Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Interesting Story About Gifted Family

Wow, this turned a lot more interesting then I thought it would.
I bet those older kids are a big help in the education of the younger ones.
If everything is as it seems the parents could just coast from here on out and sale their product.

I thought I agreed. I put my kid in school to try to keep him normal. Now I think he's normal either way. He was normal when I put him in school, right, and that was before he had any school. He'll keep being normal (on the playground) wether I send him to school or not. He will not necessarily get an education if no one insists on giving him one. I don't think education is a normal thing that will automatically happen. That's why we built a whole system to educate kids.

A friend arguing for socialization over education reinforced this concept with her choice of wording, "what if he forgets how to play with the other kids?" Is that really likely to happen, I wonder? I think forgetting how to play with kids is less likely to happen naturally than growing all the way up without a good education.

I agree.

See, we're not even near thinking about that yet. For now the only question is accelerate at their pace, or try for lock-step (too late, we pre-schooled). I guess now it's just how and what to hothouse.. how to be a teachers helper, or how to accelerate.

I think some children can be suited for university. I know with my eldest I tried to baby him with Elmo quiltcovers and playdates with age peers. I was worried that he would miss out on being a child because of all his grown up hobbies. I forget how young he is, sometimes- he talks like an adult, his mannerisms are mature, he is so sensible and reasonable, and he even has a charming and handsome face that looks older. The thing that reminds me he is six is his skinny, little arms lol.

I am fighting against his natural personality. I realised earlier this year that he is different from the average child, and I need to follow his lead with most things. I still won't let him watch anything that is rated beyond 'G' or let him do anything that is unsuitable for his age, but I stopped trying to make him be a kid. However, I wouldn't be able to send my baby away to a university; I know he could handle it but I couldn't!

Before I had kids, I always thought ... I'd never want my kids to learn much before school. I want them to be kids. Plenty of time for learning when they go to school. Then I got our two boys and they proved me wrong. It had nothing to do with me and what I had planned and everything with their personality and learning styles. I don't teach them. They absorb information from any source they find. So I gave up on holding them back. I am excited about the speed with which they learn! I do sometimes think about the future, especially since we are considering homeschooling at least for DS3.2 but most likely also DS4.9, though he's registered for K this fall and we are hoping he will go through K ok (only half day). After his Kindergarten year, the school we belong to will be closing down and he'll belong to a different school, at which point we'll decide what's next. I am quite sure they'll go through the curriculum a lot faster than they would in a regular school. The question is, do I want them to learn faster? For now, my "plan" is to just follow their lead. If they learn faster and keep asking for more in a particular subject, they will get more. But aside from that, I am hoping to use the extra time that we'll get by them learning faster so they can explore other areas. Areas that really interest them. My goal isn't for them to be in college by 12-13. My goal still is for them to be kids ... but not the way others around us think kids should be / act ... I want them to be the kids THEY want to be. If that means acting like kids, than fine. If it means acting more mature for their age, fine too. In the later case, we can make adjustments to our academic plans and they can head in whatever direction we all see fit. I wasn't PG, more likely, I was HG/HG+ but I know for a fact I WAS mature enough and emotionally ready to start college by the time I was 14/15. My kids might be the same way but I would NOT want them to be in college that early. Taking college classes for dual credit, yes but not full time college. I'd much rather give them one or two gap years and have them explore their interests. But again, we follow THEIR lead so who know what will happen when they are in that age

WA has a program called Running Start that allows for juniors and seniors to attend college instead of high school.

http://www.k12.wa.us/SecondaryEducation/CareerCollegeReadiness/RunningStart.aspx

There are also two programs at UW for early entrants.

https://depts.washington.edu/cscy/programs/

The Early Entrance Program seems like a good program that addresses some of the concerns raised here.

Wow. You are so lucky to have these amazing programs for kids! How nice it must be to just give your child what they need, just because they need it. Rather than having to fight for every single beeping thing , just to give your child half of what they need.

I don't think that you and I actually disagree on this point.

It is the right thing for some kids. MOST of that cohort will need some kind of hothousing of social/emotional/executive skills in order to be truly at home in that academic setting (which comes as a package deal with adult-ish expectations in those other domains).

Most isn't "all" however. But it does explain why I firmly believe that 12yo children on college/uni campuses ought to be rare. If that ever becomes commonplace, then there is something very very seriously wrong with our K-12 educational system, and probably something equally wrong with higher ed.

The other thing that I wonder about... is the necessity of putting a very young teen into a position where his/her decision-making is impacting the entire course of his/her life and career.

Yes, these are PG children-- I think that at least that, we can all agree upon. This is NOT a good plan for bright or MG kids, right?

But they are still a long way from having fully developed executive skills, no matter how good those skills are relative to population norms in the moment.

Again, it's one thing if it's truly child-led, this kind of academic forging. But it does mean that instead of making errors as an 18yo college freshman, such children are going to be making errors in their first JOBS after graduation instead.

It compresses the time to "adulthood" by societal standards. That's the nature of my concern. It has little to do with what seems normative. Normative doesn't really exist for PG children anyway. Common experience can, but that doesn't mean that perceptions and analysis of those experiences will be the same. Nor does all of that intellect substitute for life experience.



Very well-stated. I am deeply troubled by the video in the OP primarily because it does seem to be presented as a "goal" of some kind-- and the assertion that if one just buys their "curriculum" or "book" that it can be made true for ANY child... well, I think that is likely to be profoundly awful for some children who are bright but not HG/HG+.

I, too, was a child that would have benefited enormously from college at 14-16 (and in fact, my BFF did because her parents were more flexible than my own).