How do I help my super smart daughter along?

[mrbeal]

I'm biased but my barely 5yo daughter is truly gifted. Before preschool she could count to 20 and recite the alphabet and she knew her colors and shapes (like pentagon). All last year she paid attention while my wife did math homework with my son and she can now add and subtract in her head... stuff my son had trouble with in 1st grade. She writes very well and can read. She learned reading because she knew the alphabet and the sounds the letters make. For a while she was convinced she couldn't read, I think mostly because my son doesn't like reading and complains about it frequently. She will now read a book with little help, mostly she gets stuck on larger words just because there are so many letters. If I have her sound out the word slowly and in small chunks she will piece the word together and say it.
So... until very recently I was convinced I should belong to MENSA so why shuldn't my children be super smart too? I have come to realize that I'm not as smart as I thought I was (even though I do VERY well on the online MENSA tests ) but I want to be able to assist my little one if she really is as smart as I think she is. Anyone here with really smart children that can give me an idea of what I have to look forward to as she starts school? I want to know about any programs I should ask the schools about or and suggestions in helping her learn so she can excel in school.

 

[Bikinchris]

Gifted programs are available, but you will have to wait until she is of a minimum age. in the meantime, encourage her to read.

 

[Pa]

Our daughter was (is) similarly gifted, displaying all of the same characteristics you describe. We started her in Montessori school at age 2.5 and piano lessons at 5. She attended public schools, taking gifted and advanced placement courses, and received a scholarship to William & Mary. After graduation, she went to Brown University for her Ph.D, doing graduate research in Middle Eastern Music in Amman and Cairo. She plays piano, harpsichord, fiddle (for Appalachian old-time music) and the qanun, a Middle Eastern instrument. She is now a full-time Mom to two little girls, one of whom is similarly gifted. Unfortunately, the other one has a learning disability and is still not talking at age 5. These daughters require her full-time attention, especially trying to help the child who has the learning disability.

I would encourage you to enroll her in a Montessori school if you can find a good one. We are also lucky that our public schools are very good since this is a university town.

 

[bpdougd]

Our son was a smart kid. Learned to read very early. All the rest. From 1st grade through 6th the local schools had no special programs so we did things the old fashioned way: we showed up at school, worked with the teachers, got him extra, advanced work and attention. Come 7th grade the school district started up a gifted and talented program. We went to a presentation by a consultant to the school district who was helping set things up. That presentation was a revelation for many of the parents there. This guy basically got in all of our faces and said, OK we are setting up some programs but the question is not what the school can do for your kids, it is what YOU are willing to do for your kids. Essentially he validated everything we had been doing and offered an extra set of tools at the schools for us to take advantage of. The moral of this story is don't look for "programs", look to yourselves and show up... show up at school, show up in your kids' teachers' faces, let it be know that you will not accept mediocrity. And, if by chance there are advanced courses and programs, of course take advantage of those.

Rule 1: show up.
Rule 2: make sure the teacher knows you showed up.
Rule 3: be persistent
Rule 4: give your time to your child.... read to/with them... sit with them when they do homework... fill your home with books... TALK with your kids, about anything and everything... you are their first and last teacher.
Rule 5: understand that in extreme cases you may have some hard choices to make... see below

The consultant who did the presentation mentioned above told a true story about a girl in Denver with a remarkable musical gift. She sat and played her mom's piano as a toddler. Her mom got her a wee violin at age 3. Long story short, by the time she was middle school age she had exhausted the capabilities of everyone in Denver including an extraordinary violinist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra. The consensus was that the best teacher for this child was in Chicago. Uh oh. The family was not wealthy, had 2 other kids and now had some hard choices. How much do you sacrifice for this very gifted child? To what extent does providing the best for her diminish the possibilities for the other children? Do you split up the family? Send her to Chicago alone? With her mom, leaving dad with the other two kids? How do you pay for this?

Our children are our first, best gifts. They are also our first, greatest responsibilities. I honestly do not know how I would have dealt with the scenario above. All I know is that you do your very best and then don't second guess yourself or take a trip to guilt ville.

 

[ShaunK]

As a teacher of 15 years, the first thing I would tell you to do is wait. Wait until she actually begins school, and then evaluate her esp. in comparison to the other students. It may be that a little comparison is in order to tell whether she is truly gifted, or simply very bright and above average.

Also, I have seen very bright children pushed at a young age, and advanced very quickly. While they often are able to handle the advancement mentally, it often occurs at a great cost socially. Please be careful.

PS - I have a 3 year old who recognizes every letter and its sound, knows his shapes and colors, does a lot of what I consider amazing things, and he's not even the smartest of our children. My 3 oldest children have been taking piano lessons since age 6 and show great promise. From where I come from, this is not highly abnormal.

 

[GonzoBernelli]

I have a son who, at age three would rather have talked with adult neighbors as opposed to their children. When he reached grade one, the school contacted us because they thought he was acting out in class. We took hime to Denver Children's Hospital and put him through a series of tests, including IQ tests, in which he achieved more than 135. The hospital said we should talk with him to assure him he was not being tested because we thought he was sick, because he did quite poorly in a couple of sections of the IQ battery. When he retook the [similar] test sections a week or so later he nailed them resulting in an even higher IQ result. The hospital came to the conclusion he was bored in class and concluded he "got" the object of the lesson the first time through, whereas other kids were not getting "it" after multiple repetitions.

What had we done as parents? Talked to our children as if the were intelligent; stimulated their fun time by challenging them with games and puzzle beyond their ages (if a game was rated for ages 3-4, they were given games rated for older children, say 5-6); asked them question about they would handle certain situations and then discuss the good points and bad with them trying to teach them analysis and reasoning. Those items have stick in my mind and there were probably lots more, but it was over 30 years ago.

Help this helps some. Once created kids continually need to be challenged...

 

[Palouse]

. . What had we done as parents? Talked to our children as if the were intelligent; stimulated their fun time .... Once created kids continually need to be challenged...

Amen, brother, Amen!
And a lot of patience. And learn with them.

 

[seres]

.....What had we done as parents? Talked to our children as if the were intelligent...

Well said, Nick!

 

[TomP]

As a teacher of 15 years, the first thing I would tell you to do is wait. Wait until she actually begins school, and then evaluate her esp. in comparison to the other students. It may be that a little comparison is in order to tell whether she is truly gifted, or simply very bright and above average.

Also, I have seen very bright children pushed at a young age, and advanced very quickly. While they often are able to handle the advancement mentally, it often occurs at a great cost socially. Please be careful.

PS - I have a 3 year old who recognizes every letter and its sound, knows his shapes and colors, does a lot of what I consider amazing things, and he's not even the smartest of our children. My 3 oldest children have been taking piano lessons since age 6 and show great promise. From where I come from, this is not highly abnormal.

I would be curious to know if in your experience, you have seen negative issues such as attention disorders or any other alphabet soup acronym, or Bi Polar problems with the highly intelligent you you have taught. High intelligence can cut both ways IMHO.

 

[JanJacob]

Another teacher here.

Highly intelligent children are often seen as having social problems. They don't, it's just that they develop differently from other children. Being able to connect the dots much earlier and faster then the rest of us is not always easy.

Comes to mind the story of a girl that went to preschool at three knowing all the colours. The teacher asked of a blue pen what colour it had in class and another pupil yelled 'green'. The kid got a compliment from the teacher, as you do with little children for yelling nonsense. The more intelligent girl concluded that yelling wrong answers was the way to go at school and you can imagine what happened with people's view of her intelligence.

Long story short: Talk to her like she is intelligent, as said earlier. She probably needs it.

Another thing: Don't train her. She'll love it because of the attention, but bare in mind it can hurt her education if not well timed and done proportionally.

 

[TomP]

[quote="Pa,

I would encourage you to enroll her in a Montessori school if you can find a good one. We are also lucky that our public schools are very good since this is a university town.[/quote]
+1
We have an excellent Montessori school here. We could not afford it, and it was a bit far to get to. My daughter is exceptionally smart. The Gifted program started at 8 TH grade here, and it was a free standing program, with different teachers and class rooms all day for 5 years. My daughter got an excellent education. Our local schools had slipped in heir performance when my granddaughter came along... She is as gifted as her mother and was placed in the new "so called gifted program" . In order to not hurt other children's feelings and have a separate program, as her mother had been in for the gifted, the gifted students met only a couple of classes a day; not sure how this assuaged the feeling of the other 600 students, but that is the way it was, and no amount of complaining to the superintendent would change it. So check out your local schools gifted program very closely.

To heck with the feelings of the other students and this political correctness, if that is what we could call it. I am really tired of all children in a contest getting a prize, that is not real life and we are not teaching them to accept failure and to work harder next time. In my day, with an IQ, for what that is worth, of 128 to 140, I was always placed in class A, back then there were 3 classes A, B and C, and the teachers could work at different levels for different students. No one complained, that is just the way it worked, and it made sense. My grand daughter did not get as good of an education as her mother but she is doing great in college. Her mother builds bridges and roads, I could not discourage her from following me in her career path, but I have nowhere the math ability that she has, though until I was 59, I could work square root in my head, but if I asked her a about one of her construction problem she would whip out some paper and start with her trig and other formulas, like she was writing a simple sentence.

 

[Palouse]

[quote="..

To heck with the feelings of the other students and this political correctness, if that is what we could call it. I am really tired of all children in a contest getting a prize, that is not real life and we are not teaching them to accept failure and to work harder next time. ..

Reason 367 why I like you Tom!!!

 

[mrbeal]

Wow, lots of good suggestions here... seems the most important thing is to talk to her like she's a person and help/encourage when necessary. Yesterday she was reading a book with my wife and had trouble with some of the words... my wife just sounded out the word for her instead of letting her sound it out for herself like I do. If she gets stuck with a sound or combination of letters then I help. Most of the time with a little bit of help she figures out the word and goes on her way. I'll keep an eye on her and see how it all goes.....

 

[pixel_a_ted]

Beside all the advice you have received so far, I would suggest also to give her time to be a child. Children need to play and do things that may appear silly and not advancing of their education, but necessary nonetheless.

Barry

 

[mrbeal]

Good point.... believe me, she has plenty of time being a child and she loves it. I just am trying to plan ahead. She's not forced to read, she does it when she wants to. She's not forced to do math problems, she does it when her big brother is doing it too. She plays to her hearts content, even in he bathroom sink with her Barbies...

 

[7006]

Definitely Montessori.
Some believe that each generation tends to be smarter than the previous one (Flynn effect), there are a lot of interesting articles around, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-know-humans-getting-smarter-flynn-excerpt/

In any case, Montessori gets my vote every time.

 

[mrbeal]

I kind of half ignored the first Montessori suggestion... my wife worked at ours for a couple of years and HATED it. She said the treatment of the children was borderline cruel and one of the children was her daughter. We can't afford Montessori anyway so it's a moot point.

 

[bpdougd]

Good point.... believe me, she has plenty of time being a child and she loves it. I just am trying to plan ahead. She's not forced to read, she does it when she wants to. She's not forced to do math problems, she does it when her big brother is doing it too. She plays to her hearts content, even in he bathroom sink with her Barbies...

That's the ticket. With parenting (and life in general) the most important step is showing up. If you show up for your kids you are well along the way to a successful job. My son is 40 now and we have 3 wonderful grandchildren. My son has mentioned more than once that the best lesson he ever got from me was my time.

 

[Bikinchris]

I kind of half ignored the first Montessori suggestion... my wife worked at ours for a couple of years and HATED it. She said the treatment of the children was borderline cruel and one of the children was her daughter. We can't afford Montessori anyway so it's a moot point.

The kind of school doesn't really matter as much as your own support and guidance at home, which will be much more important. You sound like you will make sure she will get that.

 

[Mitchell]

Another teacher here.

Highly intelligent children are often seen as having social problems. They don't, it's just that they develop differently from other children. Being able to connect the dots much earlier and faster then the rest of us is not always easy.

This is very insightful and often overlooked. Our gifted son has never had issues communicating with adults, but has often had difficulty connecting with his peers. This can be a challenging social issue. Our problem was exacerbated when the school skipped my son ahead. In retrospect, it was the worst decision we made. Placing him with older children did nothing for the intellectual disparity, but only intensified the social issues. My son became the bright little kid who was much younger and smaller than the others in his grade. Not good.

In the end, I say stay focused on your entire child. Yes it's nice that he/she can read and knows his colors early, but that is only a small part of their development. Do not sacrifice the other aspects of childhood in a quest to foster and enhance intellect.