How do I nurture an academically gifted child?

[avarteayaya]

He is only 5, so I'm aware things could change.

His school have told me he is gifted, and significantly ahead of his peers. But they have been pretty crap in explaining how I can help meet his needs and develop his "gift".

I want him to be able to reach his full potential.

I'd really appreciate any insight, I don't want to let him down!

This is exactly what happened to my son. He never had to put in any effort to get 10/10 in primary school. All the teachers warned me that not putting in effort can easily lead to him getting a big shock at secondary. And it was 100% true. He did ok ish in exams but nothing compared to what the gifted child his primary teachers said he would be! He’s now at uni and now 22 years old. Stil an overall general lack of effort 🙄 but can say when he really applies himself, he gets top top marks

Books

Limited or no television

Seeing his parents reading and doing things not watching television all the time

engaging extra-curricular activities

But at 5, books and reading.

And his father needs to be seen reading by your son. There’s research that suggests that boys who see their fathers read will read themselves.

No television before 7pm and limit screen time generally.

I'd pay to get a WISC V done, it's just a set of fun puzzles and the results will tell you where his strengths and weaknesses are in 5 areas.

I found it really useful for DD as it showed that her verbal comprehension/numerical skills and pattern recognition were all in the highly gifted range but processing and working memory were 'just' normal. This made total sense and explains why she prefers tasks written down or she'll forget, or how she can write beautiful and technically complex answers in English and complete very challenging maths problems written down but cant spell out loud for toffee nor say her timestables and often counts on her fingers for mental arithmetic.

We had hers as part of her ASD assessments but I'm sure clinics would do a WISC V separately if you requested it.

Both of my DC were in GAT cohort at primary. At secondary, they were both in the top 5% academically in the country.

Personally, I didn't give two hoots. I encouraged their interests (but not obsessively), took them to museums, football, camping trips, penny arcades. I figured they'd find their own way without me hammering at them at home when they were getting extra tuition and opportunities at school.

One is a now biomedical scientist, one is a surveyor.

Don't push him through books too fast, DD read Harry Potter early on andit ruined books for her for ages as other books just didn't live up to the excitement etc.

Lots of exposure to not just novels but poetry and play scripts and non fiction.

Keep an eye on the fun factor, gifted children particularly if introverted and mature with it often are treated much older than they are.

Otherwise just do what you would with any other children exposed to the arts, theatre, museums and art galleries. Extending simple things like timing how long it takes a car to go down a 1 m ramp once he's mastered using a stopwatch and recording the time you can't teach him how to calculate the speed of the car (might be a few years for that one yet but you get the idea)

Lots of great advice, in addition learning games like chess, draughts, card games, Jigsaws can help build strategic thinking, learning to question and give explanations that involve 'Higher order Thinking Skills' to build critical thinking. Develop creative interests.

Puzzles are great, DD despised jigsaws however logical puzzles were a huge hit. thinkFun do a great range on Amazon.

Following . . .

Ds is 5 and according to school some sort of child genius although I'm taking that with a pinch of salt. He's definitely smart.

We do a lot of embedding maths into stuff at home (like the car speed examples above, adding up the shopping as we go round the supermarket), read a lot of non fiction. Pointless is a fave TV show. Occasional museum visits. Extracurricular science club. I'd love an Extracurricular maths club but can't find any. Maths puzzle book always to hand for long journeys or meals out.

However, also he's in a football club,he's terrible at it but we keep taking him and encouraging him (and not telling him he's terrible). Hes learning the piano slowly. And we have fairly regular playdates to try to develop friendships.

Oh yes, also chess, rummikub, draughts, some of the Orchard games. One person puzzle games like Rush Hour and Rubiks cubes.