advise for son

Parent Cafe
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<p>My husband and I are ‘regular joe, middle class america’, both with community college. Our 2nd child (of 5) is blessed intellectually and academically. He is also very driven. Recently, on his state exams, he tested 99th percentile in both reading and math. Although, only entering the
7th grade this fall, he has been talking about a ‘good college’ and law school someday. He is starting his 2nd year in band (clarinet), also he has been in
AIG (academically and intellectually gifted) since 3rd grade. Every year in school he gets awards…won county science fair, presidential award for excellence and academic achievement etc etc…</p>

<p>I wasn’t expecting to have a kid like this…but I want to help him go down the right road. I’ve been down the college admissions with our oldest, who goes to an ‘average’ state university.</p>

<p>Any advise that I should give him…classes to take, or activities…</p>

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<p>find an area (or two) that he is interested in, and let him immerse himself in it. Besides that, read widely and enjoy life. :)</p>

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<p>katykin: My son played clarinet in band. He really developed true passion for the band. All along (since 9 th grade), I tried to make him quit band. It is the biggest time sucker in the fall. But he insisted and kept on going.</p>

<p>Now fast forward 4 years. I think band was one of the greatest thing that happened to him. I am glad that he won in 9th grade. It teaches you a lot when you are ‘stuck’ with same kids for 4 years for so many hours. The kids are all different - different color, sizes, gender and academic abilities, but they learn to coexist and work for the common goal. </p>

<p>Bottom line: If he is serious and wants to continue band, let him do it. It will help him.</p>

<p>Mistakes I made was not buy him a good wood clarinet and not finding him a good teacher (due to our background we were never exposed to this sort of thing. I still remember that when I was calling about prices, I would say ‘Bee bee’ clarinet rather than b flat). I guess, he could have done little better.</p>

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<p>At 7th grade level, my advice would be to let him try out a lot of interests and not restrict himself too early. There are a few kids who know what they want from the time they are tiny and pursue it single-mindedly, and that is fine. For the vast majority, however, I think middle school and high school should be times to try out different things until they find their real passion.</p>

<p>My son tried out a ton of sports–baseball, basketball, soccer, karate, going on to tennis and golf in high school. He also tried out a variety of interests and possible life goals–astronaut, doctor, teacher, musician, etc. He went to Space Camp one year and took part in science activities. He was active in Boy Scouts. He tried 4H one year. We supported him in all these things and tried to provide opportunities as we could afford them. (Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for not providing a ton of expensive camps, tutors, schools, etc., if you can’t afford them. There are usually cheaper alternatives, and the public library is free!)</p>

<p>My son was also in school band. He didn’t take it too seriously until high school. We paid for private lessons with a high school student at first (much cheaper!) and then with a professional when he reached high school and his interest was getting stronger. And music has turned out to be his passion. However, he didn’t really decide that until his senior year in high school. I think giving him a chance to try out many different activities and interests helped him know what he wanted.</p>

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<p>katykin, I don’t have any advice for your son because it sounds as if he’s doing great. Instead I have some advice for his parents. :)</p>

<p>Motivating (and advocating for) intellectually gifted kids is different from encouraging the garden variety of smart and achieving students. The gifted ARE different; they think differently; they learn differently; they succeed differently. </p>

<p>They are often perfectionists and tend to hide their lights in effort to fit in. (This gets worse as they get older and more socially conscious.) They greatly fear failure, so much so that they may stop trying. </p>

<p>They are world class procrastinators and have trouble bringing projects to closure. Nothing is ever good enough to be considered finished.</p>

<p>They often do NOT get the top grades (though they usually test well), either due to boredom or utter disregard for areas that they are not interested in. They can have enormous drive and focus, but it is not necessarily evenly distributed or easy to appreciate. They can drive you nuts!</p>

<p>They are very often misunderstood to the point of resentment – and this where your job as advocate is so critical. </p>

<p>My advice is to get some good books on the gifted personality and teaching gifted kids. Encourage your son to take chances, experiment, get outside of his safety zone.</p>

<p>Good luck with this special and talented boy and let us know how it goes.</p>

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<p>Your son is lucky to have a parent who takes the time to come here to get some advice. Kudos to you!</p>

<p>The best advice I can give is that it would be helpful for you to let him know that it’s fine, even desireable to make mistakes as he tries new things. As someone wise whom I know said, “If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t do anything.”</p>

<p>Unfortunately, often gifted people think that because they are smart, they should be perfect at everything. It’s important for them to know that making mistakes is part of the learning process – if one is taking the risk of learning at a high level. If they are not putting themselves into situations in which they have to study hard and also make mistakes, they aren’t challenging themselves enough, and thus, aren’t giving themselves enough of an opportunity to develop their potential.</p>

<p>Let your son also know about things that you value about him beside his intelligence, and give him chances to develop other aspects of his character/personality beside his intelligence.</p>

<p>Make sure to compliment your son for taking productive risks, not just for getting high scores and grades.</p>

<p>Incidentally, I’m gifted, am married to a gifted man and have 2 gifted sons, so am speaking from experience.</p>

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<p>My younger brother is gifted, so I have a bit of experience with it - but from a sibling’s perspective :)</p>

<p>Momrath is right - gifted kids do not think the same way as your average bright kid, and they often won’t test as well. </p>

<p>At this young age, I would let your kid really have a ball :slight_smile: Let him get into anything he wants to, encourage him to do it until he wants to stop, and then let him do something else. It is not necessary for everything he does to be perfect, and you should encorage him to take risks and make mistakes. </p>

<p>Also, don’t neglect his siblings - this is the quickest way for resentment to grow. Try not to spend all your time on your gifted kid, but rather get the others involved, and get them all doing things together. I know from experience that it is ROUGH for siblings of gifted kids - we can be seen as the ‘weak link’ so to speak, and it is hard to come to terms with. </p>

<p>Laylah</p>

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<p>katykin:</p>

<p>You’ve gotten lots of good advice here. I very much endorse Simba’s suggestion that he should continue with his band. </p>

<p>Since he will be entering 7th grade, that would be the year for him to participate in Talent Searches. This means he should take the SAT before turning 13. That will give you and him an idea of how he compares in relation to other children nationwide who scored above the 97% percentile. It will also open up opportunities to participate in academic camps, if he chooses. </p>

<p>Since he likes science, he might also like math. Does the school offer MATHCOUNTS? This is a competition that applies to kids through 8th grade. Later on, he can take part in AMC competitions. Personally, I’m not in favor of competitions but the problem-solving skills that students acquire by preparing for them are extremely valuable in college.</p>

<p>If you want to accelerate his learning, you need to work closely with his teachers and school. This means providing more advanced materials than for the rest of the class, perhaps allowing him to go to more advanced classes for some subjects and staying with his peers for others. You can encourage him to challenge himself but assure him it’s okay to drop back a notch if it’s too tough and not to worry about getting top grades. If he wishes to take classes 2-3 years ahead, as long as he is comfortably in the middle of the pack as opposed to the very top, it’s okay, it means he can handle the work. But the important thing is that he should enjoy himself and enjoy learning. He needs to strike a good balance between academics and social activities, arts, sports, etc…</p>

<p>Finally, Laylah is right: consider the impact on the rest of the siblings while making provisions for your gifted child.</p>

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<p>katykin:</p>

<p>If your son likes math, you may want to visit the mathforum @ <a href=“Classroom Resources - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics”>Classroom Resources - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics;

<p>They have problems of the weeks from elementary to highschool level math. They are math problem with logical reasoning skills embeded in the problems. </p>

<p>When our son was young, this thing was run by Swarthmore and it was free. Now Drexel has taken over and charge $15 for membership.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Hands off a 7th grader? Uncensored development, isn’t that extreme? </p>

<p>Personally I think a session with a good college councilor, private one if finance allows, will payoff in big ways down the road.</p>

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<p>I would say always keep in mind that he is foremost…still a kid who probably wants to act like a kid. I have seen from my own S (now rising college soph.) that people begin to expect the gifted smart kid to also be somehow more mature and well behaved than the “regular” kid. If the regular kid gets in trouble for something at school or wherever, it’s just chalked up to goofy teenage behavior but if the smart kid does the same thing, everybody is aghast that such a smart kid would do such a dumb thing. Smart kids still want to be part of the group and not always expected to be the perfect role model for others. It’s too much pressure and no fun. Support his interests but don’t push too hard.</p>

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<p>My suggestion is that you reevaluate your thinking about your whole family when it comes to intelligence. There’s a good chance that all of you are gifted even if you haven’t been that far in college and no one ever suggested that you were gifted. From what I’ve seen in life, most gifted people are not recognized by their schools or others. Indeed, they may think they are not too bright because other people have difficulty following their advanced thinking and may respond to their ideas as if they are weird. They also may think that they aren’t gifted because they get awful grades. </p>

<p>Many gifted kids (my kids included) get Ds and Fs because either they don’t care about grades, they find the classes boring or they decide to ignore their formal classwork and spend their time instead pursuing their own intellectual interests, which may have nothing to do with classwork.For instance, I was on academic probation my freshman year in college because I decided to do an independent study in a history class, and I spent all of my time reading that stuff. Unfortunately, that “independent study” was really independent study – not any kind of formal or graded classwork.</p>

<p>Frankly, until I was about 30, I thought that people were mistaken when they told me that I was gifted. Ideas that I had that seemed obvious to me drew blanks from other people, including students whose grades were much higher than mine. I also thought that I couldnt’ be gifted because I had to study and because sometimes I flunked tests while friends who claimed that they didn’t study got higher grades.</p>

<p>It wasn’t until I learned about giftedness that I realized that giftedness doesn’t mean that one gets perfect grades or never has to study. It also doesn’t mean that one never has to edit one’s writing. It simply means that one has the capability of learning advanced material. and (if one is verbally gifted) can write very well if one takes time and edits oneself.</p>

<p>Giftedness also doesn’t mean that one is equally gifted in all academic or other areas. There’s every indication that I’m verbally gifted, but am probably high average in math. My older S is similar: Off the charts verbally, can do h.s. and college-level advanced math, but has to study very hard to do it.</p>

<p>When my younger S was a toddler, I thought he was mentally ■■■■■■■■ because unlike older S, who always was verbally precocious, younger S was very quiet. Younger S also was a preemie and at risk of developmental disabilities. When he was IQ tested as a toddler (as part of follow-up for prematurity), he refused to cooperate – just sat there – and if the tester had scored him, he would have scored as ■■■■■■■■. </p>

<p>In first grade, our school system does a quick group-administered IQ test on every kid, and we were surprised when S’s teacher told us that he scored higher than any other kid in his classroom. He scored at the high average level and was recommended for further testing. At that testing, he was very shy, the tester was inexperienced and made some major mistakes (I have been a clinical psychologist and studied assessment, and I spotted the mistakes in her testing report). She said he had high average intelligence, but wasn’t gifted. I didn’t bother to have him retested then because he still was very quiet and shy and was very content with his classwork. I didn’t see any reason to stress him with another test, and, frankly, I also didn’t think he was gifted.</p>

<p>His third grade teacher was wise enough to notice that my kid was easily getting high grades even though he was quietly playing at his desk most of the time, so she recommended that he be retested. This time, he had a tester who knew what she was doing and he scored more than 20 IQ points higher – well in the gifted range overall, and in the highly gifted areas in in some areas.</p>

<p>And one last thing: gifted kids can be the class clown, the kid who misbehaves or the good girl who is very popular and gets Cs because she doesn’t want to stand out for being smart.</p>

<p>So – take a closer look at yourself, your husband and your other kids.
The below is from a website about giftedness:</p>

<p>"6. Brothers and sisters are usually within 5 or 10 points in measured ability. We studied 148 sets of siblings and found that over 1/3 were within 5 points of each other, over 3/5 were within 10 points, and nearly 3/4 were within 13 points. When one child in the family is identified as gifted, the chances are great that all members of the family are gifted. </p>

<ol>
<li><pre><code> Second children are recognized as gifted much less frequently than first-borns or only children. They exhibit different characteristics from their older siblings and are less likely to be achievement oriented. Even the first-born identical twin has a greater chance of being accepted in a gifted program than the second-born!
</code></pre></li>
<li><pre><code> Parents’ IQ scores, when known, are often within 10 points of their children’s; even grandparents’ IQ scores are often within 10 points of their grandchildren’s. "
</code></pre></li>
</ol>

<p><a href=“http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/learned.htm[/url]”>http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/learned.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Academic challenges are terrific, but don’t forget to nurture and encourage social development, because, in the last analysis, getting along well with others transcends intellectual gifts.</p>

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<p>I agree with Allmom about the importance of making sure that your S has good social skills.</p>

<p>If he has difficulty getting along with others because his peers aren’t interested in activities he cares about, he may enjoy going to summer camps that would allow him to pursue his interests. That way, he can make some friends who care about the things he cares about.</p>

<p>Some like Johns Hopkins CTY program and Duke’s TIP program are expensive and also are based on SAT scores (which kids can take in middle school to qualify) but you also can find camps that are far cheaper and still will attract very bright students interested in those areas. Check out the Hoagies gifted pages for this information. You can Google to find it.</p>

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<p>It’s uncanny how closely your description of your son, and your family, parallels my own pre-adolescent life. My parents had only made it through high school, and your son seems to have hit his stride, scholastically, a little earlier than I did. (Until I got to junior high school, most of my teachers seemed to view my presence in their classrooms the way a hiker would regard a stone in his shoe.) But trade the clarinet for the violin, and turn back the clock 35 years, and your son could be me. </p>

<p>My parents reacted with a mixture of pride, alarm, and bewilderment when I announced my desire to attend a “good” college, and law school. They were no longer alarmed, but just as proud, and no less bewildered, when I graduated from that college a decade later, and from law school a few years after that.</p>

<p>So here are some observations from one who has traveled a good distance on a path much like the one your son seems to be embarking upon, focusing on what for me were some of the most dangerous stretches.</p>

<ol>
<li>In some ways, the toughest part of the path for me was the stretch your son faces right now: junior high school. Not all of the attention I attracted from my peers was desirable. I once had the distinctly unpleasant experience of sitting on the school bus, with blood covering my clothes and my violin case after being beaten by a football player, enduring the taunts of several of his friends throughout the long ride home.</li>
</ol>

<p>Boys like your son sometimes come in for more than their share of bullying; be alert for signs that it’s happening. (The school bus still seems to be the nexus for a lot of it.) If it does happen, get him some counseling right away. I muddled through somehow, mostly by giving repeated beatings to my pillow, and to my retrospective horror, by taking to carrying a knife “for protection.” When I think how horribly my path could have forked at that point, I absolutely shudder.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Do not underestimate the importance of friendship. I formed four friendships in the seventh grade, and another in the sixth grade, that sustain me to this day. </p></li>
<li><p>“Keep your eyes on the prize.” The goals your son has set for himself are very attainable, with perseverance. It’s important to make sure that he knows that.</p></li>
<li><p>“There really is a Santa Claus, but not everyone makes his ‘nice’ list.” I experienced a great deal of distress in high school, wondering how I could possibly come up with the money for one of the colleges on which I had set my sites. Through a mixture of abject ignorance and adolescent hubris, I only applied to three schools, all in the Ivy League; I wrote a single draft of my admissions essays, in pen, right on the applications themselves. I belated realized how foolish I had been; I suffered through self-imposed agony throughout the spring of my senior year, until one of those schools came through with an acceptance, and with a good financial aid package. When the time comes, your son should apply to a lot of those “good colleges,” including a healthy number of true “safety” schools. </p></li>
<li><p>Don’t let the unusual drive of this son blind you to the talents of your other children. The apple doesn’t often fall that far from the tree. I just spent a delightful week visiting with my siblings; every one of them is the equal in intellectual ability of my colleagues in the corporate law department where I work. But our family situation was not one in which academic achievement was assumed to be in the cards. I was a bizarrely driven child, and refused to let anyone get in the way of realizing my ambitions. But not every talented child is that innately driven. Sometimes talent has to be more actively nurtured. I have no doubt that had my siblings been raised in a more encouraging setting where academic achievement had been considered the “default state,” their lives would have taken a very different trajectory.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>Katykin - Notice how l-o-n-g the responses are? One liners don’t help a gifted child much. “You’ll be fine.” “Do whatever you want.” “I’m sure the other kids don’t think you’re weird.” Eeek.</p>

<p>Make some adjustments in your life. Take your S to museums, the symphony, Gettysburg and Mammoth Cave. As suggested above, read about gifted children and find someone who can help you with questions like “Even if he gets into Penn where do we find the money to get him through?” (Oh, and “through” might include Grad School and other post-Graduate training.) Start now.</p>

<p>That stated, many others have faced the same project that you have. Work at it a little bit and things will turn out all right.</p>

<p>PS, One more thing – don’t expect your S’s high school to be much help. Be grateful for whatever your S’s schools and teachers do for him and THANK them profusely, but the major burdens will be carried by your family. And that’s OK too. Bon Chance!</p>

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<p>Thanks for all the posts. I do think my other kids are ‘smart’, but no where as driven as Zach. His IQ tested around 140’s in third grade (4 years ago). I was told by a school guidance counselor that she had only seen 1 or 2 test higher in the whole county, during her 15 + years. Many years ago, in HS I tested at 143, but I was a ship without a rudder. Average grades, no guidance counselor… My father hadn’t even gone to HS… and my mother went to 10th grade. My parents were just thankful I graduated. Although, I was ‘somewhat’ driven, I joined the military to pay for college, I had my oldest son 3 months before my 4 year time was up. I went on to community college and have an A.S. in nursing. My husband, although smart was raised by a single mom and attended 13 different schools before dropping out in the 10th grade. He did get his GED and is currently 30+ credits into obtaining his B.S.
Zach is so different from my other kids. He wants more…he calls himself an L.I.T. lawyer in training… and has said he wants to be a lawyer since he was 5 years old. He used to play with his siblings writing out make believe contracts, and post ‘restraining orders on his door’. While the other kids are reading science fiction, he is reading an enclyclopedia. Although he enjoys Harry Potter and other books/movies, he also pesters us to death to watch the history channel’s series ‘Revolution’.<br>
I want to do right by him…(I want to do right by all 5 of my kids),
I do know how tough middle school, and high school are…My oldest, a Junior at UNC, was always more artsy and less academic, occasionally in trouble (bus trouble too). He was a big target for bullies. He was way less driven. He didn’t care where he went to college as long as they had his major.
thanks for all the input</p>

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<p>“Although, I was ‘somewhat’ driven, I joined the military to pay for college, I had my oldest son 3 months before my 4 year time was up. I went on to community college and have an A.S. in nursing. My husband, although smart was raised by a single mom and attended 13 different schools before dropping out in the 10th grade. He did get his GED and is currently 30+ credits into obtaining his B.S.”</p>

<p>Both you and your h sound very driven to me. If you’d been raised in the kind of environment your S was raised in, you may have expressed your drivenness in the same way he is. </p>

<p>What both you and your H have done to obtain your educations is very impressive – particularly considering that you also have several kids!</p>

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<p>As a kid I was academically high, but never really learned to be a good risk-taker, maybe even today. So make sure that your son learns that.</p>

<p>As a lawyer, I would say that your son may or may not want to be a lawyer when he gets older. Don’t worry about it.</p>

<p>My sister has run gifted-talented programs in elementary school for years. Her modus operandi is to find ways to get every kid into those programs that she can; she believes that, at that level, the programs can benefit almost all kids. She always complained that she was not my equal academically, but the fact is that she is at least as intelligent than I, more talented in many ways, and far more accomplished.</p>

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<p>What sort of local high schools are available to you? If they are not top-quality I would recommend very highly the Johns Hopkins-run CTY programs. I have two kids, one at Princeton, one a rising junior in high school. The one at Princeton was the type who was born ready to go to college. She has made her own education all along, and we have been lucky to be in an area with top schools and the finances to send her to a wonderful private high school. So when she got bored in 6th and 7th grade she just turned her attention to the social world, and her ballet, and the 600 other things she was interested in. Nothing extra was really required for her to make the most of her high school years, except that I not throw her out the window on occasion:).</p>

<p>My S doesn’t have D’s same level of social interests. He likes topics and facts and material and ideas, and one or two good friends. And like many boys, if he thinks something is boring he doesn’t want to make the effort. Not that he does badly at school, his grades are great, just that he has not discovered any true passion, either academic or otherwise. I believe now that extra academic attention would have given him that opportunity.</p>

<p>We sent him to a CTY session this summer for the first time. Only wish we had discovered it earlier. The danger with these kinds of kids is, as others have said, that somewhere around 5th-7th grade they really start to outstrip their peers and the material they are presented, even in good schools. Boys frequently then turn to video games, etc as a way to find sufficient complexity. We found that CTY really offers boys a place to learn the way boys like to learn - focused, all-encompassing, high-bandwidth. </p>

<p>I believe CTY offers scholarships for those who need them. If no one has yet given the URL, it is <a href=“http://www.cty.jhu.edu%5B/url%5D”>www.cty.jhu.edu</a>.</p>