Gifted children

All kids are gifted; some just open their packages earlier than others. Michael Carr

Ha ha…this quote makes me laugh.

I often say I despaired of getting our son out of elementary school, mostly because of fighting over the dreaded homework, but he graduated from Princeton.

At the time he was growing up, I didn’t realize a parent could ask for tests for the gifted program. I thought it had to be offered. At some point his friends said he should ask for the test, so he did. I think this was in high school. He passed. Somewhere along the line he became a self-starter.

College girl took the test in elementary and didn’t pass. That one made me mad. I said to the tester that they weren’t testing for the right things. (They sort of agreed.) Mama Bear. Meantime she took a ton of AP classes and had nearly all As and got into the college and the program she wanted to get into, the school that many are not accepted into.

I have a friend whose Chinese daughter is talented on a lot of levels, including Irish step dancing. She’s won numerous medals for this and is a lovely girl in all respects.

My older Chinese daughter, surprisingly to me, just loves making music, even practicing. (She is self teaching herself piano on my keyboard, since she has learned to read music at school, and we are playing some duets together, as well as she is playing one at school.) Through the school, she started with viola and on her own switched to cello. It makes me happy to see her enthusiasm, even when she is debating the merits of whether she should do chorus or cello depending on which she was chosen for, if she were chosen for both. (She was chosen for chorus for the county program.)

Cherish the talents and let them develop along their own lines. One talent leads to another. And they multiply, rather than simply add to each other.

Do you have any ways of doing this to share?

Karin

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Categories:

Arts, Inspiration and creativity, Opportunity, Parenting



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