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Home › Articles › Back to School Headquarters › Gifted Children

Gifted Children

The Other Side of Special Education

By Kelly Burgess

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Not only were academics not a problem, Alexa was asking for more difficult work within a month of starting kindergarten. While most of her fellow 5-year-old students were learning simple words like "look" and "run" and learning to write their numbers properly, Alexa, who had started reading at age 3, was already doing addition and subtraction.

When the school finally tested her later that year, Alexa was found to be highly gifted. That year wasn't too bad, because Alexa had a teacher who was willing to go the extra mile to adapt her curriculum for the bright little girl, but subsequent years weren't always as pleasant. At one point, the Kottmeyers had to file a non-compliance complaint against the school district to get adaptations for Alexa in the classroom.

Alexa, in a way, was a "typical" gifted child. She was reading very early, showed a keen interest in the world around her, asked surprisingly sophisticated questions and was able to express herself well. Gifted children also tend to pass developmental milestones early, have an advanced vocabulary, become easily bored with routines, can be very demanding, particularly of adult or parental company and stimulation and have a good memory and longer-than-average attention span. Because she was her first child, however, Kottmeyer merely assumed all children developed that quickly.

Educating the Gifted Child
In the end, the accommodations made for Alexa just weren't enough; she was far too gifted to be accommodated in an average classroom. She is now attending a special high school for gifted students. It means she has to live away from home, but she's happy and thriving among her intellectual peers. Meanwhile, Carolyn Kottmeyer, who also has a highly gifted daughter, Jessie, age 7, who is already in the fourth grade, started a Web site for gifted children, Hoagies Gifted Education Page
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