A different kind of teacher to spot and avoid!

Came across another type of primary school teacher this week. And I think I may have gotten a glimpse at why some gifted children 'dumb themselves down' and by 8, they are developing academically along with their peers.

This teacher suggested that the way she likes to 'handle' gifted children is to encourage them to help the teacher out with their slower classmates, particularly with reading and maths. Now initially this sounds like a good idea - to keep the gifted child busy in the classroom after they've finished their work early. BUT....make no mistake folks - I definitely don't approve.

You see.........while the child is acting as a free teachers aid/assistant - they are not developing any further than their peers at all. They are forced to learn at the same pace. And the justification for it? "We have 30 children in a class - there just isn't time to deal with the needs of one child."

Honestly? I'm appalled. It makes me madder still to know that this particular teacher works in remedial reading. She's got all the patience and time in the world if a child can't read at all. The truth is....that teacher never has to research extra material or locate extra resources or deal with any paperwork to accelerate a gifted child.

Grrrrrr!!! If a teacher isn't prepared to help the gifted child in their class, they should at least be handing their care onto someone who is - not crippling them just because they can't be bothered.

Further notes on education

Had a really 'interesting' moment at Sophia's pre-school yesterday which gave me a little insight on educator attitudes. One of the teachers had taken the kids across to the park to have a bit of fun with a home-made rocket. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing - it can't have been too advanced or crazy because the kids are only four but they were asked to draw about their experience afterwards. Sophia starts to do the scribbly thing she often likes to do...just toddler kind of stuff really. The teacher says to her, 'no, no sweetie -- why don't you draw the rocket.' So Sophia then does the other type of drawing she likes (it's almost split-personality-ish) which is fairly accurate kind of stuff. She draws the rocket with the windows and the sun and the teacher with all her fingers and toes etc.....and the teacher just couldn't believe what she was seeing.

But this is what a parent of a gifted child means when they say, 'they just need a little encouragement.' That little bit of encouragement just to think a little differently can achieve vastly different results. I suspect this is the difference that occurs when they get to school. Teachers that leave the gifted to just do what they do because (being very bright) these kids don't need assistance.....are cheating that child of their potential.

When Sophia was three we decided it was time for her to go to kindergarten for social purposes and because it was a learning environment that might help to keep her little mind stimulated. When we observed one of the teachers telling her off for smudging letters on the board when she was trying to read them, we called a meeting with the teachers and we told them of her abilities. We said that she 'just needs a little encouragement'. I think they heard....'I want you to help me get my kid into university when they're 8'. They were instantly intimidated and kept saying....'children need to play at that age'. We took her out of there because of the number of times we observed Sophia being left to her own devices. They weren't even bothering to encourage her to socialise with the other kids in the end.

Attitude changes when it's a gifted child involved in discussion between educators and parents. The reaction from the educator is either keen curiosity or fear. When a child does things outside the expected outcomes for their age group, the accusation that we are cheating our kids of their childhood by pushing them to learn things they don't need to know yet is often soon to follow. That comes from the idea that 'this is a child that doesn't fit 'the box' and I've got to fix it! These parents must be shown the error of their terrible ways!'

Here's a pearl of insight for that type of educator......gifted kids don't need 'pushing'. They initiate the subject they're interested in themselves. And with a little encouragement, they can fly where ever they want to go.

Children need to play at every age, at any level of development. Where is it written that learning can't be play? Play is learning - is it any different if you're playing with words or playdough? Or both!  Why is it that if a child is three or four....any 'learning' isn't perceived as play? When a child initiates learning about a subject, why discourage them because of their age? Aside from having to restrict age appropriate material, why discourage a passion for learning?.

Some would say let the teachers find out for themselves and then they'll change their attitude. I don't believe that attitude ever changes. What happens instead is that teacher ends up with too much time to damage the passion a child can have for learning before you, as a parent, can find out.

Attitude is everything in my book and doubly important for a gifted child from the very start. I'm still saying...cut to the chase...use the words we're all uncomfortable with and ask your child's teacher straight out - 'what's your attitude to gifted children'. You'll know inside of 30 seconds whether or not they are going to have a chance at meeting your child's educational needs. And when you say, 'they just need a little encouragement', make sure that's exactly what the teacher understands.

 

The 'Aha' moments.....

So when does any parent really start to wonder if their child might be gifted? There are little signs that make you wonder a bit. She knew her alphabet before she was two. We thought....'that's kinda cool' and somebody mentioned that that might be more than 'cool' and perhaps moving into the very bright arena. We thought she was fairly bright but that perhaps we were seeing more potential that was a bit more obvious because of extra encouragement. After all, Sophia had had more exposure to computers and educational TV than the average child.

There was another time, I remember pretty clearly, also when she was two. We're sitting in the lounge one day and Sophia marches up to me with a little stone pyramid that normally sat on a small bookshelf. She said, "Mamma! This is a pyramid - it has four sides!" I said, "That's nice dear, now take it out of your mouth." It was funny and cute but we just did the whole...isn't she a clever wee thing!

It really sorta dawned on us that perhaps it was a little more than 'fairly bright' when we were at the library one day when she was about two and half. In fact it more bowled us over a bit. I got hold of a book that I thought she might get a kick out of. It was different arrangements of food cut up to look like different objects like planes and people and see-saws etc. I put it down in front of her and she announced the title of the book - 'FOOD' - very clearly. I kind of looked at her and went, 'really? no way! she must have figured out what it was by the pictures on the front.' So we start going through this book and she's carrying on her little trick and that's when I noticed she was naming intangible things that she might not have gotten from the pictures.

The first book at 2 and a half

I did a bit of a double take and then I thought, 'ok Missy Boo-boo - lets just have a look at what you can really do then.' I rummaged through till I found a fairly simple level one reader and I gave it to her. She read it cover to cover on the spot. I just about fell over backwards. I knew damn well that this was very different to what I was familiar with and I knew that I had never known anybody who could read at two and a half.

I went home and told her father.

Then we went and asked a few people what they would do, how they would handle it and just how far outside of the box is this? One thing in particular that was mentioned to us was the issue of comprehension. One teacher said that she had come across children learning to read early (although none so young as Sophia) but most of them could read the words but didn't understand them. Not only did Sophia understand them but by the time she was three and half, she was using conceptual words in the correct context. I do remember having a wee debate about the usage of one word (unfortunately I can't remember which one) that could be applied the way she was using it, if you took the literal meaning of the word, but it wasn't quite the way that word was used - the context wasn't correct. It was quite funny trying to explain to her the why's and in the end I just said that the English language was a bit silly sometimes because most of its words were borrowed from other languages.

The thing is her age never really impacted on us until that moment when we actually took stock of how old she was. This is because it is very easy to forget how old they are. It's only now that I'm writing it all down and taking note of things happening at certain ages that I'm sitting here thinking.... holy crap - well duh! lol

On onwards.... to babyhood.

Our daughter is four now and she's just amazing. It's taken me this long to get down to writing a blog about our experiences. I've kinda held off because one of the things a parent of a gifted child often experiences is ridicule. Every time they try and find out if something is 'normal' or what they can do to encourage something - somebodies got to get their boot in because clearly - they're one of those 'loopy' parents that believe their child is special above all others. The fact is, you tend to know when your child is doing things that are a little odd for their age and that sends you out for answers. With a gifted child, you're out looking for answers all the time. And what makes it particularly difficult is that 'professionals' are often the worst to scoff.

There's a lot that I don't remember, I afraid. Key things that could be helpful but - keep an eye on things - and I'll slap them in when I remember them. I can't remember a lot about the early early days. They were pretty much a blur of new parenthood and sleeplessness. I can tell you that she often didn't sleep. Awake every half hour some nights. She didn't nap as a wee toddler either. And even now.....getting her to sleep is.....interesting. She often slept with me - even from the time we were in the hospital. Although its often frowned upon and people are slamming the practice heavily now - the nurses seem to understand that if she and I were going to have a chance at bonding, we had to sleep together.

She held her own head up, pretty much from the start. I think that could be because she didn't have to try and negotiate 'normal' birth. And she hated anybody touching her head - or her hands. I remember thinking how odd that was. When people touched her hands (as people often do with newborns) she managed to make it very clear that that was not allowed.

3 months old

She was noticeably strong-willed fairly early on. In this photo, her father was looking after her for an hour or so (while I took a break in the garden). He had her in the bouncer with a play-frame and she was getting quite shirty at him moving the toys. Each time she fell asleep, he would try to move them away from her and she would reach up to grab it and stop him taking them. She'd go back to sleep again, he'd try to move them again....she'd have to stop him - all the while barely opening her eyes.

Most of her baby milestones were fairly much on time I think. Some even seemed a little late. She was crawling at 7 months, walking at 13 months, first word at 14 months. Clearly she understood things alot earlier but with talking in particular, we had the impression that she didn't see the point of it. Her first word was UP and her first real sentence came four months later. She'd been playing with my bedside cupboard and announced, "It's a door."

From then on she just motored through things including the alphabet. Its almost as if she just decided from 14 months on, now was the time to get cracking. 'Ok, we're done with this baby thing now!'