 3+3+3 which is also known as 3 groups of 3 items. After doing some other problems, she's realizing that this is where all the skip counting comes in handy (2,4,6,8 and 5, 10, 15, 20, and so on). Now she gets there was a reason for that.

I think kids quite plainly know what they want to know and to not honor what they want to know is the quickest way to kill their desire for learning new material.