Gifted Education Communicator — A Journal for Educators, Parents and Students

What is this Gifted Thing, Anyway?

by Dan Peters, from the GEC, Fall 2012, Counseling Corner

This is a question I am asked—in one form or another—on a regular basis. I find myself pausing, assessing who is asking, how much they may or may not understand, how open to the idea of “gifted” they may be, and then mentally searching through all of the definitions and descriptions about gifted I know, to carefully craft an answer that has the best chance of sticking and being understood. Why is answering this question so hard?

I find there are several main reasons that this is such a difficult question. First, the word “gifted” is loaded. It turns people off. It seems to suggest that “gifted” people are more special and better than people who are not gifted. It seems to imply that gifted people “have more” so it not only puts them in a position of being seen as elite, but also as not needing “more” of anything because they already have more than most.

The next reason is that such different criteria are used to determine who is gifted (and who isn’t). Some people consider gifted individuals the top 2% on an IQ test; others use the top 5% and the National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC) recently changed its definition to include the top 10%. The field is split, with some believing we cannot “water down” the criteria for those considered highly gifted because it diminishes those who are really different and need more accommodations. Others believe we need to broaden the definition to include larger numbers in order to impact education policy and funding so gifted kids receive more appropriate services.

Another concern is the different gifted categories. Most people seem to agree that the categories or types of giftedness include: intellectual, academic, visual and performing arts, creativity, and leadership ability. However, how many schools have gifted programs for learners other than academically gifted? If you are creative and not in a program that emphasizes or encourages creativity, are you still gifted? If you are a leader among your peers, but have academic learning problems and do not score well on tests, are you still gifted? If you are an advanced musician but your school does not have a music program, are you still gifted?

Thus, many ways are used to define and recommend children for gifted programming; but what does that really mean?

Then there are the multiple definitions of gifted. Some describe giftedness as showing “advanced development” in the categories listed above. Others state that giftedness is “advanced ability and/or potential,” while still others prioritize talent, or abilities that result in a product, or advanced level of performance as the prime evidence of giftedness. Finally, there are many who explain gifted individuals in terms of their personality characteristics, and describe them to be more “driven,” “intense,” and “sensitive” than those who are not gifted.

I think about all of these things when trying to answer that seemingly simple question, “What is this gifted thing?” I find myself smiling at the person who is asking, and knowing that I have a very short window to educate them about a group of individuals who have great potential to impact our world, but who also are at great risk of not being able to bring their abilities to fruition.

Bridging the Gap

While the question seems simple and innocent enough, it is a really important one that represents both a lack of understanding of this group of individuals as well as the opportunity to explain what “this gifted thing” is. You may be talking to someone who can make decisions that impact gifted kids; or help a parent or teacher better understand a gifted kid; or explain giftedness to another who is curious or misunderstanding.

I have found that giftedness, and the accommodation and differentiation needed, is misunderstood by most people. While our field is not united about what giftedness is, the even larger issue seems to be how we explain what giftedness is to those outside of our field—teachers and other educators, parents, other family members, or the public at large. These are the people who influence gifted children on a daily basis through their feedback. It is this feedback or messaging that is internalized and used by gifted children to form their identities.

Through my years of sitting in school meetings and parent counseling sessions related to gifted children, I have found that the most critical piece in bridging the gap in understanding is to join the person or people I am speaking to. It is important to understand where others are coming from when trying to explain who a gifted child is and what his or her needs are. Separating gifted children from the rest is often necessary in terms of explaining differences; however, separating them from others without attempting to also join them, results in a differentness and isolation that often does not result in the needed understanding, differentiation, and accommodation that can help a gifted child survive, and ultimately thrive.

My experience has shown me time and time again that all people want to be understood and heard. That includes the person who is asking the question about the “gifted thing,”—whether it be the administrator who is responsible for an entire district, the teacher who is needing to meet the needs of all her students, or the parent who may be exhausted and exasperated by his or her gifted child. Their experiences need to be heard and understood in order for my message about a gifted child to be heard. I need to join them where they are so I can successfully explain to them about who a particular gifted child is, and the needs of gifted individuals.

What To Say So People Will Listen

So what do I do? I find myself with a few different ideas or phrases that I keep in my back pocket. I decide which ones to use based on my audience and my ideas about their motivation to understand a gifted child. I try to use language which I feel will be meaningful to the person asking the question with the goal of providing an opportunity for a new understanding of a murky and confusing term.

Here are some of the phrases and ideas that I use to explain giftedness and gifted children:

• They tend to have advanced thinking and see things differently than most their age

• They tend to have an unexpected, yet remarkable understanding of things well beyond their years

• They tend to be more intense, sensitive, and driven than others their age

• They often know much, or all of the school work in their grade and beyond

• They can often act both older than peers in some things and younger than their peers in others

The above descriptions are meant to be just that—descriptions of gifted individuals that set the stage both for empathy of the experience of the gifted child, and the accommodations and differentiation that can literally make or break a gifted child’s development and experience. I chose which description or descriptions to use based on what I think the receiver will resonate with—intensity, sensitivity, drive, advanced ability, creative and divergent thinking, or all of them. I am looking for them to nod their head and say or show some sign of understanding. This understanding then leads to the next important step—what a gifted child needs.

If and when I get to this point, I often reply:

• To be challenged intellectually

• To be given academic material at their current level of knowledge

• To be with others who are true peers—who are like them and value them

• To be accepted for who they are

I often say that working with and teaching gifted kids is not rocket science. It merely requires understanding who they are and what they need. Yet, understanding gifted kids and giving them what they need continues to be a challenge for the vast majority of people. All of us who work with gifted kids have a calling. Our mission is to describe gifted children to others so they are better understood. We need to understand why we are being asked the question, and figure out the best way to explain it so it is heard and understood. If gifted children are better understood, then it will be easier to get them the resources they need to grow, develop, and thrive. So, “what is this gifted thing anyway?” What will you say…?

DAN PETERS, Ph.D., licensed psychologist, is Co-Founder and Clinical Director of the Summit Center, specializing in the assessment and treatment of gifted, talented, and creative individuals and families. He is also Co-Director of Camp Summit for the Gifted, Talented, and Creative. Dr. Peters speaks regularly at state and national conferences on a variety of gifted issues. He consults with GATE and Special Education Departments, and trains and consults with teachers and parents about understanding, teaching, and raising gifted children. Dr. Peters serves on the Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG) Editorial Board and is Associate Chair of the National Association of Gifted Children’s (NAGC) Assessments of Giftedness Special Interest Group. He is an Advisory Board Member for the California Association for the Gifted.

Northern California Symposium – Nov. 2, 2013

Welcome to the Gifted Education Communicator 2.0, an online journal for educators, parents and students, with lessons, information and strategies so you can more easily apply the best practices in the field and at home.

The NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CAG SYMPOSIUM will take place on Saturday, November 2, 2013, 8:15 AM – 4:30 PM, at American Canyon High School, in Napa County. Registration ($85 / $60 for CAG members) includes morning refreshments and a delicious catered lunch, your choice of four workshops (out of over 60 to choose from), plus a keynote, all presented by experts in gifted education and gifted parenting. Come and enjoy information-packed sessions in state-of-the-art classrooms, a bookstore stocked with wonderful resources, and a chance to network with parents from throughout northern California. For more information or to register, go here. Hope to see you there!

Why Don’t Teachers and Parents See Eye to Eye about Gifted Children?

By Nancy Robinson

Article from GEC Spring 2010

Effective working partnerships between teachers and parents are essential. Even though the partners don’t always see eye to eye, at least they ought to be talking about the same child! Why does it sometimes seem they are talking about two completely different children? Here are some of the practical, everyday reasons why this mismatch might occur.

The Two Settings

Home and school are two different worlds, with little resemblance to each other physically, psychologically, or in their casts of characters.

Division of space. At home, on average, there are at least as many rooms as people, give or take a few. You can opt for togetherness or solitude. (Well, parents may not always get to choose but children generally can.) You have probably taught your child to seek refuge in her room to de-escalate or to keep long-term projects intact. Even a well-planned classroom furnishes few private options and the level of stimulation can be high and unrelenting. There may be 25–30 students and a teacher in each other’s presence all day in about 900 square feet. This is particularly hard for introverted/imaginative children whose inner tempos aren’t a match for the teacher’s expectations or who have their own intense agendas. In a program we ran for young children highly gifted in math, one youngster seemed always to be misbehaving. Eventually, we realized that he was complying … with the previous activity. He needed to follow his inner clock. But in that program there were two adults to 15 children—a luxury.

The number of balls in the air at once. Many children are distracted in a room full of busy, noisy groups. Perhaps a couple of children are having a disagreement, and there are comings and goings of out-of-classroom activities. Your child may be in a pullout program that is high-energy. The teacher is distracted, too, trying to keep track and move things along. At home, even with a big family, the distractions are likely to be fewer.

Expectations about adult attention. Even if you’re engaged with one child or a grown-up task, your children can count on your ear and your interest within minutes. How different is the usual classroom where the teacher may be leading an all-class discussion or going from group to group. Do the arithmetic. Given the routine demands of the day, at best there may be four hours of intensive teaching—240 minutes. Even if half the time were devoted to individual students and divided evenly among 25–30 children (it isn’t—struggling students get more), each child’s ration would be 4 or 5 minutes! Surely your child can count on more than 4 minutes of undivided parental attention every day!

Spread of ability and maturity. Siblings generally aren’t the same age and aren’t expected to behave as though they were. You make allowances for differences in maturity, including internal asynchronies: older children help younger ones and it’s easy and, indeed, pleasurable to adapt to the abilities, skills, and interests of each child.

In the classroom, the usual expectation is that all the children will function at more or less the same level and pace. Slower ones are given extra help but often too little is expected of faster ones. Even at a very young age, gifted children try to avoid being different, even at considerable cost to their individuality and their developmental progress. Peer pressure intensifies as they grow older and generally doesn’t abate until late high school. One of the virtues of accelerative educational options and self-contained programs for gifted students is that the norm to which students are trying to conform is a better fit for who they really are.

Gifted Children’s Characteristics

Along with mature thinking processes and rapid learning often come some personal characteristics that may appear quite different at home and at school.

What it takes simply to keep up with your child. It takes energy enough to teach a class of typically developing children, but children who are learning at a higher level and a faster pace require special strategies if teachers are not to be continually exhausted in keeping them challenged. Truly differentiated instruction is hard work—all the harder with students who complete projects and assignments at an unexpected pace. Even good-hearted teachers can succumb to irritation when an idea they have thoughtfully developed for your children takes maybe ten minutes to complete!

Bored children do misbehave! An under-challenged child has to do something to enliven a day that seems to move at the speed of molasses. Add to this the inevitable irritation that comes with repetition of “learning” what one seems always to have known: “Can’t we get on with this?” One of the brightest children we know was expelled from kindergarten for kicking a teacher in sheer frustration at such a situation. You can help by sharing with the teacher the stresses you hear about from your child at home— not criticisms but insights that may not be apparent when a child is acting up.

“Special” versus “different.” The unusual ideas and accomplishments of the child you cherish may constitute an extra challenge for a teacher. Perhaps your children simply use words other children don’t understand or repeat sophisticated jokes or puns that sail right over the heads of their classmates. Sometimes they have seen a disturbing feature on last night’s news and are obsessively worried about what’s going on in the economy or Darfur—situations their classmates may not even have heard of and certainly don’t see as personally relevant. A busy teacher may not appreciate the maturity underlying these distractions in the way you do.

Asynchronies mask abilities. The development of most gifted children is uneven, sometimes to the point that strengths remain hidden. For example, age-appropriate emotional regulation, social skills, fine motor skills, or shyness may mask higher-level thinking and imagination. For gifted children with distinct language, reading, math, or working memory deficits, their advancement in other areas may escape the teacher’s attention unless you describe what you see at home and share strategies you know that capitalize on your child’s strengths.

“Sensitivity” versus vulnerability. The proportion of gifted children who are constitutionally hypersensitive and over-reactive is open to question, but some clearly are. Accepting the sensitivity as part of “gifted behavior” to be coped with is very different from seeing it as an annoying defect to be eradicated.

High standards versus perfectionism. Students already at or above the top of the class may still be impatient with the quality of their work because they can conceptualize and aspire to truly high performance. In the context of the classroom, this may seem like overkill or neurotic perfectionism when “good enough” would earn an A. The healthier aspects of high aspirations may be more apparent at home, but be sure they come from your child and not from her trying to please you or the teacher.

Creativity versus non-conformity. Most creative ideas don’t bear much fruit—one has to endure a healthy number of flops when taking out-of-the box risks. Creative attempts are often messy, and neatness and sharing may be of very low child priority at such moments. It takes a perceptive teacher to appreciate this process; otherwise, your child may be seen as off-task and disruptive. In fact, this may be the case. One bright preschooler, for example, loved to experiment with color mixing and turned everyone’s watercolors into various shades of brown before he was discovered. His parents felt that his teacher just didn’t understand him! If such disconnects are happening, it may be helpful to bring from home some of your child’s creative successes but also to help your child to develop boundaries at school that don’t interfere with others.

Self-reliance and introversion versus isolation. Many healthy, gifted children enjoy their own company and find all-day social interactions trying. In addition, many prefer solo activities to collaborative group projects because they do want things to turn out well, and they end up doing most of the group’s assignment without learning much themselves. This understandable behavior may seem maladjusted to a teacher—especially one who would appreciate the leadership and help a bright student can give.

Friends versus soul mates. When they can, most gifted youngsters gravitate toward friends of the same level of mental maturity, friends with whom they can share intimacies, puzzle through complex ideas and, in return, be understood. They yearn for loyal and stable friendships that often are beyond those their age mates can provide. Their teachers see them as popular because other children are attracted to them, but they may miss the superficiality of the relationships. In a program at the University of Washington (UW) that enrolls students ages 12–14 for a year of preparation before attending the UW, we typically heard from delighted new students that, for the first time in their lives, they had found “soul mates.” Parents may be much more tuned in than are teachers to their children’s essential loneliness.

Parent-teacher Partnerships

Communication and collaboration are obviously the keys to building effective partnerships. Keep your eye on the common goal you share—raising a happy, resilient, productive student who learns with zest, invests effort and commitment, makes good friends, and contributes to the welfare of others. You each bring to the partnership not only special skills but special knowledge about your child. Remember to show your appreciation not only for the teacher’s contribution to your child’s development but the extra energy your child demands. Have sympathy for what that teacher goes through day after day in that blooming, buzzing classroom!

Nancy Robinson, Ph.d., is Professor emerita of Psychiatry and Behavioral sciences at the University of Washington and former director of what is now known as the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young scholars. Her research interests have focused on effects of marked academic acceleration to college, adjustment issues of gifted children, intellectual assessment, and verbal and mathematical precocity in very young children.

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