How will I know if my child is Gifted & Talented?
This is a question that many parents wonder about and it is definitely not one that can be easily answered.
So what does it mean to be gifted? How does it influence a child’s life and experience? How does it shape, not only childhood but the whole lifetime?
The very best answer ever written comes from researcher Michael Piechowski. He wrote:
Giftedness is not a matter of degree but of a different quality of experiencing: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding – a way of being quiveringly alive.
Piechowski was referring to the extraordinary intensity with which gifted individuals perceive and experience life. It is precisely this which makes their responses so intrinsically different from those of other people. They often see long before others see, see much further, or see far more deeply and powerfully. (Cathcart 2018-2021)
Identification is, sadly, a complex process and can become quite a beast to wrestle with for parents and educators alike. There are though some early milestones that can give us a glimpse into what some traits might look like in early childhood and these should be what I believe should guide us to observe, notice, record and wonder about.
Research tells us that parents are the best people to identify their own children so for me there is also an element of trusting your gut involved in this. From my personal experience, many of our parents are also gifted and so they intrinsically know what the child is feeling and experiencing but because they may not have ever been formally identified they hesitate to promote the idea out loud.
If you have noticed your child appears to be doing things that peers of the same age are not, write your observations down and date them.
This could be an early acquisition of language, first words being short sentences.
It could be their sense of determination to do everything themselves, like dressing, selecting their own outfits, struggling to get socks on unassisted.
It could be their insistence on feeding themselves when they lack the basic coordination to hold and guide the spoon but the sheer determination and refusal for you to help.
It could be their insistence to be the boss of themselves and becoming an emotional superpower if you attempt to intervene.
This could be insisting on clicking their own seat belt at 2 years of age every single car trip and having a fit of rage if you try to help them do it faster.
They may develop an “imaginary friend” who they play with, talk to, complain about, blame things on, make up stories about, and giggle uncontrollably about them for ages.
They will exhaust you with non-stop questions about everything they experience in the world, on walks, in the rain, at the park followed by the inevitable “But why?”
They may struggle to sleep and have nightmares and dreams that seem so real and terrifying they are upset, emotional, crying, inconsolable.
They may worry about their friends if they hurt themselves or get sick showing empathy at a young age.
They may make rapid progress through developmental milestones, learning words, speaking, walking, running, throwing balls, riding a bicycle, drawing, writing.
They may play with lego, toys, puzzles, books for long periods of time alone, happily engaged in their own company.
In my experience early childhood educators are very good resources who see these traits first, many parents will recall in later years a conversation with an early childhood teacher about the possibility the child was gifted.
There are many checklists and identification traits available for parents and the TKI links with checklists for Aotearoa New Zealand, including Māori and Pasifika guides are a good start.
