Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion You know you're parenting a gifted child when...

...your kid's teacher tells you you're "pushing her" because you work with her outside of school.

Yet...it's perfectly okay for other people to send their kids to Kumon or other tutoring centers for "extra help."

When your 6yr old child's teacher assigns child reading level K and online books to read on a controlled, leveled site which child refuses to use until child finds a way to access level Z, saying "HA! Level Z!". Child then proceeds to listen to a 45min reading of Robinson Caruso, refusing to go to bed, and answers half of the comprehension questions correctly.

...there is a discrepancy about some fact, your dd10 is the one in the family everyone assumes has it right.

...grandpa can't figure out how to fix something around the house, he calls your dd10 to come help him figure it out, and she usually comes up with a solution.

...you almost don't let your kid at age 3 participate in the end of year production because she hadn't been to preschool for 2 weeks and only went 2 days a week before that, and you have never heard her say a single word from any of the songs. But you decide to let her stand up there anyway and she leads all the other kids.

When you ask your dd5 the items that are on the grocery list (because you forgot the list) & she can list them in order.

When your ds8 keeps an "idea notebook" of new engineering designs and you are pretty sure some of them could be feasible.

When you have to declare a "question free zone" for the 10 minutes it takes to get everyone out the door for school.

When your kids ask for a separate library card so they can check out more books.

...when all the students in your dd8's third grade class gets a paperback student dictionaries to take home but all the words your child wants to look up isn't in that dictionary and you have to go to the "big" dictionary to find the definitions. But she still reads the "small" one at night to help her go to sleep.

I liked the idea of spelling things backwards, so I suggested it to my wife last night. The first word she thought to cipher? "Park". K-R-A-P. My DD 4.5 proceeded with her usual phonics. Hilarity ensued.

Glad I could provide you with some fun. I still don't know if my kids (13 and 8) would know if we spelled backwards in front of them...we have left that stage behind.

YES - and also, when they accuse you of "pushing her" even when you don't work with her outside of school. because of course NO child could learn anything without direct instruction, right? [bangs head on desk for the fiftieth time...]

Your ds6 assembles new vacuum cleaner before you're finished reading the directions.

ha, ha! just wait until he disassembles it... my poor mother came down to the basement one day when i was about that age, only to find me sitting squarely in the middle of a neat array of vacuum parts. as she put it, "it was too quiet."