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http://gallatingifted.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/8-gripes-of-gifted-kids/


8 Gripes of Gifted Kids
January 29, 2012
tags: Jim Delisle

How can you initiate a discussion about what it means to be gifted? By using one of Jim Delisle’s techniques. Jim surveyed 2000 gifted students to find out what they didn’t like about being gifted, then summarized the findings into the Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Kids. Now he uses that list with other gifted students in a 5 step process. He hands out the list, then:

Asks them to circle the ones that affect them.
Has them cross out gripes that are not an issue for them.
Tells them to turn over the page and write a few sentences about the ones they circled.
Has the kids pair up and discuss which ones they agreed and disagreed on.
Pulls the whole group together to discuss the list.

Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Kids
from When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers
Pages 155 & 156

1. No one explains what being gifted is all about – it’s kept a big secret.
2. School is too easy and too boring.
3. Parents, teachers and/or friends expect us to be perfect all the time.
4. Friends who really understand us are few and far between.
5. Kids often tease us about being smart.
6. We feel overwhelmed by the number of things we can do in life.
7. We feel different and alienated.
8. We worry about world problems and feel helpless to do anything about them.

I have to say that, as much as I really like Jim Delisle, I don't like this list. I've seen it before and my dd11, in particular, was extremely turned off by it. She saw it as a list for braggarts who think that they're better than everyone else.

Her experience of being gifted is more about thinking differently than others than having people tease her for being too smart or finding school too easy. In some ways, she finds it harder than less intelligent kids b/c it is taught in a way that is so different from how she learns. She works hard to see things the way that others do and is frustrated by the way things are presented.

I think that this has led to her rejecting the label gifted all together b/c she sees it the way this list describes it -- as being all about kids who find school easy and who are perfect students.

Whereas I forwarded it to my kid's gifted teacher, because I believe most of those are issues for my kid. They were for me, too, when I was a kid, although I'd be the first to admit that when I was that age, I was totally an obnoxious braggart who thought I was better than everyone else. But I think the causality goes in the other direction - when I was in an environment in which none of those things were issues, I was a much more tolerable person.

DD mentioned just this week that kids were giving her trouble about having skipped a grade, which I'd figured would be a non-issue by now, a year and a half after the skip.

DD: One kid will say, "why did you skip a grade?" and then another one will say, "because she's smarter than all of us!"
Me: Are you smarter than all of them?
DD, indignantly: No! ... Especially not than the teacher.

Then again my dd11 is 2e. Maybe it is less of a fit for 2e kids.

I think how good of a fit it is will be very kid-dependent For my 2e ds12, I'd say #2,4,7 have been very big challenges. #5 happens but not "often" (but often enough to cause him to try to hide it...) (otoh, probably not as much as he's teased for the other e part of his 2e). #8, he's certainly uber-aware of the world's problems, much more so than a typical kid.... otoh, he's not terribly worried about them.

I kinda like the strategy used here for discussing among the kids... not sure I can see that my ds would be interested in it though, for this particular set of discussion topics.

polarbear

It's a good book, and there's a student worksheet in there to be used as a taking off point for deeper discussion of how perceptions of giftedness are affecting the child. I sat down with DD and asked her some of the questions supplied in the worksheet, and it really didn't open the door to too many insights.

The only gripe she agreed with was #2.... vehemently. Otherwise she seemed to think she knew what being gifted means, though I've found out within the last week that it doesn't mean what she thought it did (inconceivable!).

This actually made me tear up a little. I am very sure DD would agree with all but 5 and 6.

Interesting. DS didn't say a clear Yes to any of them, but did "sort of"s to 4, 5 and (even more sort of) 8. The tone was probably set for him by the fact that I felt I had to start off by asking "do you know what gifted means?" and that his answer to 1 was "well, no, because I don't really feel I want to know what being gifted is all about"!

That will be me.

I always feel helpless about all the world problems. I also feel guilty that my life is relatively carefree.

Yep; I'll help you row that boat, Cricket. The experiences I've faced with my 2e in school are SO different than my older son who is gifted.