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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Avoid using the words "smart" or "gifted" in the kid's earshot. My parents hid my IQ test results from me and I didn't know what I was working with until I was in my teens. It was v. helpful. [/quote]

This is probably good advice for a parent coming to DCUM to ask what to do for a gifted child.

My childhood was exactly the opposite. Being told in a way that seemed (to me at the time) objective that I was special changed my entire life.  Honestly, if I didn't have a particularly diligent 5th grade teacher asking for me to be tested while having more failing grades than passing ones, I would almost certainly not have a college education, much less a graduate education.  It was a real turning point in my life and helped me engage in so many other activities and want a different life than the one that I was headed for.  It helped me believe in myself and ask what I could do.  It gave me a new friend group.  And most important, in the awful cesspool that we call middle school it gave me a positive identity for myself at a time when so many kids struggle to define themselves in new ways.  My parents weren't terrible people. I wasn't abused or hungry.  My parents even told me that education was important and that I could be anything I wanted to be.  But I lived in a small town in the Midwest where very few people really leave and it is easy to stay.  Parenting here is much different with elementary kids scheduled for an instrument, two sports, coding club, and a meditation meetup.  Not going to college is treated like choosing to do meth for six months to see how it goes.  The pressure is intense in everything- admission to the magnet middle school, competitions to go to art camp, and HS freshmen drilling SAT prep.  I would imagine that a "gifted" label here would only add pressure. It might lead to the sort of "opt out with potential" where being praised for potential is good enough and fear of failure says it is better not to try than not to succeed.

But in the event that you are positing on DCUM for somewhere other than the UMC neighborhoods around here, then the best advice I can give is to breathe normally.  If your child were not gifted, it would still be a good idea to take them to library (or another enrichment opportunity).  If they were not gifted, they would still need to learn how to lose a soccer game (or anything else) without storming off or pouting.  And it would still be a good idea to focus praise on good process than outcomes.  [/quote]

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