A message to parents of gifted children

By Beth Smith, M. Ed | #smithingifted

Your child comes home and tells you something that makes your heart sink.

Maybe a classroom teacher said:

“I don’t know how they are in gifted.”

Or perhaps the comment was made directly to you during a conference:

“I just don’t see it.”

“They don’t act gifted in my class.”

“They aren’t one of my highest students.”

As a parent, it can leave you wondering:

Was my child identified incorrectly?

Are they really gifted?

Why isn’t the teacher seeing what the testing showed?

Before you begin questioning your child—or the gifted identification—there is something very important to understand:

Gifted does not mean perfect.

Gifted does not mean straight A’s.

Gifted does not mean finishing every assignment first.

Gifted does not mean beautiful handwriting, perfect organization, flawless behavior, or always having the correct answer.

And gifted certainly does not mean that a child will demonstrate advanced ability in every classroom, every subject, every assignment, every day.

Giftedness is far more complicated than that.

Giftedness Is About Potential, Not Performance

One of the biggest misconceptions about gifted education is that gifted students are simply the children who perform at the top of the class.

Sometimes they are.

Sometimes they absolutely are not.

A gifted child may have extraordinary reasoning ability while struggling with writing.

A child may understand advanced mathematical concepts but make careless computation errors.

A student may read several years above grade level but forget to turn in homework.

A gifted learner may produce incredible work on something that interests them and barely complete something they find repetitive.

Some gifted students are perfectionists.

Some rush.

Some become bored.

Some are anxious about being wrong.

Some hide their abilities because they desperately want to fit in.

Some have ADHD, dyslexia, autism, executive-function challenges, or other learning differences alongside giftedness.

These students are sometimes called twice-exceptional, or 2e learners.

And some gifted children have simply learned that being academically invisible is easier than being academically different.

None of those things automatically makes the giftedness disappear.

“But My Child Isn’t the Highest Student in the Class.”

That’s okay.

Gifted identification is not an award for having the highest grades.

It is an educational determination based on evidence showing that a student has learning characteristics or abilities that may require something beyond the typical curriculum.

That evidence might include measures of reasoning ability, achievement, creativity, classroom performance, observations, portfolios, or other data depending on the identification process used by the school.

A report card answers one question:

How is this student currently performing on the work being assigned?

Gifted identification attempts to answer a different question:

How does this student learn, think, reason, and respond to challenge—and what does this student need educationally?

Those are not the same thing

Sometimes the Bigger Question Is: Why Aren’t We Seeing It?

When someone says,

“I don’t know how this child is gifted.”

I think there is a much more useful question we can ask:

“What conditions help this child show us what they can really do?”

Because gifted ability can be difficult to see when students are primarily being asked to:

* repeat information they already know

* complete work that is significantly below their readiness level

* memorize rather than analyze

* follow procedures rather than solve problems

* answer questions with only one correct response

* practice skills they have already mastered

Sometimes you don’t see advanced thinking until you provide an advanced thinking opportunity.

Give the student a complex problem.

Ask them to defend an argument.

Let them investigate something without a predetermined answer.

Ask them to design a solution.

Introduce ambiguity.

Let them debate.

Allow them to create.

Give them something they don’t already know how to do.

Then watch.

That is often where gifted learners become much easier to recognize.

Gifted Students Still Need to Learn How to Struggle

There’s another side of this conversation that parents need to hear.

Being gifted does not excuse poor effort, incomplete work, disrespectful behavior, or refusal to participate.

Gifted children need accountability too.

In fact, one of the most important things we can teach gifted students is how to work through something that doesn’t come easily.

Many gifted children spend years succeeding without developing strong study habits because school has been relatively easy.

Then suddenly they encounter something difficult.

And they don’t know what to do.

They may shut down.

Rush.

Avoid.

Argue.

Procrastinate.

Say, “This is stupid.”

Or decide they must not really be smart after all.

That’s exactly why gifted students need appropriately challenging learning experiences.

They need opportunities to discover:

I don’t know this yet.

My first idea didn’t work.

I need another strategy.

I need help.

I can revise my thinking.

I can keep going.

That’s not evidence that gifted education isn’t working.

That can be evidence that gifted education finally is working.

Parents: Don’t Turn the Comment Into Your Child’s Identity

If you hear that someone has questioned whether your child belongs in gifted education, please be careful about how you discuss it with your child.

Imagine being nine years old and hearing:

“Your teacher doesn’t think you’re gifted.”

A child may translate that into:

“I’m not smart anymore.”

That isn’t the message we want.

Instead, try:

“Being gifted doesn’t mean you’re expected to know everything. It means your brain sometimes needs different kinds of challenge. You’re still responsible for working hard, learning from mistakes, and doing your best.”

That message protects the child without removing responsibility.

What Should Parents Ask?

If you have concerns, approach the conversation with curiosity rather than confrontation.

Ask questions such as:

What specifically are you seeing in the classroom?

Where is my child doing well?

Where are they struggling?

Is the concern about ability, achievement, effort, behavior, organization, or something else?

What happens when my child is given more complex or open-ended work?

Is there evidence that my child has already mastered some of the material being taught?

What types of differentiation are being provided?

What does my child’s gifted teacher observe during gifted services?

Then bring the pieces together.

Gifted education works best when classroom teachers, gifted teachers, families, and students share information instead of working from isolated snapshots.

Because the student who appears disengaged during a worksheet may spend ninety minutes passionately engineering a solution to a problem no one assigned.

The child who rarely raises their hand may produce remarkably sophisticated thinking in writing.

The student who struggles to organize a backpack may reason several years beyond age expectations.

Both things can be true.

And Teachers, We Need to Be Careful With Our Words

Teachers are human.

We make observations.

We ask questions.

And sometimes we genuinely don’t understand why a student’s assessment data looks very different from their classroom performance.

That’s worth investigating.

But saying,

“I don’t know how that child is in gifted,”

can unintentionally communicate that giftedness is something a child must continually prove to adults.

A better statement might be:

“I’m seeing a difference between this student’s identification data and their classroom performance. I’d like to understand what might be contributing to that.”

Now we have a conversation.

Not a judgment.

That’s the conversation gifted students deserve.

The Goal Isn’t to Prove That a Child Is Smart

I don’t want gifted students spending their childhood proving that they belong in a gifted program.

I want them learning.

Struggling.

Questioning.

Creating.

Researching.

Failing.

Revising.

Collaborating.

Taking intellectual risks.

Discovering what they are capable of doing when the answer isn’t obvious.

Gifted education should never be about protecting the label “smart.”

It should be about responding to a student’s learning needs.

So when someone says,

“I don’t know how they are in gifted,”

perhaps our response shouldn’t be to defend the label.

Perhaps we should ask:

“What haven’t we discovered about this learner yet?”

Because sometimes the most gifted thing about a child isn’t immediately visible on a worksheet.

Sometimes you have to give them the right problem first.

#smithingifted

Gifted ≠ perfect.

Gifted ≠ highest grades.

Gifted ≠ easiest child to teach.

Gifted means there is more to the learner than we may see at first glance.