Children learn first and foremost from their parents and families. Parents who spend time with their gifted child are more able to tune into their child’s interests and can respond by offering appropriate enrichment opportunities. If you are the parent of a gifted child, here are some recommendations which you may already be doing:
- Read aloud to your child. It is important that parents read to their gifted child often, even if the child is already capable of reading. Be sure to ask your child questions about what you have read. This way you can discuss the plot, themes and creative ideas your child may have.
- Encourage your child to play an active, meaningful role in family decisions. Listen to suggestions, applying them whenever appropriate and possible.
- Try to encourage integrative thinking by drawing relationships among ideas and events. Discuss possible consequences of actions, both personal and social, building upon daily experiences and contemporary events.
- Encourage imagination – engage in storytelling and creative expression in the arts, for example.
- Support a child’s or adolescent’s calculated risk-taking and non-dangerous experimentation, even when the possibilities of success are slim. Help them understand how lack of success is part of lifelong learning and encourage them to explore the causes of failure and alternatives to success.
- Guide your child in learning how to socially and emotionally cope with failure, AND with success.
- Help your child discover personal interests and provide opportunities to experience a variety of books, games, puzzles, activities, and publications that foster critical and creative thinking. Introduce them to situations that expand their horizons and help build an appreciation for diversity and an understanding of cross-cultural perspectives. Limit the time your child spends engaged in technology-enhanced activities such as TV and video games.
- Encourage the support of extended family and friends who can spend some time with the child so that parents can get some rest and to give the child added – or different – stimulation.
- Speak and listen to your child with consideration and respect. From the time he or he can talk, a gifted child is constantly asking questions and will often challenge authority. “Do it because I said so” doesn’t work. Generally, a gifted child will cooperate more with parents who take the time to explain requests than with more authoritarian parents
- Learn as much as you can about gifted children in general and your own gifted child in particular. Don’t fall into the trap of being concerned about whether your child is “normal.” Your child is probably “normal” for his or her level of giftedness and shouldn’t be compared with other children. Celebrate your child’s uniqueness and work to be your child’s best advocate.