According to the National Association for Gifted Children, parenting a bright child comes with many challenges and responsibilities. As the parent of a gifted child, you are probably used to hearing them say schoolwork is boring or easy. While parents may listen to these statements and think they’re good signs, they can lead to future problems.
Many gifted children struggle in later school years due to lack of organization and planning skills. Others have a hard time accepting failure and persevering through challenges. To help your gifted child thrive, you need to prepare them for future setbacks and experiences. Here are some fundamental approaches that will ensure your high functioning kid’s future success.
Develop Organization & Planning Skills
Young children usually learn to plan and organize their ideas to complete homework and projects. However, many gifted children find elementary coursework so simple that they never develop these essential skills. Help your child understand the importance of scheduling, planning and organization through daily routines and home projects.
Engage in challenging home projects or extracurricular courses with your children to develop these necessary skills. Create a daily schedule of routine events, including school work, and reward positive behavior.
Build Confidence and Resilience
Children who don’t face failure in the early years of education can be without the tools to deal with challenges in the future. Additionally, gifted children who feel pressured to meet external standards can crack and lose interest in their educations. To ensure your child doesn’t become an underachiever, build their confidence and resilience.
Celebrate the effort your child puts into projects, not just the results. Teach your gifted child about great inventors and famous figures who failed, before succeeding. Engage in problem-solving with your child. Allow them to explore different solutions to the same problem to teach them about real-life challenges. Coding and robotics are great challenging endeavors to help develop the problem-solving skills of gifted children.
Encourage Self-Expression
While your gifted child may be a whiz at math or writing, don’t hyperfocus their lives. Allow your child to explore the arts, music, sports, and other paths. Putting too much pressure on one area can cause a child to stress or burn-out early in life. The result is a gifted math genius who refuses to pursue college or a cello prodigy who never performs in public.
As the parent of a bright child, you want them to succeed in life. For that to happen, it’s important to treat them as individuals. Allow your kid to be a kid. Let them make mistakes, explore different activities and challenge them to learn new things. Don’t pigeonhole your child into one role and expect them to play that part forever.
Children grow and change each day. If your gifted child isn’t nurtured, challenged, encouraged and prepared, they may not be ready for those changes. So, remember these simple tips as your child develops and watch them thrive!
How do you nurture your gifted child? What challenging activities do you do as a family? We want to hear your experiences.