Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Undetermined giftedness and homeschooling

I am a mom to my 6 year old daughter who has never been enrolled in school. We are relaxed/eclectic homeschoolers, probably leaning toward unschooling, though I do throw a math lesson in here and there, and we did work on handwriting for a while until she got the hang of it. We don't have a set curriculum though or daily "school time" or anything like that. I strew a lot of educational things around and she's still in that absorbing-it-all phase of life where she's "on track" for her grade level (or beyond). I keep tabs on the standards and make sure she is meeting them. If that changes I would adjust how we do things.

I guess this was all sparked by a recent interaction with a friend who made casual mention of her being gifted. I sort of skirted around the idea since it had never occurred to me, and I don't know if it even matters all that much, but maybe it would offer me a different perspective or resources to learn more about?

So, more about her (perhaps too much, LOL)...

She turns 7 next month and reads at a 3rd-4th grade level 5th-6th grade level (edit: I just had her read through some lists I found online, I didn't realize she'd improved...whoops! though not unusual, plenty of kids read beyond their "grade level"). She spontaneously learned to read when she was 4.5 years old. Her math is pretty on track for her age, though if she finds something too easy it's "boring," or too difficult and it's a meltdown trigger. This is about the only area we try and work on with homeschooling, though it's very casual.

She's intuitive, considerate, and has a solid understanding of the world going on around her. She can understand concepts and apply them to other situations. She's a perfectionist, and stubborn sometimes, though she seeks approval and wants to please. She is sensitive to clothes being "itchy" or "feeling wrong." She is also emotionally sensitive--quick to cry. I had thought she would have outgrown that by now, and sure it's less often than earlier years, but it still happens (I'd say weekly instead of daily outbursts). She's very articulate with a large vocabulary, She's an active bouncing-around kid, but can spend a long time focusing on a task if it's her idea and interesting to her. She can also spend hours just reading.
I don't know, I always just figured she was an only child that's not enrolled in school so she gets to experience real life and interact with a variety of kids and adults regularly...and that's why she seemed maybe a bit precocious.

I don't even know if the "gifted" thing really makes a difference, other than maybe a different set of terms to google for ideas when homeschooling (aforementioned "this is boring" or Meltdown City...though that's surely not unique to giftedness either).

Any input? Advice for a newbie to this whole idea? Should I just let it be and carry on our happy lives because surely that wouldn't do any harm?

Your daughter sounds a lot (maybe even eerily so) like my daughter would have been described by me (at age 3-5 or so). Barring being quick to cry, that is. DD (now 16) has always had extraordinary emotional regulation and maturity.

It sounds like your little one has some significant asynchrony happening there, though-- it's not unusual, do know that. MANY 5-7yo children who are highly observant or gifted still tend to be pretty prone to meltdowns from being overwhelmed.


Honestly, the only thing that I wish that I'd known a LOT more about at that point was to keep a close eye on the perfectionism and do whatever I could to nip that in the bud. Press on it with activities that are:

a) ungraded, open-ended, with NO "right" answer, and no percentages or grades attached, and
b) things that she does NOT find instantly easy-- but finds that her performance is roughly equal to her effort.

Keep an eye on how rapidly she learns. That is the key thing that (IME) separates garden-variety gifted from higher levels, and it ultimately determines just how specialized or unusual a child's educational needs are or become.

Your description of her reading arc, for example, would lead me to suspect that she's probably MG, but could be HG (which formal settings don't handle all that well).

The Goldilocks thing with math, though- oy. That sure sounds familiar. If it isn't instant, it's "too hard." If it is instant, then it's not hard enough. Ugh. My best been there advice is that such children-- particularly if they are extremely capable-- may need to be specifically taught how to fail and learn from failure as part of the learning process. This is true of children that avoid occasions where failure is a distinct possibility. It's very easy for homeschooled-- particularly unschooled-- children to mask that this is precisely what they are doing when they "lead" the child-led process by avoiding things that they aren't good at already by just... not... choosing to do those things.


Yes, that is something to keep an eye on. I've no idea if it is truly unique to gifted children, but it does seem to be close to universal among that cohort, anyway.

Hi Howler Karma,
I liked your idea of helping nip perfectionism in the bud and wondered whether you could give an example of what you might do for activities in a).
Thanks,
HHBELLA

What HK said. It's good that you're in a situation where you are able to be flexible with her education.

There is a gifted homeschoolers forum (not Davidson) out there --a friend has mentioned referencing it for ideas/resources for her daughter.

Math... oh yes, we have that pattern (with PG son). Also now having it with spelling as he's in spelling bees and gets upset when practicing and he misses (i.e. doesn't know yet) a word. Meltdowns, crying, etc. Which is a good reason to press on, talk about everyone needing to learn how to push past not getting something right the first time and that it might seem odd to him since so much comes immediately. Work in progress.

Our child seems to to use crying to communicate frustration. Pretty sure not around his friends, but around us. Then again, my mom used to accuse me of saving up all my emotional fits to use on them... so he may have inherited that...

One thing that has helped with my daughter is to talk to her when she is not in the middle of schoolwork and is calm about how being wrong and then figuring out how to fix your answer is the way your brain grows. Then when she is melting down about not being able to do something, I can tell her that the discomfort she is feeling right now is the feeling of her brain stretching and growing. It (sometimes) calms her down and gets her back into working on the problem. It probably also helps that she heard Richard Rusczyk speak last year about how if you know all the answers, you're in the wrong classroom. It was more convincing coming from him than from mom.

HowlerKarma, thank you for the thoughtful response. I am so new to this whole idea I had to Google a lot of the terms you used, but I think I understand most of it now Perfectionism definitely is an issue. For example, I've found she's stopped drawing because her artwork doesn't turn out how she envisions in her head. I guess it's all in the past few months...maybe a year...that I realize she has really decreased her effort in a lot of things if it's not "perfect" AND easy. I'm struggling with how to offer her challenges but still feel successful. She's been doing alright with seeing the results of practicing her violin and therefore improving, but she hasn't applied that toward any other things that I can think of.

ConnectingDots, I am definitely thankful that we have the ability to be flexible. Should we choose not to homeschool in the future we have a project-based school with multi-age classrooms in town, as well as a gifted school, both private (affordability is a different story, LOL). Crying is definitely a way she communicates with just us; she holds it together in public 99% of the time. This too easy/too hard/always "boring" thing though...oy! At least we're not alone

ElizabethN, that's a great idea. Next time we're having a related conversation outside of the work I'll be sure to bring that up. We talk about her brain growing and practicing to get it stronger, but it's usually in the middle of the frustration, and I don't know that I've ever described it quite like you've outlined.

fjzh - sounds like you're doing a good job figuring out what she needs!

With math, though, it's good to be aware that most standard math curricula is pretty painful for a gifted child. If she's avoiding challenge due to perfectionism, that's one thing, and there's some good advice above. But if she just finds it tedious and boring, well, she'd be in good company. (And if she's like many of our kids, she's doing both. They need to experience real challenge in math if they're going to learn how to cope with it). There's a ton of threads here on early math, with long lists of really fun books that teach cool concepts, written by people who love math and want to share that joy. You may find it much easier to work with your daughter on math that wasn't written by people who hate the stuff, and assume the student will too.

Some frequent recommendations include Beast Academy, Pappas (Penrose the Mathematical Cat), Martin Gardner, Enzensberger (Number Devil), Edward Zaccaro, the "Sir Cumference" series, Murderous Maths... not to mention a zillion Numberphile videos on Youtube. Questions from the Math Kangaroo contest can be lots of fun too: they require only grade-level skills but lots of out-of-the-box problem solving.

fjzh, your description of your daughter sounds almost exactly how I would describe my son. He is also as yet to be identified, but I am really starting to believe that he is at least MG. We have the same extreme problem with perfectionism and I have asked for ideas to counter it as well. We recently read the book Your Fantastic Elastic Brain by JoAnn Deak and DS LOVED it. He might even be making a tiny bit of progress whenever we remind him that his brain is stretching itself...