Do You Have a Gifted Child?

A Checklist of Characteristics for Giftedness

Jul 26, 2007 Douglas Parker

While many schools and educational professionals are trained to identify gifted children, here is an easy way for parents to get a first glance at their child's potential

Some parents choose not to know the gender of their baby before birth, and some want to know what color to paint the nursery. In the same way, some parents don’t want to know if their child is gifted and all that goes with it for fear of labeling or having greater expectations placed on their son or daughter. Despite that, parents of gifted children pretty much always know that something is different about their child, and this is where this giftedness inventory can help parents take a few first steps into the world of gifted education.

Why Do Schools Test for Giftedness?

Generally speaking, the one major reason a school would screen students for giftedness is to provide those children with a different kind of educational program that would best meet their needs. In the same light, parents could want to know about their child’s giftedness so they could get as much support in place as they can. In many cases, raising a gifted child is not an easy task, so the sooner the identification can be made, the sooner the parents can get to work. It is especially important to focus on gifted children in their early years as this is when a great deal of the cognitive growth occurs, and when the children are forming their self-images about themselves. It is during this period when children decide if being gifted is okay for them, if it’s really bad, or somewhere in between.

The school district or private educational professionals are the experts at identifying a gifted child after administering the appropriate investigations, including intelligence tests and teacher testimonials.

How Can Parents Tell If Their Child Is Gifted?

There are some anecdotal kinds of observations that can be made by parents to see if they might want to move ahead with testing sooner than the school’s efforts. These are offered only as general thoughts, and are not accurate for children of all ages. So, you might have a bright and talented or gifted child if he or she:

Reads at an early age, often before five

Gets along well with adults or older children

Has a wild imagination

Has strong opinions

Has a very good memory for details

Is very curious

Is critical of himself or herself

Asks a lot of questions

Sees himself or herself as “different” from the other kids

Can plan ahead

Does not always respond well to external motivation

Becomes uninterested when things slow down

Can be critical of self and others

Exhibits uneven, or asynchronous, development of his or her emotional, social, physical and academic levels

Understands adult jokes and stories

Makes good guesses at things

Has a well-developed sense of right and wrong

Likes to learn for the sake of learning

Might be experiencing discipline issues at school; especially at staying focused

Has a well-developed vocabulary

If your child exhibits some or several of these characteristics, you might want to consider taking the next step with testing to identify if your child is gifted.

The copyright of the article Do You Have a Gifted Child? in Gifted Education is owned by Douglas Parker. Permission to republish Do You Have a Gifted Child? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Gifted

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