Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Freedoms for gifted students

Even though some of our students and kids may be mature and work well, even up to skipping grades, some of them may have only age-appropriate freedoms rather than grade-appropriate freedoms.

For example some teachers may recommend doing most of the organisation for the kid for "maturity" reasons even if a transition may be in the kid's better interest.

The student may also feel unfree if they are working at a much higher level and yet merely have the freedoms of kids that they don't relate to.

How do you deal with this problem? Do you let them have freedoms at their grade level? Date earlier? Not mind as much if they smoke/drink yet somewhat discouraging it? Still giving them a support system to show how more freedom doesn't necessarily mean you as a parent will leave them out to dry in case issues occur?

I am in Australia rather than the US, but my approach was that since I placed my kids amongst an older cohort, it was only fair to give them the same freedoms (within legal limits for drinking and for driving), so they would have the best chance to succeed socially. Due to the necessity of working long hours when I was a trainee specialist, my eldest spent 50 hours a week in long day care from the age of six weeks so by her fourth birthday, she had the global development of a six year old and she truly was indistinguishable from her grade peers. The added bonus was that since she was assigned to compete in her age group for sports, she was swimming, athletics and cross country age champion at her school which brought a lot of social credits. She started dating a classmate when she was 14 and exercised excellent judgement as her first BF is now my son in law. They are in their mid twenties and she has a year to go to become a fully fledged general medical practitioner and after a series of well managed projects, he has been selected to become the next state director in a mid-sized engineering firm.

My youngest was also an early school entrant, but with a different birthday, the gap between her and her grade peers wasn’t as large. As the baby of the family, however, she wasn’t as socially mature, but her older sister guided her through the potential pitfalls. She was/is extremely tall and was taller than all her older classmates until the boys reached puberty. She started dating at 16 and our entire extended family adored her BF. We were all as crushed as he was when she broke it off, but she told him she was too young to be in a serious relationship. She is currently the youngest residential student on her Uni campus (first semester starts in Feb here, rather than Oct in the US) and only just recently reached the drinking age of 18, so there was a large turn up at the uni bar to see her sip her first cocktail.

My son is my middle child and he didn’t meet the social expectations for an early entrant (ie. he did not always follow instructions), but his birthday placed him amongst the youngest boys in his grade. He was radically accelerated for maths (declined the offer for science) and participated in many activities (eg. robotics team, martial arts) with older students, but because of his exceptional abilities, he was always greatly respected by older peers. He was the only one of my kids who was legally permitted to drive whilst still at high school and we got him a cool new car so that he and his younger sister could enjoy that particular high school experience of independence. He had a very cool reputation whilst being a geek at heart, so the teachers loved that he made the school a more inclusive place as he was the school’s star athlete (state level at many events) but spent lunchtimes either in the library playing chess or in the music building, playing the keyboard or guitar, so for a while, everyone mixed together.

How old is the youngest's BF and eldest BF? Does she drink elsewhere other than the bars to avoid being caught and to respect the University?

It's nice that he made the place more inclusive, whether in socializing or in hobbies. What about limits in other areas, such as curfews or smoking/vaping? I knew some who allowed their young sons/daughters to vape in places where there was no purchase age for free samples. Did they have bad habits or minor flaws that were otherwise fine?

In hindsight for myself Australia and US are nicer for these sorts of things. I would have stayed home and went to local university early.

If your questions are to me, then in my original post, I clearly described that my youngest took her first sip of alcohol when she reached legal drinking age (18 years throughout Australia, whereas I am aware that the different US states set their own legal age limits). There was a large turn out to celebrate because she was the last student this year, to reach drinking age on her campus. My other two aren’t interested in alcohol at all. None of my kids smoke or vape. As a young general medical practitioner, my eldest campaigns against it and does much to promote healthy living lifestyles. Both my daughters dated older classmates who were 16 & 17 months older respectively, not any different from some of their female classmates who dated guys in the grade above them. I’ve never imposed a curfew - in eagle parenting style, I keep a close watchful eye over my kids, but give them plenty of freedom, as long as they don’t break my trust and they rarely disappoint me.

The main difficulty I had with parenting them was that when they were young, my younger two fought incessantly, but when he turned ten, he abruptly stopped reacting and when she turned ten, they rapidly got on very well. Although she adores them, my youngest struggled quite a lot feeling overshadowed by her two older siblings. Going away to a University/college where no one knows her siblings and where she is currently well regarded and treated well as the youngest on campus has been great for her self esteem. It was really interesting to hear her recently articulate her previous concerns that she would become a cliche’ of the ‘wild, rebellious, youngest child’ (she has a special empathy that is a gift, but she did see herself as the black sheep of the family based on tangible achievements) and her relief that she has turned out to be well organised and high functioning.