Another gifted at 2 y/o thread?? You bet!!

[OutnumberedDad]

Hi, this is a very long post but I would really appreciate your input.

I'm going to skip the whole 'my child can do this...is she gifted?' part because I recognise that it's impossible to say at this age. However, and for the record it is my first and therefore my glasses are extremely rose-tinted, she satisfies all of the criteria for an advanced child and is probably around Level 3 or 4 when compared to the Davidson's levels of giftedness.

Due to this, I have a multitude of questions in my mind on the best way to nurture her. I am equally aware that she may normalise but currently her learning is growing exponentially with no sign yet of stagnation so I want to keep stimulating her.

A potentially relevant point since I've read that intelligence can be hereditary is that I was basically a 'child genius'. Believe me this isn't a brag since I didn't blaze a trail of glory in any field but I could fully read, write and I knew all of my times tables before starting primary school. I achieved a score of 178 in a Mensa test aged 5 and did my Year 6 SAT's in Year 2. However, accelerated learning didn't work for me because I hated the physiological differences like being smaller than everyone else and I wanted to stay with my friends and with a daughter in the 2nd percentile these height differnces will exist for her too.

My Mum avoided pushing me academically because she didn't want me to be a troubled child prodigy as popularised in the media. Therefore, from Year 3 to Year 6 I essentially plateaued since the school were unable to stretch me and I became bored and increasingly disruptive. To some extent, these traits remained with me throughout my school life.

So, what on Earth should I do with my daughter? Ultimately, I want what my Mum wanted for me in that I just want her to be happy. However, at 27 months, she's already pretty much at a Reception Level for maths and English and while I know the formative years are about developing life-skills, how will she not get bored if she spends every year of her school life going over concepts that she already knows?

She is very friendly and every day we are at the park or going to baby groups so she is enjoying all of the wonderful parts of growing up as a child but should we also be stretching her academically? It seems ridiculous to not give her an opportunity to progress in the next two and a half years but in giving her that opportunity will school not then become even more redundant?

Again, I know that her rate of learning may slow but at a time when she is absorbing everything around her it seems odd to think about slowing her rate of learning. However, that is a legitimate thought which crosses our mind as parents.

For those who think we should stretch her, how should we go about it? We will of course make everything fun but should we 'teach' her as a teacher would or just allow her to learn by picking things up naturally in a non-focused way?

Sorry for the essay and I would really appreciate your responses.

Twofishfingers, I see what you are saying. I had always thought the ability to speak depended on how well developed the vocal chords were and so not an indication of intelligence.

Hi,
lots of good points and advice already.

One thing jumped out at me from your OP:
It seems ridiculous to not give her an opportunity to progress in the next two and a half years but in giving her that opportunity will school not then become even more redundant?

The sentiment that if you hold back don't teach your child at home, they will not be bored at school. That if they are bored at school, it is because you taught them at home.

With very able/gifted children this is simply not true. The thing is that their giftedness is not about 'having already been taught all this'; it is about their capability of learning 'all this' easily, quickly, deeply, usually at a younger age than others. This capability will mean that even if you teach them nothing at home/before school, they will frequently encounter that situation of going over stuff at school again and again that they have already mastered. Because they will 'get' it the first time it is explained, but the curriculum envisages everything being re-visited again and again...

You'll wait a long time if you're waiting for the curriculum to catch up with your child's ability...

That's very true.

Very true. I didn't teach my DS1 how to read as I thought learning it in school would keep him occupied for a while. Within 6 months he was reading fluently. Halfway through Yr 1 he had read all the books for classes Yr 1 - Yr3.

DS1 is not gifted but very bright, he picks things up very easily and doesn't need repetition. This means that in school he will grasp what is being taught straight away, is ready to implement it and is unfortunately then ready to move on to the next thing. This doesn't happen as the teacher needs to spend time going over it until the rest of the children understand it.

In terms of the curriculum he is about 3/4 years ahead but he is coping fine is school. He loves school and its more about the social side of things for him there. He has a great imagination and loves to play.

richmal I agree being degree level at primary age requires teaching, but he wasn't taught any differently than the older sibling. Just as many on here have said, responding to interest and providing the resources.

Older sibling was like me, the type who breezes through to 18, getting top grades with little or no effort at the usual age. Not genius ability or exceptionally rare at all. Admittedly at his level he required different resources. But certainly not at that level because the parents had taken a child like his sibling or I, forced him to drop every other normal aspect of childhood and education , and hothoused maths down him 12hrs a day. He was just something else.

I do agree that everyone improves with teaching. But, I also think it's very hard to define what we all mean by 'teaching'. Ott teaching/ hot housing is fairly obvious. But in general terms sitting at the table with worksheets/ objects or explaining the same concept whilst doing everyday tasks, and writing out questions when requested, amounts to pretty much the same thing.

I was watching my ds do his online homework tonight and realised there's definitely something about maths brain.
He was doing 2 1/2 x 3 1/2. He answered "8 3/4" instantly. I asked him how he done it, and he said 2.5 x 3.5 = 8.75 so that's 8 3/4. I found it really weird that he converts fraction into decimals and converts it back to answer it. It never occurred to me to do it that way. I will never understand his thought process.

Would you consider home education? I ask because I have a little bit of experience in that area - we home educated ds (now 11) for just over 2 years at the end of primary school. This was nothing to do with giftedness, but it opened my eyes to the opportunities out there. If you live in or near a big city there will be loads of social and educational stuff going on and being out of the education system means you can do what you like with the academics.

I have a friend who plans to home educate all the way through. Her son is 8 but loves Maths and is zooming ahead. He's already doing pre-GCSE stuff. He's much more ordinary in English though and hates writing. It's not the problem it would be at school. They can go at his pace in both subjects.

The other plus for me is that the child has no idea they're 'ahead' or different, because there's no point of comparison. It can also be easy for a gifted child to coast at school once they reach teen years and lose their childish enthusiasm. I notice that with my son - 80% is good enough for him, as long as there are boys in his class getting 60 or 70%. Whereas at home, we could push him to achieve his best as he had no other barometer.

Obviously your circumstances may rule home ed out, but it's worth thinking about.

I was going to suggest HE too. It can be brilliant socially (that’s a bit of a postcode lottery though, we are very lucky here that there is a massive and thriving HE community and so much choice of activities that we have to turn stuff down - not the case everywhere sadly).

That’s a really good point about uneven academic ability not being a problem in HE too. Both my DCs have very wonky profiles, and now I think about it so do many of their friends, but it’s easy to work around because there aren’t 29 others.

I’m finding it a lot easier to go with their interests too, my 8yo has recently developed a particular obsession (he is autistic) with chemistry, and we are now going to be doing that to a much more advanced level, while still doing the basics in other subjects (and in fact we can use his interest to help him learn more in other areas, in a cross curricular sort of way). The freedom is really benefiting them in a way I didn’t imagine when we first withdrew them.

It sounds like your DD is wonderfully well rounded but if she develops particular interests when she’s older, HE could give her ample opportunity and time to follow that to a satisfying level, rather than having to fit it in after school IYSWIM.

My gifted child is now nearly 12 and I have the benefit of hindsight now.. Un my experience so far, the more academically selective the environment, the better they fare.

We did it all; state primary (outstanding, leafy primary), selective independent. Neither of these were academic enough and resulted in teasing, issues with boredom and school refusal.

I would have gone for superselective grammar if there was one were we lived but we have instead gone for superselective private. He is much happier as he can be himself.

I have other bright children who thrived in the other schools, so definitely an issue with the level of giftedness. He was also the child who taught himself to read very young (it was 2 or 3), and pretty much self taught through primary school as he was miles ahead of everyone.

Ps homeschooling would have been good but he is pretty hyperactive and as he grew older it would have been harder to find interesting things to do. He is also very sociable/popular which I think was part of the issue as has always been keen to fit in with the majority.

Evening all,

So at her most recent 'review', the nursery have determined her to be BELOW her age range for several areas, including reading and speaking! One suggestion to help her improve is to help her to complete sentences such as "Humpty Dumpty sat on a ..."!! I appreciate they only see her for three hours a week but considering she memorises and recites entire books I'm not quite sure how they could have got it so drastically wrong!

I'm more tempted than ever to find her somewhere else to go now - this may be the straw that has broken the camels back!

Thanks a lot for all the feedback and responses, lots of very helpful stuff. I don't think we will home educate her though because the secondary schools near me are great and we'd like her to go through the school system. I really really don't want to be that parent who goes in to the nursery questioning the report but I must say I nearly walked straight back in there to complain when I read it!!