Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Computer based training (CBT)

Yes, some PGs kids are easily overscheduled. Mine are both homebodies who moan and groan if they have to participate in any activity that takes them away from their Legos and imaginative play. Even if they love the activity, they hate to go to it. They absolutely need a lot of unscheduled time.

But that doesn't really matter. The real question is to figure out whether *your particular kid*, who (if memory serves) has always liked a lot of activities, is overscheduled.

What does she say? Does she want to do less? Does the running around seem to be leaving her stressed out?

I ran across this Wikipedia page recently, in my normal routine self-teaching of somewhat inaccurate information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation

I don't necessarily agree with it, but just recalled it. I would say that if one's kid likes a lot of scheduled activities, it can't be too wrong to schedule them.

In my own case I was kind of introverted and shy as a kid, and enjoyed reading a great deal. I don't think I would have enjoyed such a full schedule. But that's just me. I can see that even though I would have perhaps chafed a bit, I might have come out the other end of a full schedule with better social skills.

To answer the question you asked, certainly a PG kid can be overscheduled. Whether yours is is of course another matter. But it sounds as though you're wanting to explore the theory that lots of organised out-of-school activities can be a generally applicable antidote to an understimulating school environment, and I feel positive that as a general rule that won't work. This is not to deny that it might work for an individual child!

My DS does two or three one-hour afterschool activities at school - and they aren't skill-focused ones, either - and that is absolutely enough for him, to such an extent that weekends when he has two parties are really too much. For him, I think what he gets too much of is organised group activities, of which school counts as one. He finds it tiring to deal with group interaction, and needs time alone. Whether an individual child feels that way is personality rather than giftedness, but I guess that PG children are more likely to feel that way than others, because they are likely to have additional stress in the interactions imposed by their outlier status.

I don't have a well-formulated opinion, but am throwing out my two cents anyway:

1 - Of course, this is highly subjective, and somewhat influenced by where one lives, but I can't imagine having a 7-day/week scheduling. We like to get out of dodge as often as we can: there are cities, mountains, beaches, museums, etc. to explore. I need my weekend (and preferably my Friday evenings. Of course, half the time we are homebodies, but that means half the time we aren't!

2 -- Putting aside the differences in kid's comfort levels regarding structured activity vs. downtime, what are the relative pros/cons of scheduling one activity on multiple days vs multiple activities? For instance one's dc could do theoretically do piano or ballet or gymnastics or tennis (or band or the school newspaper or theater or what have you) 3 or 5 times a week instead of having 3 or 5 different activities.

Poppa Rex,

(Going back many postings ago...)

I think ideally, one would combine CBT with other types of learning. Off the top of my head, I think some points for consideration about judging the merits of a specific instance of CBT vs. other format for learning are:

-- Is the learning differentiated or pre-packaged? Some software is very good at figuring out what kids know, and skipping over it, and what they don't, and reinforcing it with extra instruction and/or practice. Some software runs every kid through the same exercise. Some teachers (or what have you) can differentiate, and others treat everyone the same, for better or for worse.

-- Is the learning multi-sensorial? You can read on a screen, or you can read from a textbook. OR you can watch a multimedia presentation, be asked to do a virtual project, etc. (Or, at the very least, does the style of teaching/presentation at least somewhat match the child's preferred learning modality).

-- What is asked of the students? A lot of CBT stuff is multiple-choice, which I think is less than ideal for assessing knowledge, skills, and ability to apply. But a lot of "regular" teaching relies on multiple-choice, too. Some CBT (like ALEKS) has open-choice short-answer response, which is a definite step up. But most CBT is not going to have the ability to grade essay-type responses, lab reports, etc. unless there is a human on the other side of the interface. The other side of "what is asked of students" is that computer-based projects may often be replicating a 3-dimentional task in a 2-dimentional world. While sometimes it is advantageous to do this -- perhaps because the expense involved in doing the actual project is too great -- other times, it is less than optimal.

-- What sort of feedback does the child recieve, vs what type of feedback they'd like? What sort of incentives does the training/teaching offer? A lot of educational software gives kids points/coins/etc for getting the correct answer, or working for a certain period of time, so the kid can then go play. I think in many instances, if you do a good job of pairing a gifted child with CBT, the computer program is its own reward. Of course, there can be a lot of problems with what gets rewarded in the classroom, as well.

-- What is the level of expertise of the teacher? Most elementary school classroom teachers are expected to be masters of all, which is a tall order -- and they may not have sufficient background in something to fill a gifted kid's needs; CBT can be done cutting corners, or with lots of content experts using the latest, greatest information.

I'm sure there are other plenty of other factors, but hopefully that's some food for thought.

Sorry so slow to respond to Lori's post about shunning, but I have a few minutes today and wanted to answer.



To me "oh" doesn't equate to shunning or anything remotely close to it. I would talk about ways to handle those sorts of conversations. My personal experience has been if you express enthusiasm and happiness about your choices most adults will join with you. So something like "My big thing now is musical theater, I'm going to be in Grease next month. It be at the Elm Street Theater. Have you seen a show there? It is a beautiful theater and we are really excited about it."

My belief is there are interesting and intelligent people everywhere and that includes small towns, rural areas and the South. If you start from the perspective that you are superior to others or that people will hate you because they are ignorant you are predisposing yourself to a life of self imposed shunning. This is an attitude of pessimism that doesn't promote happiness. We have the option to choose to live differently. When you are open to it, I believe you find interesting people everywhere. The grandma down the street may not have gone to college, but if you take the time to listen she may astound you with her knowledge of hybridizing flowers. If you are genuinely interested in who she is and what she's passionate about, you will likely find the same is returned in your direction.

This is not to say that every kid in high school is cool, but my understanding is that your son doesn't go to high school so that should not be a driving force in defining his life.


I don't agree with the entire sentiment, but I think anyone who has read any research on the mind-body connection knows there is quite a strong connection. Holding on to negativity doesn't make us healthier and there are reasons to question if it this is healthy way to live.

The "oh" response was not a good example, but it did add to our feeling of being shunned. There were members of our homeschool group that were angry with us for saying that we wished part time school and OT and PT were available for my twice-exceptional son because I would like for my son to go to some classes at the public school. I told them I had written letters to legislators. They said if I pushed for this that it would make things harder for them because somehow the government would tell them how to educate their children. Some of them thought it was terrible that I wanted to expose my child to the public school kids and some of the things they are being taught at the "government school." One woman in the group saw us at a Walmart, looked at us without saying a word, grabbed one of kids, and turned around walked the other way. We stayed out of the group for a few years but joined it again after a few people left the group, new people joined that didn't know they weren't supposed to talk to us and that was the end of that but my son still doesn't exactly fit in because he doesn't want to learn how to hunt and gut a deer or raise cows and pigs and chickens and it is hard to carry on a conversation for very long with people who are excited about these things just like they find it hard to talk to him about things he enjoys. So he isn't really being shunned by some members of the homeschool group any more. He easily wins their spelling bees, and wishes they had more academic type competitions, but most of the other kids don't seem interested.

My mother is one of those people who didn't go to college because she couldn't afford to go, except for a few classes, but learned so much on her own (without the internet) that she could answer more Jeopardy questions than anyone I knew, including people who had graduated from college, which is why I knew that my son could learn on his own.

Regarding the negativity, I do think this was why I was shunned for a while by some members of our church, so we stopped going there and only visit once in a while. I made the mistake of speaking negatively about our "perfect" school that refuses to even consider other teaching methods for kids who learn differently. All kids are supposed to be the same. All kids must learn to color in the lines before being allowed to learn anything else. IEP's? How dare anyone tell them how they need to teach, when they have been teaching the same way for years. They ignore IEP's. Nobody does anything to enforce it. They don't have a library in this town because the majority of the people don't believe we need one. They think that if people don't like the way they do things here, they just need to leave. I guess I am a little negative about that, but not enough to cause a headache. I really am happy that we can homeschool now. My son does have a lot of musical theater friends and they really are good friends.

I think it's dreadful that coloring would ever be part of a school curriculum. I have told my son to refuse any coloring books or similar material given to him in any context.

Of course there will always be people who make different choices and who disagree. The way we think about situations does really influence what our experience will be. I can easily imagine a homeschooler describing a group where they had little in common but focusing most of their memories on the one or two good friends they made along the way. That is the difference between positive and negative thinking.

This aricle might be helpful. http://stress.about.com/od/professionalhelp/a/distortions.htm

Why would you instruct him to refuse. What if it is something that is appealing to him. Sure, coloring can be very easily overdone but I don't see it as all bad. We found some science coloring books to be helpful tools. Great for reinforcing memorization and also good for continuing to develop fine motor skills. Here's an example http://www.amazon.com/Botany-Coloring-Book-Paul-Young/dp/0064603024/ref=pd_sim_b_5