What To Do If Primary School Teachers Tell You Your Child Is Gifted
Primary school teachers get to know hundreds of students over the course of their careers, and this perspective allows them to figure out whether they have a gifted child in their class. Often, this precocious individual is far ahead of everyone else and able to solve problems their classmates can’t.
If you’re the parent of one of these children, you probably know it already. But if a school teacher tells you you have a gifted child, that’s often confirmation, given their experience and first-hand observations of their nascent genius.
So, if you get a letter from the school or have an interesting conversation with a teacher at parents’ evening that confirms your suspicions about your child, what should you do?
Understand Their “Gift”
The first step is to understand your child’s gift and what makes them so special. Often, it is in academic subjects, like mathematics, but it can also be in creative or intellectual pursuits.
You can ask the teacher about the specifics of their gifts and what they’ve noticed. Usually, they can point to things like their personal observations, notes, or test scores.
The degree to which your child may be gifted can vary. Many of the brightest people in history were late developers, so it is often the trajectory that is the most important.
Meet With The School Staff
At the same time, you might want to arrange a separate meeting with the school staff. Bringing everyone together to discuss the situation can be helpful.
First, you’ll want to enquire about additional programs at the school and how they could support your child’s experience. Many primary schools offer advanced achiever classes where external teachers come in and host small classes with highly gifted children, where perhaps there are only three or four students in the session.
You can also look into acceleration, or where the student can skip grades. Many younger students do this in classes like maths and English when it is clear that the current level is far too basic for them.
Additional extra-curricular options may be worth exploring. These could include engineering club, music lessons, or enrichment activities (such as personal projects). These can help fight the boredom that highly gifted students experience when having to proceed at the same pace as their average peers.
Seek Opportunities Outside Of School
On this point, it is also worth exploring opportunities for your gifted child beyond the school environment. While academic success is valuable, it works best when it happens alongside a well-rounded life.
For example, you could explore extra-curricular options that tie in with your child’s interests, like art classes or STEM camps. You could also send them camping so they learn practical skills and get used to being out in nature.
Another option is to enter them into international maths Olympiads so they can meet with others like them and test their skills. These events get their brains working and force them to think in sophisticated ways.
You could also build informal clubs with other parents of gifted children. These are a chance for your child to find real peers with similar giftings, able to keep pace with their exceptional minds.
Advocate For Better Education
Sometimes, when you have a gifted child, it is also critical to advocate for better education. Schools aren’t always proactive, so it can be challenging to nurture the giftedness well.
For example, you could work with the school to ensure that your child’s curriculum is sufficiently challenging. Many intelligent children feel bored at school and simply watch the clock until the day ends.
If the school lacks resources or can’t meet your requirements, you may want to look into other options. Charter schools usually have giftedness programs, so these are worth exploring, especially if you have your child’s standard assessment test results.
You could also look into private institutions. These are expensive, but the cost could be worth it for a couple of years as they prepare for secondary school.
Finally, homeschooling might be an option if you can dedicate sufficient time to it. You don’t necessarily have to send your children to an institution if that’s not what you want.
Prepare For Selective Schools
If a primary school teacher tells you that your child is gifted, it may also be time to prepare them for selective schools. Most of these institutions have entry exams where children answer difficult IQ-related questions and then compete with their peers for the top slots.
Therefore, you may want to consider 11 plus tuition. The idea with these services is to prepare your child for the sort of questions that might appear in the test.
Tests vary from one institution to another, but they generally follow a similar pattern. There’s a mathematical reasoning test, an English language test, and then a verbal or spatial reasoning test. How your child trains will depend on the selective school in your area. However, even a few weeks of these sessions is better than nothing since it can enable your child to succeed.
Seek Professional Guidance
Finally, you may want to seek professional guidance on how to manage a gifted child. Even if your IQ is average, it’s possible for your child’s to be many standard deviations above the norm, and even be in genius territory. Children with IQs above 145 are extremely rare and require specialist nurturing to ensure that they don’t crash out or feel frustrated. Their minds are fundamentally different from their peers and have far more expansive requirements.
Educational specialists are useful in these situations. These can design programs for your child to navigate and help them achieve in the areas where they display the highest levels of gifting. They can also provide mentorship, giving your child the tools they need to manage their intellect and use it for things they want to achieve in life.
If you can foster a growth mindset at home, that can help too. Reinforcing your child’s achievements can encourage them to develop a love of learning and pursue topics further.
