AboutCarol Bainbridge Expertise I can answer most questions on parenting gifted children, from infants on. Questions can be about parenting, advocacy, and support and I can provide suggestions for toys and books gifted children love. I can even help you determine whether your child is gifted or bright, and I can point you to more information you might need. I can answer some questions about programs for gifted children, but can`t help much with information on colleges. Visitors wanting to know if their children are gifted might want to read the article "Is My Child Gifted?" before asking a question.
Experience I am the parent of a gifted child and have been working with other parents of gifted children for 13 years, helping them find support and providing them with information. I founded a local gifted organization and helped organize a parent day for a national gifted conference. I have been an active member of my state's gifted association since 1999 and created and maintain their Web site. In addition, I have created a website for parents of gifted children who are looking for toys and books for their children: www.giftsforlearning.com.
I am also the Guide About.com Gifted Children Site.
Organizations National Association for Gifted Children. Board member of state gifted association.
Question My son is 25 months old and having read your articles, gifted. He was a very active baby - 20 minute catnaps during the day, sitting at 4 months, crawling at 6mths, walking at 9. He has what we call brain expansions where in a very short period of time comprehends vast amounts of stuff. In a two week period around 17 months he named around 10 colours (he just started picking up crayons and telling us what colour they were), and picked up 10 -15 words a day. At around 20 months he started to show interest in letters - we discovered this while at a friends when he started pulling alphabet cookies out of a bowl and telling us what the letter was. We were shocked. He's moving into the sounds of combined letters now and I sense he'll start reading in the next couple of months. He adores books and we currently read 5 or so stories a day. He also builds creative structures up to 2ft high out of lego. He also loves our atlas and world globe and will often get the atlas off the bookshelf and talk to himself about the maps and drive his cars between places.
My question relates to some of the difficulties we have as a result of his giftedness. We think he often finds mundane (but essential) things boring and consequently frustrating. Eating is one of these and since he's been about 9 months old he's found sitting through a meal almost impossible. For a period we had to read him books to get him to sit still while we fed him. He will still only feed himself a couple of mouthfuls before he gives up out of boredom. To keep him interested we spend our meals talking about our experiences of the day in detail. Conversely he loves eating things we grow in the garden because he understands how they get to his plate.
While that has been frustrating and tiring, more concerning is that recently at his daycare he has become very aggressive to babies who share a play area with him. Until recently he's loved it, however he is in a room for 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 year olds and in the past 3 weeks many of the older children have moved into the room for the next age up and into a different play area. Leaving him with only 4 children his own age, several a couple of months younger and a number of 18 month olds. We suspect that he is missing his friends, but also that he finds it an insult to be left with younger children who he can't relate to as he would like to. He's now been in this room for 9 months. The childcare centre are reluctant to move him given he is behind in things like feeding himself so seen as more immature than the other children and he's is also a very small child - probably the size of a child 6 months younger, so they are concerned he may get a little intimidated by the older children.
I'm wondering if this aggression is characteristic of a gifted child who isn't getting enough stimulation? And if so how we manage this not only now, but in the future as I would be hesitant to have him accelerated at school when he starts in a couple of years time given his very small size.
Answer Hi Sharon,
What does your pediatrician say about your son's eating habits? Does he think it's a reason for concern? If your son is doing well physically, growing and not getting sick, then you probably don't need to fret about his eating habits. My son was like that at around the same age. He simply wasn't interested in eating. I don't think he found it boring. It just wasn't important. He lived on whole wheat bread, milk and fruit for months and months and months. For a while I thought he'd never eat anything else!
Check with your pediatrician to make sure there are no health issues and if there aren't, you probably don't need to worry. It's most likely not boredom that keeps your son from eating, but lack of hunger. If your body does not have any nutritional needs, you aren't going to get hungry or get sick.
The aggression you describe is probably the result of your son's frustration with the children he's with in his school room. Those children cannot interact with your son on the same level. That is frustrating and young children don't deal very well with frustration. It's not necessarily a response to a lack of intellectual stimulation, at least not in the sense we usually talk about it.
My son had similar reactions to children his age and younger when he was in preschool. The kids all loved him and would follow him around, but it drove him nuts. The younger kids either couldn't talk or could talk in any real communicative way -- meaning they couldn't talk about the things my son was interested in. He ended up running away from those kids and crying and fussing if he couldn't get away. And he didn't know how to explain his feelings or what the problem was. It looked like he didn't know how to get along with other children.
However, when my son was with other gifted kids and older kids, there were no behavior issues. We see this happen pretty consistently with young gifted children. It's not that it's insulting to be with those younger kids and it's not even necessarily that your son misses his friends. It is probably that your son is frustrated that the other kids don't understand him and he most likely doesn't understand the other kids.
Imagine what it would feel like to be on a strange planet where only a few other people could speak your language. Now imagine that you are in a room all day long with these strange people. You are trying to get along with them, but you can't get them to understand what you are saying and you have no idea what they are saying. On top of that, imagine that none of you are particularly good at controlling your emotional responses to the situation. What do you think would be happening in that room? How would you feel? Now imagine that in the next room over, there are a couple of people who can speak your language. Where would you want to be?
I seriously doubt that your son would be intimidated by the older children. I hear that sort of thing all the time and I never understand why people assume that will happen. Children don't really get intimidated. They may get nervous. They may be shy. They may even be a little scared. But intimidated? That's an adult construct.
Your son would probably do better with the older children. No one ever held back a child based on size if the child was the right age to go with the other kids. It's really absurd to use that as a criteria. What do we do with children who have growth issues? Keep them with children forever? I also seriously doubt that your child is not "behind" in feeding himself. Is he incapable of feeding himself? Does he not know how to hold a spoon? If he's hungry, he'll eat.
