I am the mum of a gifted child. AMA

[mumof2andimtired]

My son is 8 years old and is considered gifted. I usually just browse on mumsnet but I decided to make a post cause so many people in real life have so many questions!

I also have a 12 year old daughter

I could read and write at age 4. It was the 60s. Lots of kids could I suppose. Different times. I wish your son well x

That was me

Anxiety and depression set in very early. I didn't amount to anything.

I hope he has a better experience. I also hope you don't have really high expectations of him like my parents did for me.

Really hope that's not the criteria for globally gifted! 😂 all jokes aside it can't be?

We make sure that he gets to be a child. Nobody has any high expectations of him, we don't focus on the fact he is gifted. Our focus is making sure his identity doesn't revolve around academics. We have always taught him and his sister that making mistakes is so normal and we learn from mistakes.

He is kind, caring, funny and creative. Those are the traits we talk about most in this household. Academics are a small part of his personality

So you mean he has a high cognitive ability? 'gifted' is such a woolly term. So the support you get from having this labelled presumably is to help him navigate areas that are less 'gifted'?

I don't have high expectations of him. He's a child. My only expectation of him is that he cleans his room (spoiler alert, he rarely cleans his room)

My son is 4. He could read fluently by 3. Does that make him gifted?

The support is to make sure he feels supported. Socially, academically, mentally.

And yes, he has a high cognitive ability, that's the correct term.

I doubt it 🤣 I wouldn’t have thought many of today’s kids can read and write before they go to school?

Well there’s a range of ability in any age group, I think usually 4 to 5 years, so being 4 years ahead (ie year 7 or 8 work in year 2 or 3 is clever but not that unusual). A prodigy is someone extraordinarily gifted, so think great musicians or mateticians.

I think if he did it on his own it could be hyperlexia. If you supported him then I think it's normal.

Have you looked into the "After Gifted" community?

In my experience gifted kids actually need more support later on, often at a time when kids are becoming late teens/young adults and should be becoming more independent in their studies.

This leads to the later stage flop for a number of reasons (from lack of practice of having to work hard for grades, to self esteem issues etc etc)

You might already have a plan in place for this, but it so often gets overlooked by parents.

When did you first realise he was gifted? Was his development from birth way above what's expected? I once saw a documentary about a little boy with a very high IQ and he apparently first spoke at 4 months old! Gave his parents a fright 😂

Me and my husband have spoken to many professionals and we do have a plan in place for when he is a bit older. Trust me, me and my husband know better than to try and navigate this situation without support

Ruth Lawrence was a child prodigy. She passed A-Level maths at age 9 and entered Oxford University at age 12. She graduated with a starred first-class bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oxford in 1985 at age 13.

Oh lord. The last AMA I saw on this was a disaster. Grabbing popcorn.

Which is what most parents would claim to do. Labelling him as gifted and telling him that he is gifted goes against that though.

Good luck. I don’t know any adults who were labelled gifted as children who haven’t suffered as result, I really hope he doesn’t suffer too.

Why was he evaluated by an educational psychologist?

I am not clear what this is about really. What does gifted mean? Does it matter?

What are you wanting people to ask?

I was pushed on at school and took all my exams early and went up to uni early... it did not profit me in any way whatsoever. I was too young for uni and it was socially very difficult. And career wise it meant nothing in the long term.

Your child needs to have help with social skills and learning to be kind. These will benefit him most. Forget the label.

Not necessarily I could read fluently by 3 and my handwriting was years ahead and I’m not gifted

Done entirely by himself, no phonics, just sight reading. However he does not have hyperlexia as he has good comprehension. Hyperlexic children struggle with comprehension.

Well he was a very alert baby, but we didn't realise he was gifted until until he was about 2 years old. There was heavy signs when he was about 18 months old and we noticed he would seem to actually understand the alphabet and he recognised sight words very easily. We noticed he would sort his toys into categories, complex categories for a 2 year old. He could count way above the numbers we had already taught him. So there were heavy signs when he was 18 months old but we really started to properly notice when he was about 2 years old

His school had a meeting with me and my husband and they told us that my son should be evaluated by an education psychologist

So could I in the 90s, but that doesn’t make me gifted! It’s well within the parameters of normal.

I think it's within the normal range. Just like some children can ride a pedal bike at 2 and some don't master it until 10. Some can sing in tune and have rhythm and others sound like dying cats being tortured.