4 characteristics of a gifted child - is your child gifted? Take this easy quiz

Let's celebrate and enhance our children's gifts, whatever they are.

        Perhaps you are wondering if your child is gifted. Several questions arise when parents realize they may have a gifted child. What exactly is a gifted child? Where can you get your child tested and assessed? Can a child be molded into a genius? How does one maintain the balance between encouragement and pressure? Is it possible to raise a gifted child with his happiness still intact? What is the best way to raise gifted children? What if you don’t do anything? (The end of Vol. 7 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! has several useful, hands-on ideas for parents to try.)

        “Every gift contains a danger. Whatever gift we have, we are compelled to express. And if the expression of that gift is blocked, distorted, or merely allowed to languish, then the gift turns against us, and we suffer.” Johnson (1993), as quoted by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Gifted Development Center, of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development, http://www.gifteddevelopment.com.

        Gifted children usually have an intense need for a creative outlet. When a child is gifted, but his/her own school or family doesn't recognize or appreciate it, those talents are often subdued or snuffed out by that environment. This can cause behavioral problems both at home and at school.

        Rita Dickinson, founder of gifted education in Colorado, realized that at least half of the parents referred to her had no idea their children were gifted. When the parents didn't recognize it, the school didn't either. (In many cases, the mothers may have thought their child was gifted, but the fathers talked them out of it.)

        The gifted children most often overlooked were from low socio-economic backgrounds, ethnically diverse, or both. Dickinson also stated that a large percentage of the gifted children she tested in the Denver Public Schools were first referred for behavior problems.

        Public school programs for gifted children give economically-disadvantaged children the only opportunities they may have to develop their abilities. Those who want to eliminate gifted classes are punishing the gifted poor, because the rich can afford private schooling. Many middle class families choose to home-school their children rather than to subject them, day in and day out, to the constant boredom of what they already know.

        Having been a gifted child myself, and having several gifted children of my own, has given me plenty of insight into the dos and don'ts of parenting intelligent youngsters. Whether some children are gifted- and others are not- can depend upon our definition (more later). What makes some children gifted is the ability to memorize things easily. What makes other children gifted is the ability to see patterns and relationships. Others easily see geometric relationships in three dimensions. Even others have the ability to readily understand language structure. Sometimes we view giftedness as having a strong talent for music or art. Maybe some are savants in a specialized area.

        Too often we think of gifted as doing well in school and getting top grades. But there is also the ability to be intelligent in understanding human relationships, behavior motivators, and body language. Sometimes our definitions are too narrow. Genius children can seem attention-deficit or hyperactive due to boredom and a need for constant data input for their brain. They are misdiagnosed ADHD when all they need is more interesting mental stimulation!

        Being gifted is a combination of genetics (nature), environment (nurture), and attitude (the child's own viewpoint and choices). I have one son with a t-shirt that reads, "Genius by birth, slacker by choice," which is so true for him! Attitude - inner motivation - is everything. I have a daughter who gets top grades, but she has to put a lot of work, time, effort, and study into it. She has made herself gifted or talented, in a sense.

        If a child is genetically gifted, her parents can enhance her abilities or destroy her self-esteem by how they handle the situation. Parents can encourage a child's natural abilities or they can ruin them with too much force. Is being academically smart the only area of the child worth developing? What about heart? What about compassion? Social awareness? Gratitude? Humility? A child's love of learning can grow or wither depending on parents' choices.

        Is your child gifted? Take this easy quiz.

• Does your child learn at a much faster pace?
• Does your child process material to a much greater depth?
• Does your child show intensity in energy, imagination, intellectual prowess, sensitivity, and emotion, which are not typical in the general population?
• Does your child create something, somehow, some way, whether academic, scientific, literary, musical, or artistic?

        This info comes from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children (1985), http://www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html, cites three types of characteristics of gifted children: general behavioral, learning, and creative characteristics. Parents of gifted children will get a kick reading through the following definitions and recognizing them in their children. (No, they don't have to have all of these to be gifted.)

General Behavioral Characteristics

1. Does/did your child learn to read early, with better comprehension of the nuances of language? As much as half the gifted and talented population has learned to read before entering school.
2. (Did the gift increase the reading, or did the reading increase the gift, or both?)
3. Does your child read widely, quickly, and intensely and have large vocabularies?
4. Does your child commonly learn basic skills better, more quickly, and with less practice? 
5. Is your child better able to construct and handle abstractions?
6. Does your child often pick up and interpret nonverbal cues and can draw inferences that other children need to have spelled out for them?
7. Does your child take less for granted, seeking the "hows" and "whys"? 
8. Does your child work independently at an earlier age and can concentrate for longer periods? 
9. Does your child have interests that are both wildly eclectic and intensely focused?
10. Does your child often have seemingly boundless energy (which sometimes leads to a misdiagnosis of hyperactivity)?
11. Does your child usually respond and relate well to parents, teachers, and other adults? (They may prefer the company of older children and adults to that of their peers.)
12. Does your child like to learn new things, is willing to examine the unusual, and is highly inquisitive?
13. Does your child tackle tasks and problems in a well-organized, goal-directed, and efficient manner?
14. Does your child exhibit an intrinsic motivation to learn, find out, or explore and is often very persistent? ("I'd rather do it myself" is a common attitude.) 

Learning Characteristics 

1. Is your child a natural learner? 
2. Does your child show keen powers of observation and a sense of the significant? (They have an eye for important details.)
3. Does your child read a great deal on his/her own, preferring books and magazines written for children older than s/he is?
4. Does your child often take great pleasure in intellectual activity?
5. Does your child have well-developed powers of abstraction, conceptualization, and synthesis?
6. Does your child readily see cause-effect relationships?
7. Does your child often display a questioning attitude and seek information for its own sake as much as for its usefulness?
8. Is your child often skeptical, critical, and evaluative? (They are quick to spot inconsistencies.)
9. Does your child have a large storehouse of information about a variety of topics, which they can recall quickly?
10. Does your child readily grasp underlying principles and can often make valid generalizations about events, people, or objects?
11. Does your child quickly perceive similarities, differences, and anomalies?
12. Does your child often attack complicated material by separating it into components and analyzing it systematically?

Creative Characteristics 

1. Does your child's creative abilities often set him/her apart from age-mates?
2. Is your child a fluent thinker, able to generate possibilities, consequences, or related ideas?
3. Is your child a flexible thinker, able to use many different alternatives and approaches to problem solving?
4. Is your child an original thinker, seeking new, unusual, or unconventional associations and combinations among items of information?
5. Does your child see relationships among seemingly unrelated objects, ideas, or facts?
6. Is your child an elaborate thinker, producing new steps, ideas, responses, or other embellishments to a basic idea, situation, or problems?
7. Is your child willing to entertain complexity and seem to thrive on problem solving?
8. Is your child a good guesser and can readily construct hypotheses or "what if" questions?
9. Is your child often aware of his/her own impulsiveness and irrationality, and show emotional sensitivity?
10. Is your child extremely curious about objects, ideas, situations, or events?
11. Does your child often display intellectual playfulness and like to fantasize and imagine?
12. Is your child less intellectually inhibited than their peers are in expressing opinions and ideas, and they often disagree spiritedly with others' statements?
13. Does your child sensitive to beauty and are attracted to aesthetic values?
14. Does your child often have a drive to be creative- to create something new all the time?

        In general, a child with an IQ of 100+ is average, of 130+ is gifted, of 150+ is highly-gifted/genius, and of 170+ is profoundly-gifted/genius. The child of 160+ IQ is as different from the child of 130+ IQ as that child is different from the child of average ability. Recent research indicates that there may be many more children in this high range than formerly believed. Due to their unique characteristics, these children are particularly vulnerable to being misunderstood. Highly-gifted children still need specialized advocates because very few appropriate curriculums and non-traditional options have been developed for these children to date. (Common Core should be abolished.)

        Highly-gifted children tend to reveal disproportionate development, meaning that their mental age increases at a much faster rate than their physical and emotional growth. Because of their high cognitive abilities and high emotional intensities, they experience and relate to the world in unique ways. These children are often found as a result of extremely high scores on individually-scored IQ tests, generally above the 140 IQ range. Others may be prodigies or savants in specific areas such as math, science, language and/or the arts. As noted previously, profoundly-gifted children can score in excess of 170 IQ.

        A bright child who is capable of scoring in the high ninety percentiles on group achievement testing may not be considered gifted. We must recognize that standard achievement tests are "grade level testing".  Such a child is definitely academically-talented, but further individualized IQ and out-of-level academic testing must be given before we can define that child as "gifted". [Much of this comes from Linda Kreger Silverman (ibid).]

        May all parents of gifted and talented children recognize those gifts, help the schools recognize them, and do their utmost to enhance and develop their children’s talents. All parents would be wise to teach their children math and reading early (ages birth to 5), and to teach them in the right way – direct instruction and phonics.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/StarLightStarBright4characteristicsofagiftedchildIsyourchildgiftedTakethiseasyquiz