You may have noticed something special in your child, or perhaps people are telling you that your child is exceptional. You may be parenting a musically-gifted child or parenting a profoundly gifted child. In any case, you need to make the right determination to reveal their hidden talents.
However, whatever the indicators, it is not easy to distinguish whether your child is gifted or not, and you can ask how do I know if my child is gifted.
Gifted children often have significant variations within themselves and develop unevenly across skill levels. Let’s say, a gifted child may be excellent in chemistry, but poor in reading--or vice versa. Generally, intellectual skills are quite advanced, but fine motor or social skills are lagging.
Before we dive any deeper, let's take a look: what is giftedness?
Although there are different definitions, the following definition of the Columbus Group, on which many sources agree, seems quite satisfactory:
“Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally”
There are so many challenges of parenting a gifted child, but if you use the right tools, you can channel your child in a way that strengthens their abilities.
MentalUP is an application that includes intellectual games both for gifted children and for children of all intellectual levels. In order to contribute to your child's cognitive development, you can leverage MentalUP to make it fun for your gifted child.
With 150+ brain exercises for focusing, attention, visual intelligence, and many other areas, where gifted children have problems or have high development potential, MentalUP can help you reveal your child's gifts. You can easily benefit from its suitable gifted child test.
Here are some most of the common characteristics of gifted children:
Parenting a gifted child has different characteristics than parenting other children. Undoubtedly, the upbringing of each child requires a special approach.
However, in raising gifted children we encounter different specific difficulties, mostly arising from the motivation of parenting a gifted child with perfectionism. At this point, you should emphasize effort and progress rather than perfection.
Most talented children are often accused of being naughty, careless, and unconcerned.
Yet, misidentifying gifted children as naughty is an indication of the incapability of those who educate them.
The correct approach to this kind of child should be understanding the fact that they learn faster than their peers, comprehend facts more quickly, and then get bored with the subject.
Therefore, you should help them develop skills and interests, for example, in music, plant science, animal care, electronics, carpentry, mechanics, law, design, and crafts. Thus you can satisfy their hunger for self-development.
Special, talented children always have difficulties expressing themselves when they cannot receive appropriate training with a special education curriculum and appropriate trainers.
By instilling ways to help your child understand and regulate emotional reactions, you can develop your child's emotional intelligence and make them more compatible with their environment.
Another significant point is finding or creating opportunities where your child can explore interests and nurture talent:
Even though parenting a gifted child is more difficult than parenting other children, it is also very enjoyable! Because of that, most importantly is that at the end of each day, you have to remind yourself: “Wow, I'm so lucky!”
The more intellectually gifted a child is, the greater the risk of social difficulties and unhappiness. Therefore it's important to keep an eye on your child's self-esteem and work with their teacher and school counselor if they’re really struggling.
Some gifted children feel pressure to "give back" because they feel so fortunate to have their own intellectual gifts.
Gifted children are often driven to be high achievers in all areas of their life. Your child may procrastinate on starting homework or school projects or spend a lot of extra time on them because of their desire to get everything right.
Gifted kids tend to be their own toughest critics. Many struggle with testing because of the sky-high expectations they feel when they sit down for an exam.
After earning mostly A's in school, getting a B or C grade can be crushing to your child — and shocking to Mom and Dad. Help your child keep a healthy perspective on grades.
One of the potentially most difficult aspects of giftedness is having trouble making or keeping friends. Gifted children may appear to be socially mature and well adjusted, but might feel lonely or sad about problems with peers.
When raising a gifted child, applications that are versatile or that focus on specific topics that may interest your child can be very useful.
Generally, the focus is on the cognitive development of gifted children, but attention should also be paid to the physical development of each child. MentalUP is a blessing for parenting a gifted child as it brings together both physical and mental development in a single app. In addition to fun educational games, MentalUP measures your performance and development with regular reports.
In this way, kids can discover their strengths and improvable skills, and parents can track their kids’ improvement over time.
Along with brain games that aim to improve children’s visual and verbal intelligence, logical reasoning, attention, concentration, memory, math skills, analytical thinking, and problem-solving, MentalUP recently released its fitness feature to support the physical development of children.
In MentalUP Fitness, there are a total of 240+ exercise types including strength, stretching, cardio, balance, and fun exercises.
Thanks to this feature, which has voice-over language options accompanied by 3D characters, children's movement, and physical development, children are supported during periods of inactivity.
Thanks to these components of the app, children can choose their friends to work out with as well as the place they prefer. The app is also certified as a pedagogical product and has 10+ million users as a reliable source with no ads.
The Official NASA App includes a collection of stunning images, videos, mission information, news, NASA TV, mission status, and more. Set the groundwork for your gifted child to explore the world!
This app will meet the expectations of gifted children that are eager to explore the world and encourage them to learn more.
In this app, kids pick up some basic physics lessons and construct their very own machines to digitally play with in real time. Play with physics! Build and operate your own car, crane, rocket ship, plane, helicopter, tank, and more!
Once your invention is complete, Monster Physics will render it with its built-in physics engine and let you actually operate your creation in real time. Drive your car, operate your crane, guide your rocket into space, or fly your helicopter! The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
One of the most important problems is creating conditions that can reveal your child's special abilities, on the one hand, and give emotional support to your circumstances, which are difficult to adapt to the outside world, on the other hand.
Encourage questioning. As you’ve probably noticed, gifted children ask a lot of questions. When your child asks a question that you can’t answer, it’s okay to admit it. Then help your child find the answer by visiting the library, searching the Internet, making phone calls, and/or consulting experts on the subject. Be curious yourself. Let your child know when you are learning something new or researching the answer to a question you have.
Talk to your child on a regular basis about their experiences. You will be able to pick up on signs of frustration or boredom. Then you can manage it with beneficial apps for boredom like MentalUP.
Stay in touch with your child’s teacher. Attend parent-teacher conferences, and include your child, when appropriate. Build a respectful relationship with the teacher. Keep a file of test scores, report cards, and work samples that show evidence of your child’s giftedness.
To develop high motivation, students need stability, psychosocial support, and challenges at their cognitive level. Settings that do not meet these standards can hinder students’ motivation.
Furthermore, to effectively nurture self-efficacy and academic self-belief in gifted adolescents, it is essential to let them engage in meaningful learning situations; otherwise, they are at risk of becoming underachievers.