Parent Support is Crucial
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Parent support is incredibly important to nuture a student with gifted and talented (GT) characteristics. Check out these resources below to identify if your child is GT and the best ways to support the child academically, emotionally and environmentally.
Parent Resources
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Developmental Support Child
Parents can help most by providing an environment rich in affection, materials and equipment, and allowing the child to take the initiative in operating in this environment. The child needs encouragement and approval for genuine success.
Although the bright child needs attention from his/her parents based on an understanding of his/her special aptitude and needs, directed enriched learning opportunities should not be over-emphasized. There are many avenues of learning. Let the child discover his/her own interests, work on hobbies, read, and delight in varied experiences.
Gifted children and their parents should enjoy each other--not feel they must “develop each other's higher level thinking skills.”
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Emotional Support for Child
The various attitudes that parents display toward a gifted child range from excitement and pride to bewilderment and even negative attitudes about giftedness. Some parents seem to be concerned primarily with the child’s achievement. Some gifted children sense that they are not loved for themselves but for what they can achieve, and resent this, sometimes to the extent of doing poorly in school.
Some parents seem almost jealous of their gifted children and have difficulty communicating with them for reasons which neither parents nor children understand.
Other parents appear indifferent to their gifted children. These are usually parents who place a low value on education, thus restricting their children’s natural eagerness to learn.
A favorable home environment is one where basic affection for the child is expressed in efforts to meet his/her needs without excessive permissiveness. In such a home the child has freedom within limits-- freedom to explore, to experiment, to read widely, and to have friends. He/she has many outlets for intellectual interests, but is not pushed. The child who is pressured may resist learning which would come naturally to him/her.
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Fostering Intellectual Growth for Child
The beginning of appropriate education for gifted children, as for all children, starts early in childhood. Often parents recognize traits in their young children which lead them to suspect that their son or daughter is different. That “differentness” however, may be greeted with a variety of parenting responses. The alertness and curiosity which lead the toddler to open drawers, taste dirt, bang pans and demand the identity of dozens of objects is welcomed and encouraged by some parenting styles. These same parents delight in their child’s discovery of the world and take joy in the child’s growing powers of observation.
Parents who value compliance and conformity may discourage the curious child by showing displeasure when the child experiments with objects and asks a number of questions. Alertness and curiosity, the ability to name and compare many objects, sensitivity to detail and persistence are some of the early traits which may lead to giftedness in school behavior. The continuation of these abilities may be largely dependent upon parental acceptance and encouragement of those abilities.
