All
of us love would love to hear and believe that our
children are gifted. Indeed, it is a parent's dream
to be the father or mother of a gifted young boy
or girl.
However, as a parent,
it becomes your responsibility to identify the special
gifts of your child early on and provide the best
of nurturing so that the child makes the best of
his/her gifts in the longer run.
So the
first issue that you need to solve is the identification
problem - you need to identify whether your child
is gifted. You would be able to identify this using
some trends shown by the child from an early age.
There are ten characteristic trends that your child
would tend to show.
Remember
that almost every child will show few of those trends,
but some of them would end up showing at least eight
or nine out of these ten trends. And the children
who practically show all the trends are the ones
who can be labeled as gifted.
Early
signs of intellect: The gifted children tend
to have a great memory. The impact of this good
memory is seen early on, when they start understanding
the basic concepts of mathematics, sciences and
languages at a very early stage of life. They grasp
the subjects firmly and form a deep and profound
understand of the subjects at their levels.
Desire
for knowledge: Gifted children tend to ask questions
for apparently no reason. The real reason, however,
is their intrinsic desire for knowledge. The reality
is that they do not ask arbitrary questions; rather,
they try to understand objects, events and actions
using their intelligence, usually make a lot out
of it and then ask the questions to tie the loose
ends together. They are often inquisitive enough
to dig deep into things and pull apart their toys
and other non-obvious stuff to see how things work.
They are explorers at heart and tend to be driven
a lot by practical knowledge.
Advanced
development: gifted children are normally much
more developed compared to other children of the
same age. They start identifying the parts of their
bodies at an extremely early age. Their vocabulary
is normally way stronger than other children of
their age. They tend to play with letters and digits,
create new words and uncover mathematical secrets
that are challenging at their given age.
Sensitivity:
Gifted children tend to be sensitive. Many of
them tend to attach the symbols of others' anger
and criticism to their own selves. They are often
driven by impressions.
Aware
of differences of success and achievements early
on: Since the gifted children are capable of
achieving more things compared to their peers, they
also tend to be successful in their early lives
in a way. As a result, they learn to attach the
sense of success with their work and enjoy the feeling
of achievements out of it. And as time passes, they
start putting a higher value tag on such factors,
again adding a personal notation to such achievements.
Focused
long spans of activity: Gifted children may
appear to be impatient in many of the cases, but
if they face the right kind of intellectual problems
that interest them, they would keep sitting and
attempting to solve the problem for a long span.
Often, they would not budge till they see the other
end of the problem. On the other hand, problems
and challenges that occupy regular kids are often
rather trivial to the gifted kids and they tend
to solve them quickly and move forward, giving an
impression of impatience.
Reasoning
capabilities: Gifted children tend to develop
excellent reasoning and logical capabilities early
on in their lives. The logical power develops and
matures more as the child grows up. The symbols
of logical powers are clear from an early age. If
you give a gifted child a piece of jigsaw puzzle,
s/he will attack the problem and solve it in a reasonably
short period of time. This is because of the excellent
reasoning aptitude of the child.
Moral
insights: Gifted children develop early insights
into moral issues. They tend to be capable of deciphering
apparently inconsistent adults and react negatively
to such behavior. The negative attitude might comprise
of anger, despise and hatred. These children also
tend to have a sense of social responsibility such
as helping the needy and not supporting war etc.
Capability
of manipulation: Gifted children tend to have
a great imagination and memory. They are also intelligent
enough to associate different fragments inside their
memory into a logical train even if that requires
some out-of-the-shelf thoughts. Adding imagination
to that, such children are excellent at manipulating.
When it comes to physical object manipulation, they
would apply the same logical and pattern-matching
prowess to carry out manipulation of excellent quality.
Capability
to identify reality and separate it out from absurdness
and fantasy: Since the gifted children are smart
and intelligent, they are also equipped with a great
analytical power. They can, thus, apply their thoughts
and analyses to distinguish between reality and
fantasy. They can make out what sorts of events,
goals and achievements are practical and what are
not. And their brains make them follow their understanding
rather than desires. This makes such children extremely
mature, in a way more mature than even many adults.
To identify
whether your child is gifted, all that you need
to do is figure out whether at least eight or nine
out of the above ten criteria are applicable in
case of your child. If so then you know that you
have a gifted child and must nurture him or her
accordingly with the right kind of education and
exposure. Feel free to welcome extremely gifted
children rather than sending them to arbitrary schools
where the child may not receive sufficient personal
care that would make the best of the child's talents.
Visitors
who read this article also read:
-
What
To Know So Your Child Isn't Overlooked - Gifted
kids
-
Gifted
Children Characteristics and its unpredictable development
-
8
Multiple Intelligences in children
-
What
is the Theory of Multiple Intelligences?
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