The Pirate Review - "Gifted. Talented!" Whatever.

Raising gifted children may present unique challenges, but the best thing you can provide is a stable, normal childhood

Yes, I was one of those annoying Gifted Kids—the average-raisers, the curvebusters, the proto-nerds and geeks. I literally cannot remember a time when I could not read; my mother tells me that by the age of three I read aloud with more expression than she did. By the time I hit kindergarten, at four years old, I was scoring exceptionally high on the standardized tests; while the other kids were learning their letters and numbers and colors, my teacher excused me to go to the library and read for hours on end. I was quickly admitted to the GT program (what most school districts now call GATE) and stayed there all the way through high school.

Of course, there were multiple down-sides to being recognized as a gifted child—I got bored in the classroom, learned very few study skills, and routinely blew off homework assignments that I recognized as busy-work—but worst of all, my difference from the other kids cost me dearly in friendships and social skills. I might have been able to read books, but I couldn't read other people very well.

Being too different—whether in looks or in abilities—is not an asset in most American public schools. It didn't take too many grades before I started having run-ins with aggressive kids who didn't like the fact that I was doing better than they were in school. Eventually, for the sake of self-preservation, I learned to downplay or disparage any talents I might have.

Through junior high, I lived to escape to the GT classroom. There we read and discussed books, did math and logic puzzles, took field trips to the theater and opera, tried all kinds of things—but most of all, blessedly, we weren't expected to keep quiet and keep our heads down. It was obvious the GT teachers actually liked the fact that we were bright for our ages, and this, more than anything else I learned in class, helped me to realize that there was no shame in being intelligent. Most often, there were simply additional expectations—whenever one of us did something boneheaded, Mr. Boylan, my eighth grade GT teacher, would mutter, "Gifted. Talented!" sardonically under his breath. It became something of a classroom in-joke.

Now that I'm grown up, one of the things I've come to realize is how rarely gifted children go on to become gifted adults. Think about the kids who skip constantly through the early grades, graduate from high school at 10 and college at 16—how many of them become Nobel laureates, Pulitzer prize winners, developers of new vaccines, rocket scientists? Even one of the most notable child prodigies who was still considered a rare talent as an adult—Mozart—died relatively young and in abject poverty. Does "giftedness" tend to even out or disappear as we grow older, or is it that life demands more of adults than mere native intelligence? I'm not sure what the cause is, although I suspect the American education process is at least partly to blame, but I suspect it'll be difficult or impossible to pick out today's brightest kids from a crowd in twenty years.

From today's perspective, if I could go back and suggest some things to my parents and other parents of gifted children, here's what I'd say:

Don't allow your kids to get full of themselves. Native intelligence, in and of itself, is never to be used as a justification for acting superior to others. You have no more control over your basic intelligence than you do over the color of your eyes or your skin; it's a genetic roll of the dice.
Although you may not have control over your native intelligence, you DO have control over how much you learn. Teach your kids that it's their duty to learn as much as they can. Bright kids crave challenges; they want to try things that are new and reasonably difficult for them to do. Give them the stimuli they desire—expose them to as many new and different ideas as they can handle. This doesn't have to be expensive. Public libraries are fantastic resources, and all you need is a card.
Resist the urge to skip your kids through school, even if they are very bright. Almost every gifted child I've met who was skipped a grade or more ahead was socially maladjusted; these social problems lasted well into adulthood. Unless you feel absolutely confident your child will fit into the social scene with older children, don't skip a grade. Frankly, I think I would have done better socially if my mother had held me back a year and sent me to school when I turned 5.
Encourage your kids to help other people. Impress upon them the idea that their talents were meant to be shared with others in order to make the world a better place. Help them channel their abilities into productive directions.
As much as possible, provide a normal childhood for your kids. Don't get them so double-booked in voice and instrument and dance and riding and other lessons, plus homework and other projects, that they never have available time just to goof off. Most people place tremendous expectations on gifted children and their lives tend to go in feast-or-famine cycles—the boredom of the everyday classroom followed by an intense spate of after-school challenges. Give them a little bit of wiggle room; let them breathe.
Just as intelligence is not something to boast about, neither is it something to be ashamed of, any more than any other trait. Perhaps we should be teaching our children that their abilities should be just as easily and unselfconsciously enjoyed as any other inherently beautiful thing—a forest, a sunset, a wild creature, a piece of music—without either excessive pride or embarrassment, but simply, with acceptance and humility.