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by Kathryn Finn
At the very least, parents of profoundly gifted children will need to enrich the educational experiences their children receive from standard schools. at the most, they assume responsibility for the whole learning process. Whether they use an unstructured (unschooling) or structured (curriculum-based) approach, Kathryn Finn shows how home-based education can grow, expand, and accelerate to meet the needs of these nonstandard learners.
A great many parents of profoundly gifted children end up home-schooling their children for part of their education. These children are so different from the typical child, and so different from each other, that it’s a rare school that has the perfect program all set up. And even if the school offers good options, they are rarely sufficient. These children often eat curriculum in great gulps and come back raging for more. So common is this phenomenon that there’s a word for homeschooling children who also go to school. It’s called afterschooling.
Like all parents, we work out solutions for our children as we go along. It often takes us a very long time to use the term gifted, never mind profoundly gifted. I didn’t use these words for over a decade of mothering. I didn’t use them when my first child turned over when she was less than twelve hours old. I didn’t use them when she was smiling at me within a week, or when she failed to be distracted when I took things out of her range of vision at the same age. And I sure didn’t use them when she wanted to stay up most of the night looking me in the eyes and cooing at me. Nor did I use them when she demanded to be taught to read when she was four years old. Or when her little sister suddenly learned to read over one weekend the same year.
Discovering my children deep in conversation about whether the universe had edges or not didn’t clue me in. Nor did having a three-year-old look up from counting blocks and announce that math is real. I didn’t take seriously another three-year-old announcement, when my daughter said that she wanted to go to school, MIT by preference. Nor did her wondering joy when she looked up at the stacks of the Boston Public Library help me. She announced that she was going to read all the books, and I told her that we’d start with the children’s room.
It didn’t strike me as odd when my one-year-old learned to choose a computer-game cartridge, insert it properly, start the computer, and happily play games rated for four-to six-year-olds. It didn’t even surprise me that she always picked the right cartridge.
Not that I was displeased with most of these things. I could have used more sleep, and I knew my children possessed a phenomenal ability to disorganize a house, but mostly I thought they were cute. All children are cute, aren’t they? And all children are full of energy, and they all make a mess. I knew my neighbors had neater houses, but I blamed myself rather than my children.
I learned to mother the children I had. I did notice that the developmental timetables in the baby books were off, but I thought that was probably to keep people from worrying. I learned that you can read even when you have a baby who wants constant interaction. You simply read out loud, for hours and hours and hours. You also go for walks and name everything you come across.
We joined the Children’s Museum and the Science Museum and went to each roughly twice a week. In the grocery store, we discussed menus and read labels together. We visited the library daily, and quickly developed a rule that no one could borrow more books than she could personally carry. We went to concerts of all sorts, and investigated all the inexpensive and free activities that a large city offered. And along the way we made the most wonderful friends.
Eventually school came into our lives for my older child, and passed out again quite quickly. It didn’t work. My daughter didn’t fit in. The teacher didn’t like her, and made that clear all around. My child wasn’t supposed to ask why about every little thing. She wasn’t supposed to point out every inconsistency or say, “Teacher, you made a ‘stake.” She wasn’t supposed to bring in books in other languages and ask to have them read to the class. And above all she wasn’t supposed to derail every lesson plan with her questions. Even then, I didn’t conclude that my child was different. I thought the school was dreadful.
We brought her home to learn. My mother donated a small chalkboard to the cause, which led to the discovery that chalk dust causes my second child to break out in dramatic welts. The doctor suggested we avoid any school with chalkboards. We didn’t even consider school for years after that.
Another mother had to name for me what I was dealing with. (Thanks, Bev.) The revelation came as a shock. I had to consider for a long while before I agreed and then proceeded to deal with the information. You may have had your own challenge named for you by a teacher, a doctor, a professional in gifted education, or another parent. The naming will give you a new view of your child, but remember that you still have the same child you had before. You’ve been learning to deal with this child all along. You will be all right. The word gifted gave me two things. It made some of what we had been living with more understandable. And it gave me permission to do things that I wouldn’t have otherwise considered.
The first thing is to forget the picture of a little classroom in your house. You may find it convenient to set up a study room for yourself and your child. You may prefer to do different tasks in different places in the house. But you are not embarking on school in miniature. This is an individual tutoring situation.
Lessons can happen anywhere that works. You can have set hours for schoolwork or use the Montessori concept of the prepared environment.
You also don’t have to teach everything yourself. Consider yourself the administration, not the staff. Feel free to make use of all of your community’s resources, including the schools, if you like. It isn’t unusual these days for schools to work out part-time arrangements, in which a child studies some subjects in school and others at home. But your community will contain many other resources as well. Colleges offer weekend and summer classes for kids. So do museums and nature preserves. Consider incorporating Scouts or Camp Fire into your program. Think in terms of volunteer work, as well as classes. Volunteer time at a museum site, or regular visits to a nursing home, can teach a great deal of history. Programs designed for adults are also an option. Depending upon your child’s age, you may need to attend, too. But children as young as ten regularly take college courses successfully, and younger ages are not unknown.
Friendship is important to any child. For the profoundly gifted child, I have found that homeschooling offers a great advantage. Basing the child’s education throughout the community allows the child access to a wide range of possible friends. It also circumvents the false impression so many children receive that friends ought to be exactly one’s own age. Instead, the child develops friendships based upon activities and interests.
Finding a soul-mate who can share all of a child’s interests is a matter of luck. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. But even if the magical best friend doesn’t come along, there are soccer buddies and swimming buddies, friends from Scouts and friends from church. There is the book group from the library, the elderly gentleman who plays chess in the park, the neighbor with the toddlers, and on and on. Find your child opportunities to share his or her interests, to run around and be silly, to be the leader and the follower, the older guide and the younger one as well. And try to have friends you share with your child. It would be sad if there were no one who could delight you both.
Homeschoolers range between two poles. The unschoolers rely on life to motivate their children to learn all that is needed. They impose nothing, following the lead of the child’s interests at every step. At the other end of the continuum are the curriculum-based. They buy textbooks in grade-level packages and run small schools in their refurbished garages.
People on both ends of the continuum do excellent jobs of educating their children. I have always been most comfortable somewhere in the middle. In part this is a matter of my own personality, and in part it is a reaction to my children and my community.
I live in a state where the law requires regular achievement testing of homeschoolers. The existence of a minimum standard is therefore at the back of my mind. Not that any of my children ever scored near the minimum. They usually miss few questions, or none. But I admit that the testing has influenced my choices. You will want to find out what your state requires. This is information easily come by. In some other countries, education laws are made on a national basis. The United States sets these regulations state by state. There are few places in the world where home-schooling is not a legal option for parents who choose it.
Additionally, I live in a college town and so we have always had access to excellent library facilities. This has led us to make our studies more book-oriented than they might otherwise have been. It also has meant we have not bought as many books as we might have needed to. (This will come as a surprise to my husband, who will not believe that anyone buys more books than we do.)
Find out the strengths of your community and your family, and use those resources to the maximum. Grandparents and other relatives are often delighted to share their knowledge and skills with children. The children are often as delighted to learn.
I have never felt any hesitation in requiring my children to learn material they feel disinclined to master. This is, to my mind, what parents do. If I can reasonably insist on toothbrushing and baths, I can equally insist that my children learn to make change or to write a letter of thanks.
My youngest recently informed me that she “doesn’t do bathrooms.” Unfortunately for her, adults “do bathrooms” as a general rule. I can’t let her leave home without the skill. Equally, she needs to be able to change a tire, cook a meal, figure out a budget, and acquire a long list of other practical skills. Under normal circumstances, the natural desires of children to be independent and mature will drive them to acquire such skills. If they don’t, that’s what parents are for.
But I feel free to require other things, as well. I feel an obligation to pass on my religion to my child. I also feel an obligation to pass on my culture. My child is therefore, willing or not, going to discover such things as classical music and Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, and will become familiar with such people as Archimedes and Einstein.
As a general rule, however, the child’s interests can be allowed to drive. It’s so much less work that way. Topics of lesser interest can be connected to the passions as necessary. Showing real interest in something yourself will almost always convince your child to take a closer look.
One question you will encounter regularly is what grade your child is in. This can be difficult to answer, because these children are often all over the place. At first, the question is really one of age. Since that’s all the inquirer wants to know, just tell them that.
You will, of course, keep track in your own mind the level at which your child is working in any given subject. For the most part, you needn’t have this nailed down to a specific grade. If you are using a textbook, it will be marked with a grade or a grade range. If not, you will know a little more roughly how to label your child’s learning level. But you will know. A gifted child rarely works across all subjects at the same level.
Don’t expect this.
I have dealt with this unevenness by adjusting myself to it. The level of input that the child can handle is often very high. I read material out loud for most of the early years. My child’s reading level was adequate for amusement reading. But for information input, we used books written for adult readers almost from the beginning. The material written for children rarely contained enough information and often had a patronizing tone that made my children wild. Their output was also oral for most of the elementary grades. They used writing for letters and stories. I checked their comprehension of the content areas by asking them to tell me what they understood, or to tell Daddy what they’d learned that day.
This led to a rediscovery of something we’d known when they were very small. My children were completely capable of absorbing information without understanding it at all. Later, when understanding arrived, out would pop the information. I repeatedly found myself staring in amazement at children who were reciting material I could swear no one ever taught them. When asked, sometimes they’d explain that the information was taught to an older sibling within their hearing, often when they were only toddlers. Occasionally I’ve been told that the child has always known it, but only just understood.
This information-sponge nature comes with a flip side: an aversion to repetition. When asked to repeat what they already know, you can watch the brain switch into the off position. If you find your child forgetting material that was known in the past, the problem is probably too much repetition. Repetition kills learning for gifted kids. Don’t do it any more than you can help. Life itself will contain more than enough practice in handling repetition.
Textbooks repeat to a shocking extent. So if you choose to use textbook material, you will have to select. Textbooks repeat within each volume and they repeat from grade to grade. Don’t ever expect to use all of any textbook. Your child will use up the benefits long before you’ve gone through every page. If possible, borrow textbooks instead of buying them.
The stage of happy exploration can last throughout the childhood years. Adolescence is different. Adolescents want to adventure into the wide world. They arrange this in individual ways. Some go from part-time jobs into their own businesses. Some choose to go to high school. Some begin with college.
At this point, the yardsticks of the educational system come into play. The records you have kept become very important. You will want to be able to document what you have done. In addition, this is the stage at which my family has found distance-learning programs very useful. They allow the child to try out a more directed style of learning and evaluation while still remaining in the familiar environment and controlling the pace. Distance-learning makes a good transition device. And while a transcript can be made up by parents, in my experience transcripts from these programs are easier for schools and colleges to accept. A gradual transition has worked best for my family. I would suggest beginning to find serious mentorships no later than age nine or ten, and to think about college courses starting by age fourteen, if possible.
One day you will discover that the homeschooling years have passed for at least one child. Enjoy them while they last.
About the author of this chapter:
Kathryn Finn is mom to five and (at the time of this writing) grandmom to one. She has been homeschooling for over eighteen years and was a member of John Holt’s staff. She is the director of Tagfam.org, an Internet-based support community dedicated to building and strengthening relationships between individuals, families, and organizations for the benefit of intellectually gifted children and adults.
Excerpted from High IQ Kids: Collected Insights, Information, and Personal Stories from the Experts edited by Kiesa Kay, Deborah Robson, and Judy Fort
Brenneman, copyright © 2007. Used with permission of Free Spirit Publishing Inc., Minneapolis, MN; 800-735-7323; www.freespirit.com. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with Permission
About the Book:
Raising or educating highly, exceptionally, or profoundly gifted kids can be daunting. They're so unique, and the challenges they face are so out-of-the-mainstream, that many adults feel helpless and confused about how to care for them. The essays, research articles, and practical strategies in HIGH IQ KIDS: COLLECTED INSIGHTS, INFORMATION, AND PERSONAL STORIES FROM THE EXPERTS provide hard-to-find support for parents, teachers, counselors, administrators, and other adults who have high-IQ kids in their lives.
HIGH IQ KIDS addresses the challenges and joys of raising, teaching, living with, and understanding profoundly gifted kids of all ages. Editors Kiesa Kay, Deborah Robson, and Judy Fort Brenneman have all successfully raised high-IQ kids. This book is the product of their collective hope to give parents, educators, and counselors the information they themselves needed while raising extraordinarily gifted children.
Look inside HIGH IQ KIDS to find information about:
. identification, assessment, and IQ tests
. homeschooling, mainstreaming, and special programs
. advocacy for the gifted (and why they need it)
. twice-exceptionality
. and much more
Contributors include Karen Rogers, Ph.D., Carolyn Kottmeyer, Sally Reis, Ph.D., Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Ed.D., Miraca U. M. Gross, Ph.D., and many more.
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