Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Thread Like Summary - Advice for profoundly gifted and imaginative 7yo?

Our boy (7) has been tested to 145+ on the WISC-V. It almost seems as if he lives in a fantasy world. Ask him if he would like more oatmeal, and he replies that the house is under attack by the snake people from Ninjago. You ask him what he's been doing at school, and he says something like they were crawling around on the school roof shooting zombies. He answers almost every question in a crazy/surprising way. He has an extreme ability to empathize and treats his stuffed animals like real animals. He often insists that "events" which obviously did not happen, really did happen. Since he was 10 months old, he has been talking almost constantly, and it often drives us crazy. He is extremely curious and asks questions of everything he meets, and it often drives us crazy . He has never needed a TV, computer or tablet to entertain himself - he can get a surprising amount of fun out of a few pine cones and a pile of dead leaves. He is very creative and can spend hours and days building strange Lego creations or making his own board games.

We live in Denmark, where he goes to a special school for gifted children. The school, at least in the small classes, mostly focuses on developing the children's social skills, and the teaching is quite ordinary, although they go through the curriculum a little faster than usual. He has very little interest in classical school subjects such as spelling, reading, mathematics and foreign languages. When you insist that he makes an effort, he is extremely strong in mathematics and he also reads really well. But he could never dream of touching his schoolbooks in his spare time, or asking for more or more difficult homework.

After all, there is a consensus that gifted children must be held to the fire and learn to make an effort and that they benefit from accelerated education. But how do you do that in an appropriate way when the child clearly prefers play, creativity and inventions to classical teaching? How do you teach the child to make an effort without the child losing his creative and imaginative abilities? We have often considered hiring a private tutor who could teach him, for example, mathematics at a higher and far more specialized level than what takes place at school, but this does not immediately feel like the right solution for him - there is a great risk that he will see it as a kind of punishment rather than a "gift". Should we completely forget about the classical education and just let him cultivate his creative abilities?

All experiences with and good advice about such children are very welcome!

Welcome, Kim!

Every child of whatever description is unique, so please keep in mind that my thoughts and suggestions are in the context of my own experiences, and that you know your own child best. But, fwiw, I am very much in favor of allowing children to learn in joy. He is still very young, and his imaginative play is entirely age-appropriate in some ways (although to a much higher degree of complexity and sophistication than many of his age-peers, in keeping with his cognition). Will he eventually need more academic advancement? Most likely, but as you report, when presented with academics, he quickly picks them up. As long as you maintain a rich, interesting, intellectually curious environment around him, I suspect that he will show you that he is ready and motivated to engage in more formal academics. It may be that his school is currently sufficiently engaging and satisfying to him intellectually because he is busy developing other important aspects of himself.

I have frequently mentioned in these pages that my criteria for appropriate educational decisions are that my children feel loved/are loving, are happy, and are growing as whole people.

Let me tell you a little story: One of our children is fairly gifted in music as well as academically. As a preschool-age child, DC requested and then raced through many early academic workbooks, reaching an end of kindergarten/beginning of first grade (so about age six) level in reading and math by age four. That fall, DC started play-based preschool a few mornings a week, and abruptly lost interest in academic workbooks (although DC did create a number chart 0-100 for a classmate, to "help" them learn their numbers!). Instead, DC became fascinated with making books, which encompassed cutting paper to the desired size and shape, coming up with ways to bind them (lots of tape, staples, and one request for a parent to sew), writing and illustrating. This lasted for about six months, before DC spontaneously returned to interest in formal academics.

At the same time, DC had a long-standing interest in playing the piano, singing, and writing songs (for both), but expressly refused to take piano lessons from me; I was firmly informed (by DC) that DC would accept instruction at a very specific age. On that exact date, we started piano lessons, and continued consistently until DC turned 13. At that point, two things happened more or less simultaneously (leaving aside, of course, that DC also became a teenager, which is hardly insignificant!): piano lessons stopped (due to DC's lack of interest in classical music and formal instruction), and DC also stopped doing certain academic subjects. By then, we were homeschooling, so both of these were probably related both to DC's internal developmental process and to the interpersonal developmental process between parent (me) and adolescent child (DC). For the following six months, DC did almost no academic work in the math curriculum, and, in fact, ended up taking two and a half years to (not quite) finish the next year's worth of the precalculus syllabus. OTOH, DC spent many hours each day, unprompted, at the piano, writing original pieces, learning songs of personal interest by ear (and occasionally even working them out from sheet music), and making huge leaps in pianistic and musical development--but on their own terms, and on self-selected content. After about a year of independent piano studies, DC requested piano lessons, with the specific goals of learning to improvise effectively from chord charts, and of learning to sing and play at the same time. We found an instructor and provided those lessons for a year (until the teacher moved away), after which DC dove back into academic math.

Fast forward a bit, and that child completed university one year early for age, summa, with double degrees including a STEM field, and is now thriving in a highly-selective doctoral program. Music and composition continue to be major parts of DC's life.

All of which is to say that it is quite possible (even expected, in some cases) for a gifted child to allow certain areas to lie fallow (so to speak) for a time, perhaps while they are diving into another area of interest, and then to pick them back up when they are ready, and quickly absorb those skills and concepts. Could we have pushed formal academics more? Certainly. But it's hard to imagine generating better nominal (long-term) academic outcomes than the ones that actually resulted, and even if it were, the possible costs in self-motivated learning, creativity, joy, and possibly our parent-child relationships were not something that we were willing to assume merely for any incremental benefit in year of graduation or additional degrees earned.

So while -- as for any parenting decision -- there may be situations where you need to make choices on behalf of your child, when he cannot see his own best long-term interest, or doesn't know the entire range of options, I think you will find that your knowledge of your child will show you when he needs more structured instruction, and when his interest-led explorations are sufficient.

Thank you so much for sharing, millersb02. I will definitely look into Gray and Grandin.