<p>Destination Imagination is similar to Odyssey of the Mind. Both are helpful for kids who are looking for a different outlet for their skills. And the problems are varied: improv, science, theater, etc. We, too, have moved through the whole K-12 process with our gifted child, and we ended up switching her to a private school after 9th grade. I would say that the private school had very few gifted kids and DD had at least one teacher who had no idea what to do with her: she answered too many questions, she answered them to fast. Ughhhh.</p>
<p>In Massachusetts, we don’t believe in a category of gifted because everyone is special. There is an office for gifted education but my recollection is that it had $0 in funding (this may be different now, because I’m not paying attention). </p>
<p>I found that we had to do it ourselves. In elementary school, I spent a lot of time with ShawSon doing advanced math, talking about international relations, philosophy. Then it became clear that he was also severely dyslexic and we didn’t have time to deepen beyond the school curriculum because he was struggling to do the busywork while learning to read and write. In HS, I took it in to my own hands (and his) by setting up a program of partial homeschooling which enabled us to hire a Harvard grad student to work with him in math while another tutor worked on writing. </p>
<p>One thing that afflicts some gifted kids is that it is painful, almost physically painful not to be intellectually stimulated. They live on the buzz of ideas, argument, etc. Public schools tend not to provide enough of that – although neither did the private school my son attended for middle school.</p>
<p>My D’s best times have been when she had a friend, or a teacher, or both in a given class with whom she could have those interactions. Otherwise she tended to rely on her ever-present notebook, basically talking to herself. I think she wrote about 3 novels’ worth in the past 5 years … kind of re-imagining her life in a lot of ways. </p>
<p>It’s amazing what just a few people can do to make such a difference in these kids’ lives. If my D had 3-4 people at any given time (a friend, a couple of classroom teachers, a GC and maybe a private music teacher) she was all right. When she had a dozen or so sprinkled through her life, she could have the strength to do anything. </p>
<p>She has thanked us for the support we gave her, and knows she was very fortunate. It would be an incredible feat for a kid like this, in a typical public school situation, to make it work without parental support. But usually those kids are the “usual” gifted kids, who are getting 100s on everything, whom teachers notice and nurture on a regular basis. We’re talking here about kids who don’t fall into that kind of “gifted” radar.</p>
<p>I’ll say again that while occasionally it does backfire - and I’m saddened by these stories of private schools that were no improvement (although being aware that could happen was one reason why even at 12 my D didn’t jump at that option) - going into other environments is often a huge key to helping these kids. Feeling trapped in a public school world, especially in a smaller town, can really be fatal to their imaginations. Having other peer groups, other adults, other experiences, has been my D’s lifesaver. Even now, as a rising senior, she is doing a summer program in one of her interests, but through another district’s summer school - new kids, a new director, a great new perspective on both the activity and on herself. I highly recommend these kinds of experiences - they’re not always expensive (ours is costing $50 in summer school tuition, plus some extra gas) and they can be very easy, even if just through an online interest group. My D has made some friends for life this way, and it’s helped her be ready to try whole new places for college, and remember she is who she is, not who the small group of adults in control here think she is.</p>
<p>EmmyBet–I think it’s common for gifted kids to be wildly uneven in development…gifted in one area and not in another. Which may be why teachers have trouble coping. They think the kid is slacking in the marginal area because they are so good and near-obsessed in another. </p>
<p>I just realized S has been doing a running cartoon series (in class) in the back of his math (multivariable) and statistics notebooks all year. Those courses are “easy” for him! :D</p>
<p>^
mommusic- Not sure his teachers would approve of that, but I love it:)</p>
<p>Support needs to be provided at home. Give children everything that they are interested in. My D. was in 5 paid EC’s when she was 7 years old. It took her few years to figure out which ones she likes to keep. I patiently waited, driving her after work sometime to several activities / evening every day and on the weekends with many out-of-town meets. At the end it was 3 activities, by her decision. She participated in all of them all thru graduating from HS. One of them involved her organizing a sport team at her HS that did not exist before. For whole year it was one person team, then 3 others joined. One of her activity she is still pursuing at college as minor. We never had any problem accommodating her talents. We both work full time, and she was the only child at home, so we had resources and very limited time, but we did it. Forgot to mention that she also was in most rigorous classes at small private prep. school and ended up graduating #1 in her HS class. Never liked to read though and had superior writing skills naturally, which continue helping her at college.</p>
<p>I think it’s common for gifted kids to be wildly uneven in development…gifted in one area and not in another.</p>
<p>Which is true for adults as well.
But we* often* expect kids to excel in all areas- or at least be more than competent before we let them go ahead in one.
:(</p>
<p>^Exactly. Which is the appeal of ungraded groupings, or grouping by ability, regardless of “grade level.” If you are advanced in math, why should you be held back just because you are only grade level in English (or vice versa.)</p>
<p>Of course, this type of classroom is more difficult to administer.</p>
<p>One of the significant TAG changes our group did help implement was much more thoughtful “clustering” of kids. I think the teachers have really appreciated this, and the kids have benefited. In HS it happens to a certain extent with the leveled and AP classes, but in the areas where they don’t level (a lot in our HS) it’s been hard on my D to walk into a room the first day and find no one she can talk to. A couple of times she had to ask to switch sections. I am so grateful to her GC, who helped her more than I can say.</p>
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<p>So very true.</p>
<p>^I agree. However, there are average kids with truly remarkable work ethic. They will go further with their attitude than their peers. In area that is hard, they will work harder. They just do not know any other way. These kids are the ones who get awards in area that they are not particularly interested in, they graduate at the top of their class, they get accepted to extremely selective programs that require interviews. They enjoy Merit awards, grants, being hand peaked by profs for assistant positions…many opportunities as a result of people around them appreciating their true efforts and awesome results. Hard work sometime is completely overlooked, and comments usually are: 'She is just so talented in everything that she does." So untrue…</p>
<p>Attitude makes a tremendous difference. Many people are not naturally “gifted” in something (academics, athletics, etc.) but have become successful by working hard.</p>
<p>IMHO, the big thing that these kids need is peers who don’t think they’re weirdos. Challenging classes that hold their attention are all well and good, but they’ll be OK in the long run even if they are bored to death in 8th grade English class. Finding a school where they are not considered freaks, or at least an after-school activity where they have intellectual peers, is more important.</p>
<p>I got a lot out of mixed-age activities, where I was a middle-schooler and could make friends with nerdy high schoolers. I am still friends with a woman who was a HS senior when I was in 6th grade, and we sang in a city-wide children’s choir together. A kid who’s very advanced in one area may be average or delayed in others, and mixed-age groups increase the chances that all the kids can find someone who fits them well.</p>
<p>OP – I would be very curious to know how your boys are doing now. What types of colleges did they choose? Did they find the fulfillment they needed?</p>
<p>I don’t mean to offend, but I think parents need to chill. There’s nothing that Einstein’s parents did to make him smarter or more successful. All they did was do the normal thing that people did. Likewise, today there are many successful people that developed great skills at early ages and never really needed anything more to help ‘develop’ these skills. They will never be developed when you have to make an effort to develop them. They are natural talents and tendencies, they’re wired into the child’s brain. You can’t help every little thing that may or may not trigger or shape their personality, and sometimes things like thought structure and logic are simply natural.</p>
<p>If anything, you might make it worse. I say don’t do anything, clearly your kids are talented. You should let them develop their talents on their own, otherwise you might end up doing more harm than good. Again, I hope I’m not sounding mean or anything, but I think sometimes parents can get a bit overbearing and may not realize it. Your kids will be fine, and if they aren’t, that isn’t because you didn’t try to make them successful.</p>
<p>Both of my daughters are much to moderately stronger in language based classes than in math based ones. Some frustration our part is with colleges in admissions who don’t differentiate between students going into math / science as oppossed to a more language-based field. Our youngest has a 720 CR & 710 Writing SAT scores but only 640 in math. She’s applying ED to Cornell college of Human Ecology majoring in human development. Although looking at the required courses they do not seem to be heavily math oriented, she very well may not get in becasue she’s not a great math student. Older D went through same thing as a International Relations major when applying to schools.</p>
<p>“All they did was do the normal thing that people did.”</p>
<p>in fact einsteins early years and education were complex, involved several schools, his fathers business going bankrupt, etc. </p>
<p>Its not about making kids successful, but removing obstacles to their way, and helping them to be happy.</p>
<p>“IMHO, the big thing that these kids need is peers who don’t think they’re weirdos”</p>
<p>This. TJ, but even more CTY, saved our DD.</p>
<p>I also forgot, I agree very much with the poster earlier in the thread who said that logic and critical thought skills correlate strongly to mathematics. In the case of the poster two posts above, I’m almost certain it isn’t because of a lack of correlation, but maybe the kid just doesn’t like math. There are tons and tons of people who are capable to study mathematics if only they were the slightest bit interested and actually made an effort to learn the skills required, or atleast to relearn them. Of course, this is a problem for those people wanting to get good scores on math examinations, but it’s fixable.</p>
<p>@brooklyndad: I can see that. But being ‘worried’ about your child not getting nurtured intellectually, it starts to become a problem.
In Einstein’s case, sure it wasn’t exactly every child’s life to be in poverty and moving about, but he was not being tutored by the head of the physics department of some grand German research university every day since the age of 5. I’m not sure if you were trying to make this point or not, but the fact that he may have had it a little tougher than most shows that it really doesn’t matter.
Einstein is only one example, someone that everyone is familiar with. There are tons of great scientists, mathematicians, poets, and musicians who never needed any special treatment in childhood.</p>
<p>“Einstein is only one example, someone that everyone is familiar with. There are tons of great scientists, mathematicians, poets, and musicians who never needed any special treatment in childhood”</p>
<p>And how many are there we’ve never heard of, cause there talent was neglected? Or cause the lack of social support drove them to despair? </p>
<p>You do know what selection bias is, don’t you?</p>
<p>I don’t know anyone who expects their kids to be tutored by the head of a university department. What they need is education that both challenges them, and is adapted to the different way that gifted kids learn and see the world. And, as hannah said, a place where they won’t be seen as weird.</p>
<p>I am SURE that does not hurt them. I believe there are studies to prove that. I don’t think its so much to ask. </p>
<p>We provide services to kids who are have LD and other things that make them different. Well gifted kids are also different. Not better, or more successful necessarily, but different.</p>