The Gifted Child

The "gifted child" can be the quick witted charmer, the eccentric loner, the artistic or musical prodigy, or the mini-genius accelerated many times over. Gifted children have been endowed with a very high potential to achieve. From birth on, it is up to parents, teachers and the child himself to translate that potential into accomplishments. Gifted children can usually learn skill with little or no formal training. Many master basic reading skills on their own. What?!Does that mean I was gifted child? I learned to read on my own - by reading billboards and crayon labels.

Is your child gifted? I don't know about you but do you honestly believe that sustaining your child on certain brand of milk will make him "gifted." Fat, maybe. Anyway, here are some special ways of a gifted child. A child may show one or more of these traits on occasion but a gifted child shows many of these consistently and to a remarkable degree.

* An extremely high energy level especially when working on projects. Might not need much sleep.
* Insatiably curious and have a wide range of interests and hobbies.
* Has an unusually long attention span.
* Has a remarkable memory and can retain most of what he observed or learn. If an object is removed from a room, a gifted child of 2-3 may inquire where it is.

* Likes to collect things such as rocks, bottle caps.
* A precocious talker using grown-up words at a young age and has no difficulty conversing with adults. Instead of saying "I saw a dog", a gifted child might say " I saw a black dog cross the street."
* A child talented in verbal areas enjoys rhyming and analogies.
* He can create a short stories, poems and letters at an early age.

There are more in my next post.