Giftedness disappearing?? Anyone else experienced this at 6yo?

[Pearlington]

Apologies for the length, but I feel I need to give some background to convey the problem. Dd was scary pretty much from birth. But now, age six, I find it seeming to disappear. It's so odd. Ill give some examples of milestones and intellectual prowess for context...

First speech 6 m
Picked out letters spontaneously 11 m
Sentence speech 13 m
Knew all alphabet letters - names and sounds - 14 m
Naming dozens of plants in Latin 16 m
Drawing recognisable faces 19 m
Asking philosophical, science and maths questions 20 m
Writing name 21 m
Reading 26 m

By 2.5 she spoke like an adult, read non fiction obsessively and had incredible insight and unending spontaneous deductive reasoning particularly in science and philosophy.

She was identified as gifted when she started a highly selective pre-prep nursery at 3 and was given Year 2 homework. In reception, the teacher said she may need to skip a year in a couple of years time and her stock phrase was, ?It must be so exhausting to be her. I?ve never seen a young brain active like that. She never stops experimenting with concepts, deducing how things work, analysing everything around her. It?s tiring listening to it and keeping up with it.? The head of pre-prep and school head jointly decided DD should have her own curriculum put in place from Year 2 on. However, starting Year 2, her new teacher told us the other kids had probably caught up over the summer so DD wouldn't need extension work.

Now, she remembers little of what she taught herself then and seems to have lost the endless thirst. She taught herself the names of all the bones in the body, how the organs worked, today she does not seem interested. The eternal incisive questioning has stopped and if I offer to explain something she says it?s boring and she doesn't want to know. If I ask her about things she used to love to discuss, she looks blank or gives a fairly thoughtless (or perhaps more age-appropriate) answer. If something looks challenging, she avoids it. Her brain never seems to get into gear.

She still says amazing things occasionally and about two months ago, I found her in the kitchen trying to extract DNA from her saliva - she'd found instructions in a book and got the whole experiment together on her own. Her reading age at 6 is pretty much adult. But all the burning curiosity and drive has weakened or even gone.

I've never pushed her but responded to her interests. Now I feel a little lost and confused as to what's gone on. I feel like I'm parenting a changeling. I asked her today if science still interested her and she said, "not like it used to. I'd like to know a bit more about cells.""What would you like to know about them?""I dunno". That was it. She has a Brian cox app and watches a lot on space. The only other relevant info I can think of is that I?m currently pregnant and have been seriously ill with my pregnancy and she seems to be suffering enormous self-esteem problems and keeps telling me she is stupid, a bad person and ? today ? a loser.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks so much in anticipation.

op, I don't know anything about gifted children but if you took the g&t out of the picture, I'd just be concerned about the behavior. Is school ok? are her teachers ok? does she know she can talk to you if something wasn't right?

just finished thread Glad she's herself again

Port

Oops portofino, I'm in the uk.

Justabout - I think you could be right. I do feel that this experience has equipped me with some better skills and I think with my illness, I assumed her resilience was greater than it is. I also think that there are too msny adults in her life dishing out discuI do think there are issues at school too which we can address.

Grrrr phone interface playing up. Should say, too many adults giving her discipline which I put a stop to about a week ago and I think that really helped. It can't be easy being one kid with loads of adults (7 to be precise) around telling you what you're doing wrong all the time. I'm sure that would affect anyone's motivation, self esteem and enthusiasm after a while.

I've been trying to focus on the self esteem but it's really hard. She's so disproportionately hysterical about failure. By which I mean, if she drops a glass, she hates herself. If she yells at me, ten minutes later she is a worthless human being. I have wondered if being disengaged is a way of avoiding failing academically so as not to feel more stupid.

I am wondering if you or someone else inadvertently focused on the end result (thinking of statements like 'The next Grand Master!') rather than the process of thinking and exploring that can sometimes lead you to an end result (but sometimes not). If anyone ever made remarks along the lines of 'What a smart girl you are' then a child can become something of a performing pony and 'perform' her smart schtick for her audience. Which is all right and mighty fine until some other child who never even appeared as a blip on the radar suddenly gets 100% in maths or dazzles the teacher with something she does in art, and the child who has up to now been getting all sorts of (unhealthy) attention for her 'performance' suddenly finds herself adrift.

It's always better to encourage effort and thought process and other elements of learning such as organisation, thinking out your methodology, using your time well, etc., and not end result, certainly not the end result if it is described in terms that link the achievement to some innate quality of the child at a time when a child, no matter how advanced in terms of intellect, is still in the process of forming a self image. Phrases like 'Clever girl', 'Walking encyclopedia', 'The next Grand Master' are millstones around a child's neck.

I think the opposite actually. We never told her she was smart because we didn't want her self worth to be based on her performance. We have always focused on being kind to others, trying your best and never let her think she was anything other than normal.

As with many kids like her, she does put pressure on herself and we could see early signs of perfectionism at a really young age and we asked the school for help with that. We set up rewards at school and home for trying things that she couldn't do well to try and give her a greater sense of being valued when things aren't going well and never made a fuss of the things she was freaky advanced in. Never discussed it in front of her. I so desperately didn't want her to feel special for her brains. The most important thing has always been for her to be happy, have fun and be kind to others. And apart from the crazy perfectionism that the school say is all self generated pressure, she really has been extremely happy, fun loving and renowned among the mums for her kindness. That's exactly how it should be.

That's why it was so scary for me when it all went weird. We discussed with her teacher whether we actually went too far concealing her ability from her and should actually tell her she's pretty clever and we took a decision to try that. Sadly, she didn't really believe us. But then, our mantra has always been be a good person and everything else will work out so I guess it is meaningless to say anything else now.

Performing pony? Never my daughter. There are a couple in her class. Hot housed to death. One is only allowed to play with educational toys, only allowed one friend a week, only allowed to play with certain children - the other days are for studying. Fifth birthday party was a classical concert. Uptight miserable serious kid it breaks my heart. I would never do that to my daughter.

Incidentally, her mother wants her kid to play with mine after she figured out what kind of a kid she is and suggested to me that a kid like mine should be taken out of the school and sent to a special academic centre and that she must be bored to death and would run into real difficulty being in our school with such a brain. I politely explained that I was in no hurry for dd to rush ahead just because she was capable and I would rather she had fun at this age.

Please note I have never told another school parent about my daughter's ability as I do not want her to be judged for what she can do but accepted for who she is. I also don't think it's of any consequence to anyone. All the kids are special in some way. Her assessment of dd is just based on what she has witnessed in her house and she has told a bunch of mums that my dd is a genius. I fervently denied it when asked and said, she's just a bit of a science head at times and she likes to read but really she's pretty normal.

Ps the next grand master comment was made to us not her and I don't think she was in ear shot. And yes I have heard teachers say "clever girl" to her but I'm pretty sure they say that to all the kids when they do well. Her grandfather used to clap and say clever girl when she did stuff and we really pressed him repeatedly not to do that exactly for avoiding that kind of pressure in her head. But I do wonder if we over compensated. I'm pretty sure most parents don't avoid telling their kid they are clever when they read well or do something good at school. But we have. Perhaps the strategy was wrong and a bit more praise for achievement would have been of benefit?

Thinking sensibly there are also genes involved. I've not been too shabby myself on the achievement front but I suffer from terrible self doubt and inferiority issues so for all my efforts to give her the right balance I also guess I should recognise that some of it might be hard wired.

H, I'm so glad things are improving. Once you feel better, I'd suggest getting hold of How Children Fail by John Holt, I suspect you'll enjoy it. It's a positive book, not as negative as the title sounds. Also, there's How Children Learn which I also found useful.

Thanks so much fishlegs - googling now!!

I wasn't trying to insult you or criticise you. I was just saying that maybe she needed time for her body to catch up with her brain. And I'm saying this as a parent of a child who is considered gifted. Where I live it is common for children to be put up a year, do well for a while and then suddenly drop behind and end up redoubling the year. Often they regain their academic abilities later on and the thinking is that their brain is focusing on other areas of development. All children ebb and flow but it is more noticeable in a child who stands out.

Ok sorry. I just get frustrated sometimes that ppl see the word gifted and want to make all sorts of crazy assumptions about the kind of parent I am and the kind of kid she is. I've met many who fit that stereotype - parents and kids - but we truly don't. I've worked hard at keeping dd as grounded and normal as possible and anyone who knows us would vouch for that, but ppl online don't know and it never ceases to amaze me how quick ppl are to judge, condemn and patronise ppl they know next to nothing about. Yes, I thought you were one of them. Apologies.

This is a very intelligent child who somehow picked up all sorts of information without being hothoused. I would say she picked up the phrase 'clever girl' too, either from family or in school from classmates, and of course from unthinking teachers.

Why do teachers do this? Whether a child is 'clever' or not is neither here nor there as far as the teacher is concerned. A teacher should no more say 'clever child' than 'stupid child'. It's up to teachers to mind their mouths and provide stimulating work, quietly if necessary. The DCs' school had a system for this - a folder called 'never done work' was in each child's desk, and if a child finished their set work early then they were supposed to take out the folder and work away on anything inside it that took their fancy, and then hand that in too. Work was replenished in the individual folders as necessary, with the teacher making sure each child had something to do that was up to their standard. Extra work was sent home quietly in the take home folder.

Resilience has been brought up, and imo resilience is an incredibly important quality to foster in children, maybe gifted children in particular, because there will come a point in the life of every gifted child when she meets her match, intellect wise, or she hits a wall and actually has to work really hard at something to get on top of it. You foster resilience by focusing on emotional intelligence through listening, talking, togetherness in general, by including the child in chores that are necessary for the running of the home (becoming part of the home team); competence and having a valued role produce confidence and keep a child grounded, by getting the child involved in a coached sport that requires effort and commitment (or a musical ensemble), supporting your teammates/bandmates and shrugging it off when you have a bad meet/performance. Sports teach the gifted child that others have gifts too -- and who knows, the gifted child might also be pretty good.

You foster resilience by focusing on emotional intelligence through listening, talking, togetherness in general, by including the child in chores that are necessary for the running of the home (becoming part of the home team); competence and having a valued role produce confidence and keep a child grounded, by getting the child involved in a coached sport that requires effort and commitment (or a musical ensemble), supporting your teammates/bandmates and shrugging it off when you have a bad meet/performance. Sports teach the gifted child that others have gifts too -- and who knows, the gifted child might also be pretty good.

Wow, yes. I agree with math anxiety.

I agree mathanxiety! A fair bit of what you suggest has already been included in our repertoire of strategies for combatting perfectionism and failure phobia. House chores, musical instruments and sports are in there and lots of talking too. There are also a few great novel ideas in there to work on. Thank you!!

She has a great and very ticklish sense of humour that we also use to diffuse moments of overt failure fear. Yesterday, for example, I had her on the floor in giggles because I was dramatising having to call emergency services because we found out my daughter had a human brain in her head and not a computer after she admitted that if she doesn't see the solution to a math problem absolutely instantly, she would call it impossible and give up.

After that, she played a five minute computer game where she had to make guesses to reveal the information in a time limit. As soon as the timer runs out it starts again with a new question so no chance to contemplate. Using the running joke about brains not being computers, she started to find the strength to blurt out answers that she wasn't confident about, amidst lots of hilarity. She had enormous fun and took an enormous step forward: by the end of the game she had lost all her fear of getting things wrong within that game and was laughing riotously when she got a big cross.

The next day after school, ske begged to play the game in front of dh. This time, no fear of the big red crosses and loads of excitement and pride as her accuracy improved. Dh was amazed. We talked about how much she had learned once she stopped fearing the mistake and just enjoyed the process, and how she could use that in other situations. She's really pleased with herself too.

As a personality, ironically, her self confidence (socially not academically) is excellent and I often think borders on over confidence. Although that waned lately, it does seem back on track.

Like you made assumptions about "screen zombies" you mean?
My 2 sons both use iPads.
They enjoy them and have fun.
They are also both very bright boys (but not gifted) who enjoy school.
Assumptions go both ways do they not?

Is she learning any computer languages? This is a good way of getting screen time. In computer programming there are many ways of skinning a cat so it can be helpful in combatting perfectionism and that sense of there being a right or wrong answer.
In my experience (clinical psychologist/academic) of testing gifted children, parents of girls tend to neglect computing.

May I ask please what area you are in? My son is a highly intelligent 2 year old whom we are looking for schools for as we are concerned about the situation you have highlighted. I am based in the North East UK, and am looking to start a focus group where parents/carers of gifted children are able to come and share their experiences/views with regards to education. The purpose of this research is to gather evidence in support of opening a gifted and talented school/unit that understands the social and emotional aspects of being gifted and allows our children to learn together at their own pace with like-minded individuals in an environment where they are stimulated and happy in their learning. Please contact me if you feel you could be of any help. Thank you.

Badvoc, that wasn't a judgement about anyone. Dd has access to an iPad. She plays on it and has fun. But if I let her have free access to it, she turns into a screen zombie. Her behaviour goes haywire and she becomes bad tempered. I don't think that allowing that to happen is healthy and I want her to have a healthy relationship with screens as a part of her life, not an unhealthy addiction.

Buster, she isn't but I think that's a really interesting idea. My husband was a programmer for a long time and I learned to program as a kid and also did some low key programming during my research years. I think she'd love that. Thank you.

Smiler if only. We live in l

Grrr. Sorry. We l