http://gallatingifted.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/8-gripes-of-gifted-kids/


8 Gripes of Gifted Kids
January 29, 2012
tags: Jim Delisle

How can you initiate a discussion about what it means to be gifted? By using one of Jim Delisle’s techniques. Jim surveyed 2000 gifted students to find out what they didn’t like about being gifted, then summarized the findings into the Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Kids. Now he uses that list with other gifted students in a 5 step process. He hands out the list, then:

Asks them to circle the ones that affect them.
Has them cross out gripes that are not an issue for them.
Tells them to turn over the page and write a few sentences about the ones they circled.
Has the kids pair up and discuss which ones they agreed and disagreed on.
Pulls the whole group together to discuss the list.

Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Kids
from When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers
Pages 155 & 156

1. No one explains what being gifted is all about – it’s kept a big secret.
2. School is too easy and too boring.
3. Parents, teachers and/or friends expect us to be perfect all the time.
4. Friends who really understand us are few and far between.
5. Kids often tease us about being smart.
6. We feel overwhelmed by the number of things we can do in life.
7. We feel different and alienated.
8. We worry about world problems and feel helpless to do anything about them.

I have to say that, as much as I really like Jim Delisle, I don't like this list. I've seen it before and my dd11, in particular, was extremely turned off by it. She saw it as a list for braggarts who think that they're better than everyone else.

Her experience of being gifted is more about thinking differently than others than having people tease her for being too smart or finding school too easy. In some ways, she finds it harder than less intelligent kids b/c it is taught in a way that is so different from how she learns. She works hard to see things the way that others do and is frustrated by the way things are presented.

I think that this has led to her rejecting the label gifted all together b/c she sees it the way this list describes it -- as being all about kids who find school easy and who are perfect students.

Whereas I forwarded it to my kid's gifted teacher, because I believe most of those are issues for my kid. They were for me, too, when I was a kid, although I'd be the first to admit that when I was that age, I was totally an obnoxious braggart who thought I was better than everyone else. But I think the causality goes in the other direction - when I was in an environment in which none of those things were issues, I was a much more tolerable person.

DD mentioned just this week that kids were giving her trouble about having skipped a grade, which I'd figured would be a non-issue by now, a year and a half after the skip.

DD: One kid will say, "why did you skip a grade?" and then another one will say, "because she's smarter than all of us!"
Me: Are you smarter than all of them?
DD, indignantly: No! ... Especially not than the teacher.

Then again my dd11 is 2e. Maybe it is less of a fit for 2e kids.

I think how good of a fit it is will be very kid-dependent For my 2e ds12, I'd say #2,4,7 have been very big challenges. #5 happens but not "often" (but often enough to cause him to try to hide it...) (otoh, probably not as much as he's teased for the other e part of his 2e). #8, he's certainly uber-aware of the world's problems, much more so than a typical kid.... otoh, he's not terribly worried about them.

I kinda like the strategy used here for discussing among the kids... not sure I can see that my ds would be interested in it though, for this particular set of discussion topics.

polarbear

It's a good book, and there's a student worksheet in there to be used as a taking off point for deeper discussion of how perceptions of giftedness are affecting the child. I sat down with DD and asked her some of the questions supplied in the worksheet, and it really didn't open the door to too many insights.

The only gripe she agreed with was #2.... vehemently. Otherwise she seemed to think she knew what being gifted means, though I've found out within the last week that it doesn't mean what she thought it did (inconceivable!).

This actually made me tear up a little. I am very sure DD would agree with all but 5 and 6.

Interesting. DS didn't say a clear Yes to any of them, but did "sort of"s to 4, 5 and (even more sort of) 8. The tone was probably set for him by the fact that I felt I had to start off by asking "do you know what gifted means?" and that his answer to 1 was "well, no, because I don't really feel I want to know what being gifted is all about"!

That will be me.

I always feel helpless about all the world problems. I also feel guilty that my life is relatively carefree.

Yep; I'll help you row that boat, Cricket. The experiences I've faced with my 2e in school are SO different than my older son who is gifted.

My DS8 would agree with pretty much all of them. #1 he understands only because I've discussed it with him. #2 isn't an issue anymore since we have moved him to a gifted private school. Now it's challenging in some ways and still finding his place (it's a small school and I mean 6 students from grade 2-9). But we persevere and support him in it all. #4 & #7 are our biggest struggles right now.

Me too. My oldest has been a totally different experience than my youngest. I suspect that dd11 actually could agree with 2, 7, & 8, but when she saw the list at a middle school we were visiting in their GT program, she was so turned off by the start of the list which smacked of, "I'm so smart, that I don't know what to do," to her that she threw the whole thing out.

DD8 says 4 and 5 a lot, 2 to some extent. Definitely not 3.

#2 & #6 for DD16

We knew after the 1st month at middle school that we would be seeking a private high school education for our kids. Dd walked into the big city private high school knowing only 1 kid who was a junior.

After the 2nd week of school she says to me with tears in her eyes, "Mom, I've finally found my tribe." It nearly broke my heart. Dd is very outgoing and has always had friends, tho they may have been one year ahead or lower. I knew school was a drag but she'd never articulated just what an outlier she'd been.

I'd work 5 jobs if it meant keeping her there and sending our son.

#2, #6 & the last one for DS12. I caught him watching the news when he was only 8 years old. And then he'd obsess about crime or hunger etc...

all of the above except #5 and only because I think our former school had a serious no bullying policy. We used to go to the same school as SDMom and even though her Mr B was the focus of some bullying, it wasn't because he was smarter...

Now we homeschool so we are *mostly* removed from the environment where giftedness is even ever brought up. THey don't even do regular testing in our homestudy program, so it's not like kids are getting tests back with scores on them...

For my own life...all of the above. I was even called "Brainiac" in college and my vo-tec nursing program. Early in life, I learned to flip my tests and homeworks over real fast so others wouldn't see...and the last one actually caused me physical stress as a child...

We have yet to find Butter's "tribe", though she doesn't seem particularly bothered about it at the moment...

2giftgirls: We've been having more discussions lately about what gifted means to us as individuals and as a family. (Probably because we've had lots of together time as we've all been home with a nasty cold).

Anyway, it's occurred to us that 99% of our friends are gifted, as are their kids. We didn't consciously seek out gifted friends, it just turned out that way. That said, not all of our friends live in our small town or have children - thus the lack of tribe for my kids.

It wasn't an issue in elementary school because both kids had their bff's and a few other friends who are also gifted. But it was a tiny school and as they move through mid and high school, the classes are larger and gifted friends are far fewer.

Dd16 detests her "regular" classes. Her school is 60% boys and she says so many of them are obnoxious. But since she's on the honors track there are always at least 3 or 4 other gifted kids in her regular classes. It's just that the entire tenor of the class is changed.

It sounds as if Butter is doing well in the homeschool environment. What exactly happens at girl scouts that is making you uncomfortable. Dd hated Brownies because the tasks seemed too mundane.

I can relate as I was asked not to return to my girl scout troop after an exceptionally (fun) trying for the adults camp out. LOL!