It's too much to expect a 7 (near 8) year old to manage her time for a bit of the day, right?

It's different every day -- some days I get Violet started with her math and she whips through it, then the next day, with a similar set of problems, she sits there for 90 minutes, doodling, staring out the window, playing with the dog . . .

Last night we had some consequences for that. She must have spent 40 minutes to do two math problems. The result was that when she came home with the nanny she still had Chinese to do. During the pre-dinner PBS Kids shows she loves to watch. (Surely one of the few almost 8yos who is dying to watch Dragon Tales?)

I remember this from Linda Dobson's The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child, where she quotes several families who pull their kids out of traditional school to start homeschooling. As one mom says, "At first, when there was no one holding their hand every minute of the day, they strayed." Exactly

I'm re-reading this as a reminder to be patient -- one mom says "Four years later, they love it and manage time efficiently enough to assist me and still have the time to participate in their favorite activities." Another says, "We do lots better now, in our fifth year." Emphasis added -- it takes four years?!?!?!?

I admit, independence is something I place an extremely high value on, and I probably have extremely high expectations for young children, even a very gifted child, as far as independence and self-motivation goes. I just wish I could get across the basic concept that if you concentrate and finish your work (which I know she can do), then you have lots more time to play or do what you like later. (Like right now she is loudly singing the Korean hello song from Victoria's preschool, and then a Spanish hello/what's your name song she's making up.)

OK, I feel a little better . . .

So, here's a little photo update from some of our recent adventures.

I love this one of Victoria -- she looks like an old lady grimacing in the mirror

And another makeover shot -- to be clear, they are warriors, not just glamour queens:

Here we are skating, first Violet:

Then Victoria and I:

• Comments (4) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Once again I am posting a link so that I remember to look at it more closely myself when I have more time.

Johns Hopkins University has one of the big academic talent searches and some popular distance learning program through its Center for Talented Youth. So far Violet is a bit young and too far away to take advantage of any of it, but it is a resource for homeschoolers as well as traditional schoolers. (Besides, we're much closer to Northwestern and its Midwest Academic Talent Search and Center for Talent Development.)

Anyway, the JHU site is called Cogito.org, and describes itself as "an online community for academically talented youth." I think by "youth" it means junior high and high school students, and it seems pretty science oriented. JHU has partnered with Northwestern, Davidson, and some other talent search-type programs to create the site, and one of these organizations has to refer you to get full membership. But you can get stuff from the site without being a member.

Here's part of the "about us" statement:

You're passionate about math and science. You already like to think about, talk about, and do math and science, but you also want to know what else is out there-and who else is out there. Or maybe you're someone with a developing interest in math or science and trying to figure out what's out there for you and who's out there to share your ideas with.

Either way, Cogito is just the place for you. On Cogito, you can read news and features on topics ranging from global warming and biostatistics to cold fusion and bioethics, and beyond. You can explore the intersection of science and the arts, from computer animation to science fiction. You can find great resources including book reviews, "Best of the Web" guides, and listings and reviews of summer and distance-education programs, internships, and academic competitions. And if you are a member, you can participate in online interviews with experts in various fields and in discussion forums with other members like you. Membership also grants you access to the Cogito virtual library where you can find a wide variety of research materials and a librarian dedicated to helping you.

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

The e-mail list for our state gifted and talented council linked to a couple of blog posts on the Teacher Leaders Network about gifted ed.

Some "intriguing" quotations:

. . . and also ...

. . . and even this . . .

At first I reacted really strongly and started composing a response about how sloppy this 30-year teaching veteran -- and gifted specialist with a Masters in Gifted Ed -- was with her terminology and definitions. Then I was too busy and I dropped it. Then I started thinking about how poorly served my daughter had been by this type of thinking -- basically that giftedness is so nebulous and so parent-driven that no one should have to change what's "worked" (heavy sarcasm there) for every other student for the past 20 years -- and I got even madder.

And that's when something in me clicked, and now I say again:

I am So over school.

I was headed in this direction from the day I realized we had to pull Violet out of school -- the day that my conversation with a very nice and well-meaning teacher had me repeating the phrase "at home she . . . " and "well at home she . . .," "but you see at home she . . ." and -- ding ding ding ding ding -- popping lightbulbs -- oh, I get it! She's happier and learns much better At Home!

But now, well, let me just say that my thoughts are still a little raw, and I have a strong inclination to express my "over-ness" with some deliberately chosen expletives, something along the lines of "Forget school," but a little rougher!

Forgive me if I'm not interested in the advocacy route: I know so many wonderful parents and educators who give hours and hours of their time to advocating for better institutional education. I just . . well . . . you can't get blood from a turnip, you know? No matter how great your advocacy skills are, no matter how justified your requests.

Besides, and I hope this doesn't sound too sanctimonious, but the rewards of giving my hours and hours to my girls instead have just been so huge. Violet and I talked for an hour last night about Harry Potter, lines of symmetry, finding the volume of cuboids, and the nature of the 4th dimension. Meanwhile, it's been nearly a year since I've sat and agonized over a letter to a teacher or principal or prepped for yet another meeting or sat with my husband as we both cried about how unhappy our daughter was.

No, you can't get blood from a turnip, but I sure have gotten a lot from bringing my Violet home.

Sayonara, school! I'm just not that into you. It's not you, it's me. I'm just not ready for the level of commitment you want. I want to start seeing other people. It's just not meant to be between us. There's plenty of fish in the sea—you'll find someone else. I know I have!

• Comments (12) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

In the car this morning Violet and I listed to Dr. Mel Levine on MPR, talking about how children learn. Levine is a pediatrician and brain researcher.

She found it so interesting that I had to leave her in the car with the car running while I picked Victoria up from preschool. One thing we listed to was Levine explanation of how some people have “superficial attention,” meaning that they tend to ignore details on the first and even second pass. These kids suffer in school, obviously, but in Levine’s studies these kids were very often the big-picture, visionary thinkers. Another group focuses intensely on detail, so much that they overlook the big picture. Violet said, “that’s very interesting,” and we had a talk about our styles of thinking.

It was good timing: this morning during math she was doing double-digit multiplication, but she kept messing up by forgetting to put a zero in the ones place when multiplying by the tens digit. (Is that clear? It would be easy to see on paper.) She knows to do it, and she understands the reasoning behind doing it, but she does not pay great attention to detail, which is a killer in math. The speech gave us a good opportunity to say, hey, it’s good to be a big-picture thinker, and we can practice the details because details really matter in subjects like math.

We talked about other ways merging big-picture and detail-focus is a great skill, including writing books. We talked about the great detail in the Harry Potter books—Quidditch rules, types of candy—and the huge story that spans seven books. I think that was an even more persuasive example than doing math problems correctly . . . ;-)

There are so many other interesting bits that I really recommend that you listen to it!

Some other themes:

The new “F” word – “fun.” We should encourage our kids to value that which is "interesting" in addition to asking whether this or that was "fun."

“Visual/motor ecstacy” – the impact of excessive visual, non-linguistic input (e.g. video games) on language development.

Socialization – Children are spending too much time with peers, not enough with adults. As a result, children abandon their own affinities and talents to merge with “the group.”

Helping your child identify which of their “learning switches” are automatic (intuitive) and which are manual. (For example, I am intuitively “big-picture” oriented, but I have to turn my “detail switch” on manually.)

Strengthening strengths rather than concentrating on deficits.

Mel Levine on MPR

The excerpt seems to start in mid-sentence.

• Comments (3) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Part of what made yesterday a good day was getting another real-world experience of why homeschooling is working for us. [I’m sure nonhomeschoolers must wonder why so many homeschool-bloggers write on this subject. Well, swimming against the tide isn’t easy!]

There was a very interesting study in contrasts among the kids—all girls, mostly ages 7-9. A few kids were very eager to share, had very imaginative observations. Violet and a girl she chose to buddy up with hung in the back, wrote notes to each other, and drew a lot of pictures. The thing is, the two girls are among the best artists of the bunch, and they really were taking it all in. They just weren’t really inclined to share their thoughts or feelings with the group—although Violet did share several of her drawings, and made a very cool one as a thank you for the tour leader when we had to leave.

What struck me was that in a regular classroom setting, Violet and her friend’s style of participating would typically not be valued as highly as the more vocal kids’ participation. Violet was really excited to be there and share her excitement with her one friend, she drew her own stuff as well as interpretations of the pieces they looked at, but she also totally turned her back to the group at times, and when she did have something to say she sometimes wrote it down rather than speaking it aloud. Both the other girl’s dad (a professional artist) and I commented, observing the girls’ actions, that we were glad that homeschooling allowed them to learn in their own ways. (OK, I just have to add that I was really pleased when the dad mentioned that he thought V. drew really really well. Moms need a little maternal pride now and then.)

I also reflected on our experience with school, and teachers’ expectations of gifted students. I would be the first to acknowledge that the kids who were speaking up today are very bright kids. In school I would guess that most teachers would be happy to identify them as gifted. The problem is that my very bright kid doesn’t act like that. She wants to wear a black dress to First Communion, she loves Tim Burton-style art (her friend was drawing “Corpse Bride,” which we have not seen), she’ll speak out if she thinks she can make everyone laugh but won’t raise her hand to answer questions even if she’s sure of the answer. She doesn’t like to be instructed (and will openly say so), and she doesn’t ever like to think out loud. This is not a kid destined to be a teacher’s pet.

For a more academic discussion of which students teachers pick out as gifted, and how highly+ gifted kids respond, see the article Small Poppies on the Davidson website. It was a great article that really helped us understand what Violet was going through as we tried to make school work for her, and when we decided that it probably wouldn’t, at least not now. I love this article, and gave a copy to our old principal (being careful to assure her that we were trying to illuminate our daughter's feelings, not condemn the teachers who see "good kids" as "gifted kids").

• Comments (5) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

I may lose some of my liberal credentials with this post, but so be it. A recent editorial in the NY Times (link below), prompted by a report from the nonpartisan foundation Education Trust, has pushed some buttons for me.

The Times summarizes the report’s findings as demonstrating that public universities have begun to use their financial aid coffers to attract high-income students rather than low-income students:

“Public universities have been choking off college access and upward mobility for the poor by shifting away from the traditional need-based aid formula to a so-called merit formula that heavily favors affluent students.”

First hackle raised: “So-called merit?” While I am fully cognizant of the very real factors favoring affluent students in acquiring those quantifiable credentials beloved by selection committees, I am not prepared to throw out the idea of “merit” all together.

Friends and family can guess why. Education professionals have told us several times that we had better start saving the big bucks for our daughter’s education, because profound intelligence and high scholastic achievement are going to earn her a big pat on the back but no financial aid for college. Too bad that the housing bubble and the cost of meeting the educational needs of our profoundly gifted child for today (free and appropriate education my a**) have made it difficult for us to get those 529 funds for the future going just yet.

The Times editorial continues:

“The public universities were founded on the premise that they would provide broad access in exchange for taxpayer subsidies. That compact has been pretty much discarded in the state flagship campuses, which have increasingly come to view themselves as semiprivate colleges that define themselves not by inclusion, but by how many applicants they turn away, and how many of their students perform at the highest levels on the SAT, an index that clearly favors affluent teenagers who attend the best schools and have access to tutors.”

No argument with the first point. And I won’t dispute, too much, the idea that certain application criteria do indeed favor those “affluent teenagers.” I just have to object to the implied suggestion that high achievement is primarily the result of parental favors bestowed on the fortunate, if spoiled, child, and probably not the result of the student’s own abilities. (Especially not any innate abilities.)

Of course I object because even when my child was six I was hearing that her abilities, her test scores, her musical talent were likely the result of excessive parent coaching and culturally biased instruments of measure. Yes, there are helicopter parents, yes, IQ tests are imperfect. Just how many times will my daughter and her parents have to grovel at the feet of politically correct amateur social commentators before we can assert that, despite all of those problems, merit and intelligence are real things, and it makes some sense for institutions of higher learning — particularly public universities whose research is pointed toward public benefit — to seek out and encourage students who appear to possess those qualities?

One last note: What is high income, according to the report?

“In recent years, aid to students whose families earn over $100,000 has more than quadrupled at the public flagship and research universities.”

Now our family income is not as high as $100K. Neither is it less than $20K, the low-income group considered by the report. But I’m going to make the radical suggestion that while $100K is a nice round number, it’s a low floor for high income as discussed in the report. A family making $100K in my town, given the high cost of living, is going to be doing just fine, thank you, but they are not in the privileged group with access to the best schools and private tutors. How could they? Sending two kids to the best schools in our metro area would require almost 40% of their pre-tax income.

A family making $100K likely will not qualify for need-based assistance, either at the secondary or the post-secondary level. That seems more than reasonable. But it seems extremely unfair to me that such a family should be passed over for merit-based assistance, especially if that decision is based on the misguided assumption that the student’s merit is derived mainly from extreme wealth and privilege.

The Times editorial concludes:

“The college degree has become the basic price of admission to both the middle class and the new global economy. Unless the country reverses this trend [of failing to assist poor students], upward mobility through public higher education will pretty much come to a halt.”

Well, Amen, I say.

But the mistrust of merit and intelligence continues to prevent the full flowering of students who could contribute much to that middle class and that global economy. For too many highly gifted students, access to appropriate education—at any cost—has already come to a halt. And we are all poorer as a result.

See links below for full details:

Education Trust Report: Engines of Inequality

Times Editorial: Public College as ‘Engines of Inequality’

Davidson Institute: Genius Denied

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

The frequent equation of gifted programs with elitism is something I think about a lot. On the parenting section of the Prufrock Press site, I linked my way to this strongly stated article by Jim Delisle. We have one of his books on giftedness -- he's good with talking about how giftedness is a whole-person phenomenon, not just ability in one or more areas.

What do you think? While I wouldn't have written it quite so strongly myself, I can't find a lot to disagree with either.

• Comments (4) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

I was going to title this post "Another PG Girl Blog" but somehow that sounded unsavory!

One of my regular blog-stops is Mariposa Academy, about a gifted homeschooled girl. I've wanted to add this to my list but I have been a bit lazy of late. Finally I am hiding in my office letting DH finish dinner -- the perfect time to update!

Among the other profoundly gifted homeschoolers we keep up with, also listed at right, are Cher Mere and Z. and Sarah and Mia.

Mamita of Mariposa Academy tipped me off to Wild Days, a book about keeping nature journals. This is the project I really need to get going in the next couple of weeks. I'm really hoping our fall "nanny" (who is getting her PhD in science ed for kids) will take the girls on some outings while I work, and Violet can work on her journal.

• Comments (2) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Early readers present a lot of challenges in finding stimulating, worthwhile material. I confess I am a bit of a purist -- I don't like abridgements of anything, whether I abridge it or someone does it for me. It just seems wrong. (Yes, I know that is just a weird quirk of mine and that I will eat my word sooner rather than later.) And I wanted to save some books until Violet was old enough to really love them -- I was afraid that if she read the Little House books, for example, at age 4, she wouldn't be able to enjoy them again as much at, say, age 7.

A conversation along these lines developed at Wickentree, in which I mentioned holding out on Harry Potter as well. (This was largely because Violet has always been quite easily scared and self-censors herself very carefully. We had to talk her into reading HP at first!

When Sarah asked about Hermione as a depiction of giftedness, I jotted down these scattered thoughts:

Violet likes to be Hermione, although she also likes to be Ginny, and in our Quidditch computer game she likes to be Cho Chang (a fellow Ravenclaw!). I think she sees herself in the bookworm-y aspect of Hermione, and probably identifies with the responses Hermione gets to her intelligence.

I have wondered about how positive the portrayal of the bookish girl is. There is a bit of the unkempt nerd stereotype (although that seems to go away more with every book), the teacher-pleaser stereotype, the workaholic stereotype. Violet is none of these – not a teacher pleaser, loves clothes, not one to take anything too seriously. Wouldn’t surprise me if as a teen she were more of a Fred/George type – good marks without much effort, extremely creative, and a troublemaker. (That is, if she were in school.)

I do wonder whether Hermione might give Violet or other kids the wrong idea – that this is how all “smart kids” act. Violet always seems on the lookout for cues for the right way to act to fit a particular part. Luckily she seems to enjoy trying on a variety of parts, so I look at this experimentation less as an attempt to conform and more as a way of understanding the world. Facial expressions, accents, different ways of showing emotion, different clothes—she’s very attuned to this stuff, not only in her drawing and writing, but just in going about her daily business. In the end my hope is that homeschool affords us a variety of experience with people, books, and ideas that will keep her from fixating on one “type” for too long.

As a kind of fictional “case study,” you can see in Hermione that tension between high performance and giftedness. She’s clearly a high performer, but that alone wouldn’t make her gifted. Is she really brilliant, or is it merely, as Hermione herself says in the first book, “Books, and cleverness”? She lacks the sense of humor you might see in gifted children. As one book on giftedness puts it, Hermione “answers questions,” but you could argue that she doesn’t often “question answers.”

If I had a complaint about Hermione as a role model, that would be it. But Hermione isn’t a real person—she lives in a fabulous fictional universe where her character serves a particular function in a larger whole. I think intuitive, big-picture types like Violet (and me) get this, even if they can’t articulate it. The “meaning” of Hermione is so deeply enmeshed in this sprawling series of characters, relationships, places, and events—I don’t think a reader like Violet would be inclined to hone in on an aspect of one character. It’s like a painting—you stand back to get the full effect rather than focus on one quadrant.

And goodness knows if anything would inspire Violet to be a bit more diligent in her work I would not complain!

• Comments (4) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

I came across this old blog post from Yet Another Homeschool Blog! (which I think has been abandoned). The title is "Why is 'gifted' such a dirty word?" That theme is not so new to me, but there was a passage about a gifted child growing up to parent her own gifted child that, sadly, really hit home:

And when she's grown, and her two year old starts picking words out of the newspaper while on her lap, this young woman will be afraid to tell anyone and she'll wonder what she did wrong, and if her baby has been somehow irreparably damaged by her mothering. And when strangers comment on the her toddler's amazing clarity of speech, the mother will respond by pointing out that she still can't jump, and she won't nap, and she's too active and once she almost fell out of a second story window. And anyway, doesn't everyone learn to talk eventually? This baby is nothing special!

Ack! That's me! I don't know that it has anything to do with my own experiences as a gifted kid, but I have definitely said those kinds of things about Violet, especially when she was 3 (or 4 or 5) and people said, "Oh, she can read!" There I was saying, "Well, yes, she does, but she can't ride a trike yet . . . can't figure out scissors . . . can't tie her shoes. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, you know!"

Why the rush to lump her back in with everyone else? God forbid I acknowledge that Violet is just plain different!

The article doesn't say this, but I think in addition to worrying about blending in, I think that impulse to gloss over differences has to do with fear of seeming like a pushy parent. Through the Prufrock Gifted Ed blog I also linked to this opinion of giftedness: that the difference between gifted and non-gifted kids in schools is that "their parents don’t care about posing as crossing guards or PTA presidents."

I mean really, would you claim that that record-setter of the 100-meter-dash only won all those races because his mom brought Gatorade to the track practices?

More bizarre was the author's claim that these kids are lucky: "Lucky because they have parents who have the road smarts to know what it takes to make a child appear teachable, moldable. . . . Easily mangeable."

Ha! Well that clearly doesn't apply to us! Whatever Violet appeared to her teachers, it was not "moldable" or "easily manageable"!

But this is the reality, in public school or homeschool. You're sitting around with a group of friends and acquaintances talking about school, books, summer progarms. Do you nod and smile and keep quiet while everyone else shares, or do you tell the truth that your kid is studying Chinese and algebra? Do you save face with a quick, apologetic addendum that, "she said she wanted to," or do you figure no one would believe that anyway? (Like one teacher told me, "Kids are very quick to figure out what we want them to say.")

I look forward to Violet getting older, when it gets a bit easier to seek out and get together with other gifted kids. And I'm sooooo glad to have the Internet now, where you can find those other parents who get it. (Just see Gray's Academy and Wickentree, linked at right, for two examples!)

Yet another hat tip to the Prufrock publisher Joel McIntosh and his Gifted Ed blog.

• Comments (4) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Maybe I should not put so much emphasis on math. While Violet is very gifted in math -- 2-4 grade levels advanced depending on the topic -- it is not her strongest gift by far. But I have the idea that daily math is important, so I try to find a way to make it work that is neither oppressively dull nor oppressively difficult.

This has proven to be one of my major homeschooling challenges. And this may be one reason why:

Sternberg (1982) has argued that emphasizing speed of performance on intelligence tasks is likely to penalize individuals who approach tasks "intelligently" or strategically. In particular, gifted children who exhibit a thoughtful and high-level problem solving approach may not earn extra points for speed. Marr and Sternberg (1987) suggest that, while the capacity for rapid cognitive processing is, in most contexts, adaptive and "intelligent," there may be individual differences in preference for mental speed, and complex relationships with higher-level processes which are described as metacomponential. One source of individual difference is described by Siegler (1989), who found that in solving simple arithmetic tasks, children he described as "perfectionists" avoided the most efficient strategy, simple retrieval, unless they were very sure of their answers.

Short version: very bright kids with perfectionist tendencies (common to very bright kids) can seem like they are struggling with math basics. And that might be because the math is very simple for them, not because it is hard.

The question for practical application: How do you know the difference?

I think I've posted something like this before. I keep finding material that helps explain the problem, but nothing to help solve it!

Today, working again on algebra, we were "translating" a story problem that went something like this: Luke is twice as old as his brother Peter. Their combined age is 12. How old is Luke?

Mom plods along with problems like these, step by step: If Peter is "n" what do we call Luke? Now write an equation . . .

But Violet just blurts out, "Luke is 8!" Ask her what 4 plus 8 is, on the other hand, and she will stare into space, bite her thumb, and probably secretly count on her fingers (which we try to discourage with Singapore Math, but oh well) before saying, "uh . . . 12?"

[Note: This is the book we've been using to play around with algebra, extend the Singapore book on fractions, and other stuff.]

I guess it's only been a few months. I should be more patient with both of us. But when she exhibits such wildly different responses to math it's hard not to get confused and frustrated!

Thus endeth today's gripe . . .

• Comments (1) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Wondering how to address social and emotional topics with Violet, who is pretty much a closed book (albeit one of the noisiet, most dramatic closed books you'll ever meet), I ordered her The Gifted Kids' Survival Guide: For Ages 10 and Under from Free Spirit Publishing, which has a lot of kid-oriented stuff on feelings, self-esteem, behavior, safety, and more.

I just set it out for her to see what she'd think of it. I know she read it because, well, she reads everything that crosses her path. I asked her about it and she said, "Well, you know, mom, it's about, well, Survival."

"Surviving what?" I asked.

"Surviving school," she answered, with a shrug and a roll of the eyes to indicate that "surviving school" no longer had much to do with her.

"So it's not really relevant for you, huh," I said, and after a brief discussion about the word "relevant" she agreed. "I guess the best way to 'survive' school is just not to go, huh?" I said.

"Right!" she said firmly.

But I know she got something out of the section on perfectionism. Tonight during bedtime Victoria, age 3, said, "Mom, [Violet] made a mistake!"

As if reading straight from the book, Violet responded. "I can make a mistake. Everyone has a right to make four mistakes a day!"

• Comments (1) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

I am swinging between a more classical approach and a more unschool approach. I'm thinking I need to give Violet more time to think about what really interests her and more time to pursue that, but I am also painfully aware of what she needs to work on!

Clicking around on the subject led to me a Q & A that included this anecdote:

One little boy was doing pre-college math when he was eight (for fun!), but didn't learn to read until he was almost ten. Within a year he was out of the children's reading area and into the Young Adult section. Can you imagine using a traditional curriculum with a child like that? Fortunately, his parents encouraged independent learning, read to him every day, and patiently allowed him to work at his own pace.

On one hand this makes total sense to me, on the other hand I might have a nervous breakdown if Violet is 10 and still struggling with mulitplication, especially as we know she's supposed to be at a 10-yr-old math level right now.

And on one hand Violet is doing great with Chinese and piano, fine with math, and really she's 7 years above grade level in her English skills so I guess we can take some time off from worrying about that. But on the other hand, she can't write unless she's mimicing a character in a story (curse the day we gave her a Junie B. Jones book!) or otherwise deeply involved in a fantasy game of her own devising.

I guess the reason this makes me so anxious is that these are the reasons traditional school wasn't working -- especially the writing thing, and to a much lesser extent the math.

sigh . . .It's all so daunting, as this article on Gifted Unschooling suggests:

Unschoooling parents can find ways to encourage the gifted child to recognize and use his sense of self-determination, to see himself as "inner-directed" rather than "stubborn" or "controlling." They can also realize that the gifted child will challenge authority, may have little concern for the opinions of adults, and may be unaffected by the use of rewards and punishments. Knowing how to use these characteristics as strengths rather than weaknesses then becomes a large part of the unschooling challenge.

And then she says. . .

Unschooling truly celebrates the creative nature of the gifted child. Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, author of Flow and Creativity, writes that creative individuals seek to move beyond dichotomies such as introvert and extravert, or fantasy and reality. Rather, creative people embody seemingly mutually exclusive traits, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in alternation, causing much confusion and misunderstanding on the part of parents and teacher. In the unschooling environment, a child has no need to fit a mold or to "live up" to who we think she should be. She can simply be, in all her dimensions of complexity.

I guess that assumes the parent is a lot mellower than I am . . .

So, after venting in this little post, I can see that I am the one who still needs some de-schooling!

• Comments (2) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Well this explains a lot.

I happened into this article called "Overexcitability and the Highly Gifted Child," which discusses some of the more frustrating and sometimes troubling behavior we see in Violet. In particular, she demonstrates "Imaginational Overexcitability"

Imaginational OE reflects a heightened play of the imagination with rich association of images and impressions, frequent use of image and metaphor, facility for invention and fantasy, detailed visualization, and elaborate dreams (Dabrowski & Piechowski, 1977; Piechowski, 1979, 1991). Often children high in Imaginational OE mix truth with fiction, create their own private worlds with imaginary companions and dramatizations to escape boredom. They find it difficult to stay tuned into a classroom where creativity and imagination are secondary to learning rigid academic curriculum. They may write stories or draw instead of doing seat work or participating in class discussions, or they may have difficulty completing tasks when some incredible idea sends them off on an imaginative tangent.

Yeah, no kidding . . .

The other ones fit too: psychomotor, emotional, sensual, and intellecutal.

It gives me some comfort knowing that this is "normal" if not typical, and that there are some strategies for dealing with it. As the author points out . . .

Paradoxically, overexcitable people are often insensitive and unaware of how their behaviors affect others. They may assume that everyone will just understand why they interrupt to share an important idea, or tune out when creating a short story in their head during dinner. It is vital to teach children and adults to be responsible for their behaviors, to become more aware of how their behaviors affect others, and to understand that their needs are not more important than those of others. The key is to realize that you can show children and adults how they are perceived, you can teach them strategies to fit in, but they must choose to change.

OK, that phrase "strategies to fit in" is a bit unfortunate, but yes, we can provide strategies for getting along.

Came across this article as a link at Prufrock Press' Gifted Education Blog.

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Maureen of TrinityPrepSchool asked about my mothering type.

I do love a quiz, so I'm happy to comply!

[Note: We've actually looked many things up during meals, but on the laptop.]

Pretty much me! Well, except that patient part . . .

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Still trying to figure out how to reach Violet -- who has been 7 for just over a week -- at her highest level of math ability while we plod through rote memorization of "math facts," I decided to plunge ahead with some algebra today.

It was great -- Violet actually said, "This is easy!" (we were just writing simple equations based on word problems, without solving) and "Oh, I get it!"

I was afraid to take this step because everyone stresses the sequential nature of math. A kid working on the 7s of the multiplication table has not reached the algebra stage of the sequence, clearly. But I was emboldened by this article about homeschooling highly gifted kids, especially this anecdote:

"Quick what's 7x9," Ben's mom queried. Seven year old Ben knew it immediately. He said he had "figured it out" by making a more complicated algebraic pattern mentally.

His mother then asked about 5x5, but he took longer saying that he, " just knew that one" - had it memorized. Ben explained, "It's as if 5x5 isn't enough to wrap my brain around and figuring it out gives my brain cells more to do. Ben continued, "I think there is a boredom factor involved. If it's inside an algebra problem I seem to know it faster. My subconscious knows it but won't tell my conscious for efficiency reasons. If I knew I was doing arithmetic I probably wouldn't be able to do it as fast."

Ben's second grade teacher wasn't ready to let him explore algebra because he hadn't yet mastered the basics. Ben kept his father's algebra book in his desk at school for free reading time. However, because Ben, like many highly gifted children, finds simplicity in complex ideas, he was actually more able to solve the difficult problems than the simpler problems generally suited for second graders. In fact it was the simple problems that confused him. As he so eloquently expressed it was as if there wasn't enough to wrap his brain around. Ben is now a homeschooler.

The whole article is worth reading.

I'll report later about how algebra and math facts are meshing for us, after we've experimented with it for a while.

• Comments (2) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

On an e-mail list for a regional gifted-talented group, I saw a question about whether to tell kids their IQ if they ask, or, in the case of the questioner, demand that it is their right to know. I'm curious to know what people think about this. I've actually searched around on the web and can't find much.

I found the comment below from an article on parenting gifted kids:

There is a consensus among professionals who work with gifted children that sharing information about their abilities in a sensitive manner may help promote healthy development. While helping a child understand that he or she may think and learn differently than age-mates is a reasonable way to approach this, sharing IQ numbers and making comparisons is not. You may wish to discuss your specific situation with a psychologist before talking with your child. Remember, gifted children may have adult-like reasoning power, but they do not have the life experience to accompany it. It's important not to treat them like adults, particularly when it comes to talking with them about their abilities.

In response to the e-mail I said something to this effect: I have two very bright friends who knew their IQs, and both of them feel that it was a very unhelpful thing for them to hear. I don't know how much that has to do with family dynamics, but both people came to feel inadequate and very pressured to demonstrate some kind of greatness. I know with our daughter, whose IQ falls into the "exceptionally/profoundly gifted" range, I sometimes catch myself wondering (ridiculously) when she's going to write a concerto or publish a novel! I think culturally we've been somewhat misinformed about what IQ means.

We have not told our daughter her IQ. She was tested when she was 6, and she did not ask. We just told her that the tests confirmed what everyone already knew: that she is very bright and well above grade level in academic subjects. I guess I don't plan to tell her, though when she is an older teen maybe I will re-evaluate. Part of my decision is a gut response, shaped by the fact that I don't know my own IQ. I was also tested as a kid, skipped grades, etc. Interestingly, back in the 70s in South Dakota, psychologists felt it was best not to tell the parents either. So I grew up with the family belief that knowing your own IQ was so potentially negative that even your parents shouldn't know!

My gut instinct would be to wait. My kids have genetic predispositions to some health problems, and I plan to wait to discuss that with them until they are older. Too much information too soon is just distressing. I see IQ-type information in the same light.

• Comments (2) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

In which I am pleased with my ability to compromise.

Not far into our math lesson, which we had in an Espresso Royale Café on the University of Minnesota campus, I found myself highly impatient with the apparently disorganized way Violet was working in her math notebook. Sloppy writing, no sense of order, moving all around the page—it was making me nuts.

I came up with the idea of making a wide margin on the outside of the page for answer to questions, but any showing-of-work could be done in the middle of the page in any way whatsoever. This worked out very well, and Violet perked up at the suggestion.

Whatever our differences, both Violet and I tend to be more intuitive thinkers, in the sense that we find the answer, then figure out how we found the answer, which may not be the way we were supposed to find the answer. Kind of like outlining the paper after it’s written. Funny, I find this totally acceptable in myself, but in teaching the temptation is still to be methodical. But we worked it out.

Island of the Blue Dolphins seemed to become more interesting today, based on our narration, and DH and I were both blown away by Violet’s ability to improvise eighth notes against triplets. She seems to be loosening up and being herself more, which is (mostly!) wonderful to see.

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Ooh Ooh! I am excited about this blog I found at Prufrock Press! I'm putting it in my links section. It is their Gifted Education Blog, and it looks to have great info.

Here's an excerpt from today's entry:

Edutopia, a large circulation (more than 100,000 readers) magazine published by the George Lucas Education Foundation, just ran a two-page spread titled "Sage Advice" in its March 2006 issue. This is a standing column in which readers respond to a prompt. This month the prompt was "How do you challenge and motivate gifted students?"

I was disappointed that the editors of the magazine chose to run these latter suggestions.

Keeping the kids silent as a form of education . . . now why didn't I think of that?

It's not just advocacy/complaint oriented, though. There's a lot of practical info, including up-to-date stuff on bright kids with learning disabilities, and lots of resources, in addition to the "education in the media" kind of stuff.

Here's a link to a piece on developing critical thinking skills in younger children, with some resource suggestions: Thinking Skills for Young Gifted Children

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link

Since I've been throwing the word asynchronous around a lot to family and school I decided to find some more info on the idea. I found an article/opinion piece that was really relevant to our situation. It really applies to any child who is not a "good fit" in a same-age classroom for whatever reason. It was a little alarmist, but basically told us that it's going to be very hard for school to take care of Violet socially and emotionally right now, and that it is crucial that those needs be met, right now.

Here's a taste:

The gifted child, because of his asynchronous development, cannot identify with the peers he finds in the local school. He usually does not share their interests and may find their behavior puzzling. He may be unable or unwilling to respond to his peers as they expect; or to conform to the school’s expectations. He may not be ready to cope with this new environment and, thus he may be unable to complete a basic developmental task. If so, he will suffer social and emotional complications that could profoundly affect his future.

If there were a place to meet peers with whom he could identify, with adults who understand how to help him cope and with the intellectual stimulation he craves, he could thrive. Is this overprotective? Will he be dependent on these interventions the rest of his life?

I believe many gifted children are irreparably damaged socially and emotionally in the first few years of formal schooling. Given that the environment in which we develop has a profound, physical affect on the development of the brain, it is no less urgent that we care for a child’s social and emotional health than their physical health.

Like I said, a little alarmist. But the basic ideas are interesting and useful for our current situation.

The source is a nonprofit called SENG: Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted, which has a database of research and articles on the subject.

• Comments (0) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link