Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "Is It A Cheetah?"

I came across this and really like the comparison, so I thought I would share.

http://giftedkids.about.com/od/schoolissues/a/is_it_a_cheetah.htm

We love this article! Was one of our earliest reads on gifted issues. Glad you shared the link here. It also ties in to my husband's young creative writing about being a Cheetah himself and racing around to explore... special memories of our first date and being so excited to be with another Cheetah.

Another useful analogy that our family has found helpful is to understand that most "enriched" or "accelerated" educational programming is not intended for Cheetahs.

It's intended for Border Collies. Yup.

Border Collies are known not only for their eagerness to please, but for their intelligence (well, for dogs, I mean), and for their sheer persistence and stamina.

Most bright-not-gifted students are awesome Border Collies. But they are not cheetahs.

This analogy has really helped my DD to understand why she still feels like such an outsider and outlier even among her driven and enthusiastic, but hard-working and pressured classmates. Running 15 mph all day is hard work, but it's work that Border Collies are well-suited to. It makes them happy and satisfied.

Cheetahs, not so much. Cheetahs are meant for sprinting-- so to make this kind of curriculum fit, you have to be able to get some 'flex' into pacing. My DD has no trouble keeping up with the Border Collies; but there's no way that she can run alonside them. She's not made that way. We have to have "meet-up" points along the way. That way she can do her cheetah thing and still hit the checkboxes.

Depressingly apt.

Mental sprinting... Curious... anyone else here "sprint"... do your kids?

I've discovered that almost any time I've mentioned the concept in a work context, I've gotten the "ok, you're crazy, but we like you anyhow" look.

Yup.

Always have.

ditto. and ditto DD5. ditto husband, though he humbly characterizes it as "extreme laziness."

And we are taught it's morally superior to be a tortoise rather than a hare.
I always wondered... What if the hare wasn't concerned with his rank vs. the tortoise, and just finished the course at his own speed instead of napping? Wouldn't that be even better???

To me, it doesn't feel like sprinting. I suppose to the cheetah, it doesn't feel like sprinting, either... just normal running. Then the cheetah wonders at the plodding pace of the lion.

What I was meaning by sprinting... is I have a mode A and a mode B. Mode A, I can do all day long. In mode B, I am running at a few SDs higher in IQ, can finish four hours work in an hour. But when I hit a wall I'm done/shot for the rest of the day, mentally exhausted. While "sprinting," I'm likely to be twitchy, rock in place, tap, be very short, inattentive, no sense of time.

I'm very much a big cat in terms of spurting, both in work and socially. Long periods of thinking, planning, and rest are punctuated by short all-out work sessions or social events. It's how I work best. I need that rest to build up to the work, or the final product suffers. For example, after mulling over a concept for a while, I wrote a children's book start to finish in under 40 minutes last week. I'll isolate myself for weeks, then plan a 12 hour day with non-stop socializing.

DS23mo is young, but I see signs of this tendency in him, too. He learns new, and sometimes pretty significant, skills as quickly as turning on a light switch after seemigly no prior interest or effort. Speaking--one day nothing, the next day sentences. Locomotion--in arms one day (no crawling), walking with minimal assistance the next. Decoding words--from no interest to being able to sound out most CVC words in a day.

Yes. Flow state = "sprint" state. But I have no real stamina to do it day in and day out, for an 8 hour workday.

I can do a two week run of 20 hour days, but then I'm not much good for mundane things for a month.