What to do with a bright child?

[Mumanddone]

I will be accused of bragging but I really am looking for genuine ideas here please.

4yo DD has started reception. She is in a private school. She can read fluently, writes and her maths skills are great. She is basically bilingual. She carries a conversation like a grown up - she’s hugely imaginative and great fun to talk to. She’s not some prodigy - she’s actually a bit of a silly little girl prone to not listening but she is objectively very very bright.

When I observe her peers, I don’t feel like they are on the same wavelength for the most part. Some of them are barely able to string a sentence together and they still seem to have very infantile form of expression. DD makes friends easily and is happy to play with anyone but at the same time - will this hold her back?

we decided for private school to boost her, but wondering if this is enough. I suppose there is a sliding scale to private education. Are there places better suited for her? Or is there something we should be doing to support her at home/ outside. She does the general run of clubs ie: drama, swimming etc.

Be very careful how you handle this. For very child I have worked with who comes with a label like 'very bright, needs to be challenged', this label has been a handicap. They can become arrogant; it can make it difficult for them to maintain friendships; they can over-rate their work and believe they know better and refuse to take advice; they can refuse to do activities / tasks where they don't automatically excel; they can end up stressed out messes because of the expectations on them.

From experience I would say celebrate a carefree happy childhood full of fun, play and other children. Do not label or set any expectations. You will make it impossible for her to fail. Acknowledge her ability to be kind as well as her academic results.
Celebrate WHO she is, not what she can do. Value her deeply as a person.

Most super bright children average out later in childhood. I would stand back and let her grow into herself. Too much helicopter parenting can damage a child’s self esteem in the long run not enhance it.

My dd is extremely bright and doing great things, but I had to fight off the expectations of others as much as keep my own in check. Be careful others are not putting her on a pedestal she can’t possibly live up to.

A joyful childhood is the greatest gift you can give a child.

I agree, I wish people would stop saying we're all a bit autistic/on the spectrum. It's quite insulting and also seems to diminish the needs for those that actually have autism.

I could read at this age. But didn't have the understanding. I could read newspapers, etc, not just children's books. I'm not a genius and I levelled out. I did have a photographic memory as a child, its not as good from my 20s onwards. I think my brain got full up 😅 If I'd seen the word I'd remember it but I agree with you in that this not really reading as there isn't the comprehension.

By contrast I have an autistic child who wasn't speaking at the start of primary school. Maybe 10 words. He did start speaking later and is objectively very academically bright and achieved well as he went through school - mainstream state schools.

I'm not sure 4 is the age to really "do" anything.

I think its quite usual for only children from middle class families to be a bit advanced at that age. They get so much input from 2 dedicated, educated adults and don't have to share the attention.

My DD and her friend both were excellent readers and had a vast vocabulary because we could read to them at their level consistently, could play 1:1 board games, take them to the theatre and museums, answer their constant questions. My DS came along when DD was 4 and she suddenly couldn't always have my undivided attention, which I would say benefitted her immensely in some respects but did also mean she plateaued a bit in her advancing education. Her friend remains an only child and I would say probably has done better academically so far, they are 14 now, due to the support she gets at home (my DD now has 3 siblings!) but I can see the gap closing as they reach their natural potentials at different speeds.

I suspect "talking like an adult" is more to do with her experiences of socialisation than necessarily about cleverness. Even if she is bright, her early years education is far more about socialisation and self-management.

Making sure you have a good range of books is helpful I found when I had an early reader and school didn't always have books that interested them.

I imagine things will even up over the next few years and they will have classmates working on the same level.

Reading is great and just encourage that. I think you worry if she gets very bored at school and starts acting up, but as she’s just started you are a way off that.

Having two similarly bright DC I would advise you to focus more on her social life than academic because she is bright she won’t struggle, you don’t need to push her she will get appropriate challenge academia wise at school but those DC who ‘can hardly string a sentence together’ as you so horribly put it will be the ones who can bully and ostracise her and IMO a happy child is one who has nice friends, not one who gets the best test results.

Trust me I have learned this the hard way.

Children are so different at this age! Ds was non verbal until he was 7 and really struggled to read and write but by 11 he had a reading age of 16 and he came top in his first year at a top university.
Dd2 was incredibly bright but I made a conscious decision not to encourage her to read and let her explore her world instead. She didn't start school until year 1, still not being able to read and was reading Harry Potter at the end of that school year. Both her and her elder sister are Cambridge graduates.
I taught myself to read at the age of 2 and was bright but haven't done anything special.

Having got three bright children, I always rejoiced when I saw them giggling and being silly. When they were able to react the same as the rest of their peers, that was brilliant. It means they are picking up social skills which will help them in life.
Let them be children; finding a mutual giggle is a wonderful way of making friends.
if you make them feel that they have to be "above" the other children then they will struggle to make friends.

@MargaretThursday is spot on. One of the worst things you can do for a child is engage in attitudes and activities which isolate them from their peers.

Lots of unstructured play with a range of children, with time to be bored and watch the world go by, is completely underrated as a developmental activity for kids.

Academic ability is a great thing and should be celebrated, but it is ultimately interpersonal skills which mainly determine future success and happiness.

My youngest is 8 & is “a high achiever” he reads and writes well, excels at maths, coding and sports. He is in the top few in his class & outside friendship groups. We obviously encourage his learning but don’t over do it. I agree with the earlier post about teaching to fail. This is definitely something we are working on, as we find if he can’t just immediately get it, he gets very frustrated & demotivated. The other thing we noticed was that although he reads, writes and spells very well & was flying up the reading scales at school .. he was doing just that, there wasn’t much focus at school on how much he was actually taking in & comprehending. So this would is now one of our big focuses at home. It’s no good being able to read years above but not actually understanding or taking in the information. I think it’s more important at the younger age to ensure they are well rounded with a good range of hobbies & experiences than to push the academic side too hard.

The benefits of play for children (with adult showing an interest) is evidenced based though. It has nothing to do with a lack of expectations or ambition.

The most important thing is for children to be happy, safe, and well cared for.

I think the best thing you can do for your DD is explore why your self perceived lack of achievement has affected you into adulthood/parenthood and to let your DD know that she has value for being who she is not just for what she achieves. It’s important to teach her that others have value regardless of their achievements or level of intelligence too.

Yes, I would much rather have the child who runs off happily into the crowd than the one who is top of the class (hopefully not necessarily mutually exclusive). Much less heartbreak.

What are you afraid of holding her back from? If she’s bright she’ll do well at school and that’s that. There’s not some levels to unlock that will change her life.

If it helps, my daughter was like this at 4 - miles ahead of her peers in conversation, writing, reading etc. Now in Yr 7 she’s still very bright but she’s not a world level genius!

In my opinion, she is a bit young for formal (individual) music lessons at the moment, although you may find someone to take her on now, it might be quite frustrating for her.

You mentioned piano lessons - I would counsel against that until she is at least 9 because unlike most other instruments, piano music is written on 2 lines of music and is a lot to take in at the beginning. Then you have the problem of two hands working independently - coordination is not easy for such young children.

I bought my children cheap plastic descant recorders and a very child friendly tutor book, showed them a few notes on it and where those notes were on the music stave and let them get on with it. Years later, they (adults) are keyboard, guitar, bass guitar, clarinet, alto/tenor sax and percussion players, who not only play in bands and ensembles but can hold their parts in choirs too. I think the trick is to not let them become too frustrated in the early days. Incidentally, here in Scotland when they were starting High School, keyboard, guitar and percussion were taught to all pupils in 1st and 2nd year, so that they could take music in national exams without having private instrumental tuition.

I am a church musician and have taught school pupils from time to time - mainly singing, but I can offer a range of instruments (banjo anyone) when asked. My speciality is getting failing students to the required standard for national exams, when they are not quite there in 2 instruments. If they can hold a tune, I can get them to perform the required 2 songs in quite a tight timescale.

OP from what you’ve said I wouldn’t assume ND - everything you’ve said is a natural consequence of being an only child with 2 engaged parents, at least one of whom is very invested in reading in particular and academic skills in general.

At a private school the likelihood is that most other children will have similarly engaged parents (that’s mainly what you are paying for) but not all of them will have had the same approach in relation to early reading etc and/or many will have other children. Dedicated 1-1 attention makes a massive difference at this age. You should also know that boys especially mature later but this does not make them less intelligent. You have deliberately chosen co-Ed for your child so shouldn’t then be complaining that she’s more advanced than many other children. It really does even out in a year or so.

It doesn’t sound to me like there is a single thing wrong with your DD - according to you she’s happy at school, doing well academically and socially, not bored - yet you’ve come on here asking for advice on what to do with her as if there is some kind of issue.

The only issue imo is with you thinking that she needs something more or different from what she already has - an expensive education, involved parents - to give her a “boost”. The fact that you are asking the question is concerning (to me) as it just suggests the wrong focus/priorities. If she’s as bright as you say the academics will take care of themselves and you should follow her lead (not the other way round), and your main aim should be developing everything else, and in particular strong relationships with her peers.

I could read at the same age as your daughter, if not a little earlier, and could name all British tree species in Latin. I was reading the classics by the time I was 8. I was always more comfortable talking to adults than to other children, but my difficulty with social situations didn’t fully become apparent until secondary school, I struggled in my first few years in the workplace, and I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until a few years ago. Being neurodivergent doesn’t mean someone isn’t bright and switched on. Your DD may or may not be neurodivergent, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility out of hand - it’s not a criticism of her!

Hyperlexia can be quite an issue with 'good readers'. My daughter (ND) was deliberately held back from being taught to read, so that she learned about stories and reading for information for her first (P1) year. Once they started teaching her to read, she picked it up very quickly and was at an age appropriate level in about 6 months.

We started music lessons and also chess at about age 4. My daughter is now 10 but it was great when she was younger as it mentally challenged her but is age appropriate like music. It can be difficult as she was bright but still only 4 emotionally. We just did lots of fun stuff together like we still do like building radio telescopes, planetariums, museums etc we are currently “trying” to build a submarine.

Ds is autistic and I probably am - according to my adult dd. Hyperlexia is apparently a symptom.

Absolutely agree with teaching to fail and also teaching being a beginner is exciting not shameful. And also you can just do something for fun.

You know we all think our kids are gifted and talented right? I would focus on not comparing your child to others. Rather take advice from their school and what the government state as mile stones. Even if she is advanced, this isn’t America where a young Sheldon type can get moved up grades or to university at 12. Suppose if you’re utterly convinced she’s gifted, you could ask the school to refer her to Mensa . That’s what happened to my friend’s sister when I was at school many moons ago!

This is very good advice

it is ultimately interpersonal skills which mainly determine future success and happiness.

This seems to be more and more widely recognised.

There are loads of bright kids at state schools, too. Maybe she’d get on better there.