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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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Galbraith's experience with gifted children whose grades don't reflect their abilities is a common problem with gifted children because of the inflexible curriculums of most school districts. They are usually labeled "gifted underachievers," but Delisle has a different tag for them. His term is "selective consumer." In other words, they take what they need and reject what they don't.

Often, this refusal to participate in the regular curriculum makes sense when a parent looks at what they're doing on a day-to-day basis. In the case of Lynn Norby, of Minneapolis, Minn., when she looked at what her gifted son did during the school day, she made a decision to home school him. "He would come home and tell me something they had learned," says Norby."Then he would come home the next day and tell me the same thing and the same thing the day after that and the day after that. There was so much repetition so that every child in the class would retain the information that the kids who got it the first time were bored to tears."

Delisle points out that many gifted children are also very strong-minded and will often just stop paying attention after that first lesson because they learn and retain information so quickly that they don't need the further repetition.

Another common problem with gifted children is that as very young students, the work comes so easily to them that, often, they don't develop good study habits. Then, later, when the work may become challenging, they can become frustrated and give up simply because they never learned how to learn. Any child who has been identified as gifted who begins to falter in the upper grades should be given reinforcement in organizational skills and study habits.

Also, as Delisle points out, it's very important to make a distinction in levels of giftedness. Just as there are different levels of special needs, some gifted children need more enrichment than others. For example, a mildly gifted student may do very well with a standard enrichment program in the public school. A profoundly gifted child, like Alexa Kottmeyer, may need something more.

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