Elgarmummy.com

Category: gifted

  • Sisterhood Of Mothers With Gifted Children

    Sisterhood Of Mothers With Gifted Children

    Sisterhood of Mothers With Gifted Children

    I feel as if I have been inducted into a secret sisterhood which few people dare to mention. This guild is lonely, but once a member pops up, you do your best to connect. This is the secret sisterhood consists of mothers (and perhaps fathers) of gifted children.

    Once upon a time, you could just show your video of how excited you are about your young child who could type  song lyrics at age 2. After a few more videos of interesting discoveries as your child gets older, you start to notice how your friends (with children of the same age are not doing the same thing), and the crowd have strangely grown silent. This is when you realise you have ventured into unknown territory, where people think you are showing off or hothousing your child, but you are actually at a loss on what to do with your child. When you finally realise that your child is gifted, after months of googling and wondering how many of the characteristics could be checked, you start to search for parents with similar children.

    When other parents reach out to you, it is almost like a lifeline. You get to share more about the issues that their children are facing, and what resources they have already found. Perhaps it could be about interacting with the gifted education branch. Perhaps it could be about sharing homeschooling materials. Perhaps it could be simply just happiness about having another person to talk to and that you can form new relationships with other parents of gifted children.

    Joining groups such as Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page allows me to strike up conversations with other parents, and also tap on their vast experience on issues such as dealing with gifted friendships, advocating for gifted children, and finding reliable testers. Having this blog also allows others to reach me. Some of them are worried about their children who had teachers who could not handle their immense curiosity and incessant questions. Others have seen family members and friends downplay their children’s numerous early milestone achievements and other gifted characteristics.

    Occasionally, you realise that a friend’s child is advanced, and you reach out. If the other parent speaks the same language, you are extremely happy that you have finally found a comrade. With friends who have younger children, sometimes I get to see videos of what their children are up to. I would observe possible characteristics and I raise the possibility that their children could be gifted. For many, it is the first time they are hearing this.

    Most of the people I know with gifted children are women since mothers tend to discuss their children more, hence the term sisterhood, but occasionally I get to know fathers with gifted children too, and they have taken more active roles in their children’s education and interests.

    Psst, are you already in this sisterhood?

    This post is part of a blog hop by Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page in July on Gifted Relationships.
    gifted relationships

  • 4 Ideas For Children During Free Time

    4 Ideas For Children During Free Time

    After being confronted with the reality that my young children spend far too much of their free time on iPad either playing Minecraft, Tap Zoo and Surfer Run, or watching YouTube videos, I decided there must be better things for them to do, because they become quite irritable after playing online games for too long. There are four big ideas I would encourage them to do during their free time.

    1. Play

    Active play is great for young children. Gifted children may have asynchronous development physically, so spending time outdoors could help them with their gross motor skills. Unstructured play is important for their development. We also go to the playground occasionally. Gar loves to climb and he becomes braver each time. I used to hover around Gar, but now that he is older and more skilful, I can let him have more independence. My son’s preschool teacher also mentioned that negotiation skills are best observed at the playground.

    The boys love to jump on the sofa. The younger one loves to jump from the piano bench, tables and beds. We have lots of playmats to cushion his jumps. Someone mentioned that having a mini trampoline would be a great idea. I haven’t had time to check that out. In the mean time, my 3-year-old sofa looks bad.

    The boys also love to play with balls. They could throw it, kick it or roll it. Gar loves to put on his father’s soccer gloves. Sometimes I will even join in, but I think I am far from bending it like Beckham.

    Apart from active play, sedentary play is important too. Gar loves to play with Batman and Joker at the moment. My husband had bought Duplo Batman, so the brothers love to play with them.

    Recently, we started playing Twister, a game that ties you up in knots, as El loves to say. What I can say is my children can’t seem to tell left and right apart.

    playing twister1

    Charades is another game that we have played before. It is no ordinary charades. It is dinosaur charades. El would act out various dinosaur species, and get me to guess what they are.

    Not too long ago, with his latest Minecraft obsession, and some Citiblocs tiny wooden blocks, he made me guess various items, such as tree, treehouse, heart, and other things that look exactly like how they do in Minecraft.

     

    2. Create

    Let children come up with something. Sometimes they could create their own games, or sometimes they could recreate drawings or other handicraft.

    El creates drawings filled with dinosaurs or Ben 10 aliens. Despite nearly 2 years of art lessons, he is still not so good at drawing. However, I still love his drawings. I have tonnes of unused exercise paper, so he just takes them and draw. He fills them up with maps of various continents and countries. He writes a lot of information on those papers as well.

    Gar has learnt how to use a pair of scissors through practising cutting those cute pictures from Kumon books. He can use a normal pair of scissors. Sometimes I just let him cut coloured paper. This helps him with his fine motor skills. He does this when he is bored.
    cut paper dog let's cut paper

    We used to do painting, but I usually ended up painting most of the time. Gar likes to watch me paint more than he paints. If he does paint, he uses a lot of yellow.

    gar and el painting

    Now that we have finally bought a piano, I would also play songs for them to sing. Gar loves Skidamarink at the moment, so I play that and he will sing along. He loves to sing. It is also a tactic by me to get El to the piano so that he can practise the piano.

    3. Think

    It is good to have down time. They could think about anything. It is also good when they are in cars and have nothing to do. Simple games can be played.

    Sometimes El sees me reading newspapers and he would join in. Last week, I saw an news article about a basketballer named Curry, and it tickled El greatly because he likes to eat curry. He was so inspired he came up with a song/rap (can’t really call it a song because he cannot carry a tune) about curry. All I did was to give him a piece of paper and a pencil.

    There is a cartoon with a character named Mabel. In an oft-televised advertisement, she says, “My name is Mabel. It rhymes with cable.” The boys are also tickled by this. El started thinking about rhymes.

    “My name is Ace. It rhymes with ice,” he said, while we were in the car.

    “No, they do not rhyme,” I replied, and made the vowel sounds for him.

    It was only when I wrote it down I realized he had rhymed them via spelling. To provide him with more examples, I showed him a video on Michael Learns To Rock, about star/car, and stay/anyway as part of rhyming pairs. Think he wasn’t keen on the music.

    Other thinking games include thinking of as many animals/birds/dinosaurs/countries, depending on their current obsessions, starting with a particular letter.

    Boggle is another interesting word game.

    We have plenty of books at home, so sometimes Gar will request us to read the books to him.

    4. Dream

    Dreaming and thinking are not exclusive, but I would like to think of dreaming as something that is more abstract and allows more room for creativity.

    I like to throw random questions to El. If you were a tree, what would you be? He replied he would be a shelter for animals.

    What is your ideal school? He said it would be a nature school. He told me that his school would be situated in a forest, and surrounded by trees. They will study about nature. He went to check out images of nature schools, and then drew his own school.

    nature school 1

    Sometimes we need to give our gifted children time to dream. If they have too many packed activities (which I am sometimes tempted to do), they are just going through the motion, and may soon lose their zest for learning.

    You could check out creative journal prompts and get some questions to ask your children. They do not have to turn this into a writing activity. They could just verbalise their thoughts, and you could encourage them to dream. You never know when their ideas could crystallise.

    7 habits of happy kids

    I had bought a book on The 7 Habits for Happy Children and read a story to El. It was about a character feeling bored. He was encouraged to take charge himself and not depend on others to relieve his boredom. The habit was about Being Proactive. When El mentioned that word to me a few days ago, I reminded him of the story, and immediately he went to find something to do. I hope my boys will take charge of their own free time and find something to occupy themselves, or just use the time to dream. El will be going to school next year, and with the stressful Singapore education system, I hope he will have free time to play, create, think and dream.

    This is part of a blog hop by Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page for June. Click on the image to check out other blogs on the gift of free time.
    the gift of free time

  • The Danger of Twice Exceptional Students Undiagnosed

    The Danger of Twice Exceptional Students Undiagnosed

    There are various streams in schools here in Singapore, each catering to students who progress at different pace. The first stream (Express) allows students to complete their secondary education in four years. The middle stream (Normal (Academic)) allows students to complete their secondary education in five years. The final stream (Normal (Technical)) prepares them for technical education. You might probably think that those who are considered brighter would be found only in the first stream, but sometimes there are anomalies.

    twice exceptional students undiagnosed danger2

    I had encountered a few students in the middle stream with divergent thinking, and while speaking to them, I realised that they were very bright. They thought deeply about their favourite topics. Some could tell me about hot global issues while others had creative ideas either nihilistic or environmentally friendly.

    Perhaps these students did not do well in their primary school education, because of certain subjects. Out of these students, some had various learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, ADHD or autism. However, I am inclined to think that they could be twice exceptional. The level of maturity in their discussions was far beyond many students in the first stream. They found lessons extremely boring, because due to the general weaknesses in the language of their classmates, they were forced to sit through hours and hours of lessons in skills they had mastered long ago.

    It is a common misconception that gifted students in Singapore could only be found in top schools, or sieved out by a national screening test at 10 years old for giftedness. While most of them would be found in top schools, there are many more that are languishing in average classes in less challenging streams. They go through life not knowing how intelligent they are, and are only constantly told they are lazy, misbehaving, rude or stupid. If their parents know how intelligent they are, perhaps they could focus on their strengths. Perhaps they are acting up in classes because they are bored stiff. Dyslexia, ADHD/ADD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and many other issues affect how they behave and learn.

    Some could be gifted, but never discovered by their parents, and with other learning disorders, they may be branded troublemakers in school. The danger comes when they overstep certain boundaries. One Singaporean sixteen-year-old, Amos Yee (https://amosyee.wordpress.com/), is currently having a brush with the law, after his outspoken rants on video offended many people. Based on his writings (with expletives included), he is definitely gifted as many of his thoughts (though not all) made sense. He had very few friends, because most of his schoolmates, while in a pretty high achieving school, could not reach his intellectual level. He probably has a sensory disorder that made him want to wear pyjamas to court, because they are comfortable. In the end, he compromised and wore a t-shirt and a pair of pants, which was still not formal enough, and resulted in his estranged father resorting to violence to get him do his way.

    amosyee
    Image taken off a video rant by Amos Yee on Mr Lee Kuan Yew

    Perhaps the boy might have Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), which makes him want to argue with adults or people in authority. He had breached his bail terms, by deliberately posting on his blog despite being told not to do so. His parents refused to bail him out. He refused to comply with the terms. What this boy needs is counselling, and not a jail term. Why should he be put in remand, together with thieves and molesters, before his sentencing? He is a minor! Of course, should he continue what he is doing, he is going to get into more serious trouble. Since I am not a psychologist, I cannot diagnose him, but I suppose the court would order a psychological report.

    What is ironic is that this twice exceptional teenager had chosen to rant about Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore who had just passed away, who was also twice exceptional. No matter what political views we may have about him about his methods and certain policies, he had definitely transformed Singapore. This gifted man had dyslexia. He was probably one of the few twice exceptional people who found success.

    leekuanyew1

     

     

     

     

     

     

    It is sad that many more undiagnosed twice exceptional children go under the radar. Some of them get diagnosed only for learning disabilities, and receive intervention measures to cope with those. Some do not get diagnosed for anything, because their giftedness had compensated for other learning disabilities, but they suffer from low self-esteem and other issues such as existentialism and never quite fitting in. Parents and teachers should be more aware of these issues and not just think these children are difficult. Should these children ever get into trouble, people should not straight away jump to conclusions and think that they have poor upbringing, or deserve to be jailed or slapped, or even killed, like what some netizens are clamouring for in the Amos Yee case.

    This is part of Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page’s blog hop on twice exceptional kids. Click on the image below to read other blogs in May’s blog hop.

    2ebloghop

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