Growing With A Gifted Child

By Diane Scanlon, 1996

When my son was 3, he could read those great big dinosaur names and match them to their pictures. I knew this was not normal. So, I hid his books whenever we had guests.

At 3 1/2 he was reading ingredients on boxes in my grocery cart and telling me which ones we shouldn't buy. People would look at him funny, so, I did my best to leave him home whenever I had to go to the market.

When he was 4 and reading high school level books, my cousin, the public school teacher, told me public school would ruin him. I didn't listen. I honestly thought, for some reason, that they would love to have a kid like this in any school. Until........The first day of kindergarten when the teacher requested that I have a talk with him. He was reading all the words that were up on the walls and he couldn't write his name. She asked me to tell him not to be so lazy since he obviously had to be able to write his name. And she didn't want the other children to feel bad that they couldn't read like him. I listened and did as I was told. My son's first school lesson was that he was bad because he could read and that he couldn't write his name.

Later that year, he wanted to take his medical book in for show and tell. I said "no" and handed him a toy instead. He went to school in tears that day. At 5 1/2 he was answering questions on Jeopardy! And for a long time only my husband and I knew this.

In the first grade he couldn't sit still in reading class. Gee, I wonder why?

In the second grade he still couldn't write well and couldn't spell for beans, so they told me that he qualified for special education even though he was so smart. So for the remainder of that year and the next three, they tried to get him to think of smaller thoughts to write. They wanted him to use vocabulary at age appropriate level because he had the vocabulary of an educated adult.

In the third grade he tested for the gifted program in our old district. He wasn't chosen even though he was 10 times smarter than every other kid in the school, including the sixth grade and everybody knew it. Unfortunately, over there the high achieving academically talented student had to struggle through what was called gifted education and the intellectually gifted child got writing resource and drugs were always an option. Go figure!

By the 4th grade, I hadn't received much help to understand why this boy who loved learning so much was miserable in school and as they tried their best to dumb him down, I didn't interfere because I honestly believed they knew what they were doing. And the more they tried, the more depressed he got.

The fifth grade was sort of OK because the teacher didn't have the materials to give him what he needed. But at least she knew what he didn't need.

I knew I had to do some learning myself. So, "I" hit the books. The education I received was frightening. I read case study after case study of children of promise who were locked in an educational system that would not bend to accommodate them. Somewhere along the way I learned that without the right kind of emotional and educational support, kids like this started to fall apart almost as soon as they hit middle or junior high school. They needed specialized teachers and needed to be away from peer pressure but instead were left in the regular classroom and attention was drawn to what they could not do, but none was drawn to their intellect. Their teachers grew to resent them and they were put on drugs that made them behave but stole their creativity. The ones who were not hyperactive were picked on relentlessly by age mates and pressured to conform. Many of the exceptionally gifted kids were plagued with some kind of a handwriting or spelling problem, which makes them appear less able than most children instead of more able. These problems were due to a learning disability such as dysgraphia. Or it was simply asynchrony. That's uneven development. But they were so smart that they could hide these problems in the early years. Possible disabilities were left unchecked, or modifications were flimsy at best. If by some miracle they actually made it to high school, they could not take the lack of recognition of their advanced intelligence anymore and cracked. They were labeled as trouble makers, deviants, emotionally unstable, behavior disordered, ADD, ADHD. Take your pick. It's not going to happen to Joseph.

At some point last year, I found out that about 10 percent of the children in our district should be gifted with maybe 3 or 4 like my son. Then I ultimately learned just how rare he really was. And that's when I knew I couldn't hide anymore.

So, I fought for a gifted program and I tried to get my point across that the students who have to study, are high achievers, happy, interested and doing fine are not the ones who need this. The ones who do are the students that are not achieving commensurate to their mental abilities. In rare cases they may be getting "A's", but they say they're bored and their teachers say they don't believe in bored. Others say they don't believe in gifted children. So I guess my last 11 years have been a dream and my son doesn't exist. And then I hear "all children are gifted". So I guess everybody's child reads by before three. I do know that there are other forms of giftedness, but intellectual giftedness seems to be the one that breeds the most contempt by teachers who haven't got a clue of what they're doing. Still, some teachers recognize they're precocious and honestly do try to challenge them and by challenge I mean, allow them to learn something of relevance that they don't already know. They might get lucky one year out of 12.

Sometimes, though, challenge comes too fast and too late. They're used to knowing everything and the fear of failure makes them take an F, rather than try and get less than an A and they "do" fall apart. Their brains rush ahead of their social, emotional, and physical development. The education of gifted children has to be interest based. They also need a very strong support system.

It looks like we may have our gifted program, but, now we have to decide what to call it and it must be for ALL children. The word "gifted" seems to give people the hives. There is so much nonsense over that word. Maybe it's me, but no one seems to get upset over the term "gifted athlete". I wonder what would happen if suddenly every high school boy or girl had to be on the football team. And it wouldn't matter whether they knew how to play or not. What would happen if suddenly there was no football team? It'll never happen in our lifetime, right? Only the best get on the team and nobody gives it a second thought. I never heard the word "elitist" refer to a football player and I never will. Too many people think that gifted education is something to be jealous about. If it were done properly, it would be inappropriate for most children. And that's because it would be inappropriate for most children to be exposed to a level of knowledge that they couldn't possibly understand.

Since our government uses the term gifted to describe this group of children it does not mean that another child has no gifts. That's just more nonsense. I personally don't care if they call these kids purple with green spots. As long as they're educated and treated properly, I'll never complain again.

These children walk into kindergarten with encyclopedic knowledge. They give new meaning to the phrase, "Just the facts, Mam." From day one they walk into an educational "no man's land". Friends of mine once said "books should come with warning labels that say, Caution, allowing your preschool child to read could be hazardous to his education". (Kearney & Kearney) However, some of these kids were reading things they shouldn't, even before their parents knew they could read!

These are not spoiled children who must get their way. They do not view themselves as better or worse than any other children but they know they are different. They are normally well behaved and respectful. If you see one in a classroom, you might not know they are different because they have such a strong desire to be accepted by their peers and have a sense of belonging. They are also the brightest of the brightest and reported by congress to be a valuable, natural resource vital to the future of this nation. I think that they deserve some kind of attention, don't you? If these children are ever to be educated properly, politics, egos and popular opinion must be left out of it. The majority of the population does not understand the needs of these children or the importance of their very existence for society as a whole. So, I've been trying to teach them.

I wrote this all out because I wanted as many people informed about this as possible. I do not blame any one particular teacher or school district for a problem that had its birth long before my child was ever born. But, I absolutely believe that if you are not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. This is why I try so hard to reach as many teachers as I can. If through this story, I have reached one teacher who before reading it thought that the education of a gifted child is an extra that must be written into a contract, than my time at this keyboard has not been wasted.

I'm not speaking to all of teachers, because I know that there are some wonderful teachers out there who honestly try to meet the needs of all their kids, with or without training. I know a few of these myself. It's too bad they're in the minority.