To Parents…(With Love)

Abstract

This article is written for the ultimate expert on the gifted child: you, the parent. After all, you know him longer than anybody, and you know him best. You may not be an authority on education of the gifted, but you are the leading expert on your own child; nobody else can make that claim.

Listen politely, but ignore the well-meaning neighbor who thinks that your child must skip herself out of age mates and suitable friends in order to survive in school. You don't have to believe blindly every self-styled expert on gifted children you talk to. Take with a grain of salt the concerned professional who predicts failure for your child in public school and recommends placement in a private school for gifted children. A psychologist in one of the most respected universities in the country laid this on me after testing my five-year-old. I spent a whole year, looking for a non-existent school that we could not have afforded anyway. Maybe my children did not learn all they could in public school (does anybody?), but learn they did, and they went on to the colleges of their choice and productive young adulthood. Listen carefully to your child's teacher because your child in school may not be the one you know at home, and that makes for useful information. But use your own good instincts and gut feelings to decide for yourself what will best help your child become, to quote the late Dr. Elizabeth Drews, more fully human.

So, dear authority on your child, look critically at the suggestions that follow and decide for yourself if they apply to your family. I hope they will be helpful to you because it is not easy to be the parent of a gifted child. But even if they are not applicable, I hope that your evaluation of my suggestions will help you arrive at your own solutions, because you should remember: You know best.