Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion New here! :) Social development question...

Going grey for a day? The grey man fits in everywhere.



OT, but a friend finally stopped doing the same thing and found her "real" type, too. Great insight.

Boys mature when they get older. Teddy Roosevelt got past his childhood 2E issues and became a vigorous athlete. Fitness just requires discipline.

Wow! Thank you all so much for the plethora of responses! I am thrilled to be here!

I just had a chance to read through all of your responses. Thank you all so much! In my sleepy early morning fog ("precoffee"), I used the wrong adjective. I should have stated, "some" of the gifted students at my school have difficulty relating to age-level peers. In no way was I saying gifted students should relate to everyone, but I hate to see them ostracized in their regular classrooms. It just seems in my gifted class I am currently taking to get my certification, I am reading a lot about how gifted teachers should nurture the social development of our students. There are many activities suggested...so many, in fact, that it is overwhelming! I was just wondering how/if teachers in the "real world" teach social development. As I imagined, the textbook paints an ideal picture whereas in the real world with our given parameters and frequent limitations as educators, these social skills are fostered by the atmosphere established in the classroom.
For the record, I would never expect gifted children (or anyone) to dumb themselves down to fit in.
Thank you all for helping me think through this issue. I am halfway through my gifted coursework with much more to learn!

It can be a two-way street... the age-peers could be ostracizing the gifted child, and the gifted child can be ostracizing the age-peers.

Just as an example, my DD7 told us at the beginning of the school year that she didn't want any of her classmates knowing she was in the gifted program, because she didn't want to seem different and wanted to blend in. So whenever she had classmates over, kindly keep it to ourselves.

Fast forward four frustrating months of school for her, and DW and I mentioned this in an IEP meeting... and DD's teacher informed us that DD was openly declaring that she's gifted, making a huge issue of it, and putting off the other kids. This told us, in effect, that DD was tired of dealing with people she considered "little kids." DD's class just happens to be the collection point for the more difficult behavior cases, but she's a model citizen, and all the standing in line and being yelled at is driving her nuts. Her message to her classmates was "I don't belong here."

And then there are the situations where the gifted kid isolates herself with a behavior that nobody else can understand. For example, one of the kids in DD's gifted class cries every time she gets an answer wrong. That is a really off-putting behavior, enough so that DD mentioned it to us. We used it as a teachable moment about perfectionism, because she has her issues there, too. And because she has issues with it, hopefully she can understand her classmate a little better. But my point is that this is the kind of behavior that can cause a class to ostracize a student... even in the gifted environment.

Each case is different, and would need a different approach. In DD's case, the solution would be to put her in a more appropriate environment. In the other kids' case, it would be to work on the perfectionism issue.

How many of their age-level peers have difficulty relating to the gifted students? Children aren't always kind to those that stick out. Some gifted children may be inclined to overcome that barrier, while others aren't. Teachers should spend at least as much time trying to get normal children to remove that barrier as they spend asking the gifted children to do the same.

When I was in school I found my friends to be others who didn't fit the mold for whatever reason. Sticking out brought us together. When I went to a top university, that all changed. Being smart didn't set me apart from my peers because we were all smart. I made friends with anyone and everyone. Now I work exclusively with engineers, and again, I am friends with anyone and everyone. This is not due to some elitist perspective on my part. Many of my best friends are of less than average intelligence (much to my mother's puzzlement.)

All of the children should be expected to accept different children.

When I was younger, my entire identity was basically tied up in being more intelligent than everyone else, basically an intrinsic sense of superiority.

In case anyone was wondering or had any doubts, I can assure you that my approach was not the way to win friends and influence people. Especially when you tied that into moral anger, essentially aligned with my own special puritan-victorianish moral worldview. I suppose that I was a martinet.

Anyhow, socially, elementary school and middle school were. Socially, I probably peaked in eighth grade. Academically, performance-wise, I probably peaked in eleventh grade.

It was all downhill from there. I recovered somewhat after a bad start in high school, but college and law school were train wrecks. That had more to do with my inability to adjust to college life more than anything else.

My kid was treated with harshness by the students one year - and the teacher was openly showing her frustration. She didn't like that he 'slowed thing down' by wanting his own questions answered. These were questions which were 'on topic' from an adult perspective, but 'too difficult to be useful to his peers' from a teacher's perspective.

I don't know if there was a causation arrow, but the next year the teacher was very delighted, and good at setting limits before she got frustrated, and it was a wonderful year - the peer relations were great too. This teacher actually thought up a project for DS to run to give the classmates a chance to enjoy his strengths. She never let on that this was a special intervention for him until years later.

As far as all the focus in your classwork, I'm a bit skeptical. As if they are trying to make it 'fair' that some kids get academics so easily by focusing on how common the social growth needs teacher help. To me, the ideal answer is to put the child in the classroom where the work is at their 'ready to learn' level and chances are that the social questions will iron themselves out, or if they don't that it will be the normal life lessons everyone needs to learn.

But those decisions are most often made at a higher level than the classroom teacher.

I'd also encourage you to post on SENG's parent forum. Here we skew a bit farther from the mean than most gifted groups. Everyone is welcome here, but because we've created a safer place for parents of unusually gifted kids, you'll see a disproportionate picture here. All the children are important, so it's good to collect info from many sources.

Shrugs,
Grinity