It’s ok for me to label my child

Monday, 13 October 2008 22:12

I've been trying to avoid labeling Sam. I deliberately avoid associating the "G" word. But I'm starting to think.. this may be wrong. By not labeling Sam, I fail to pro-actively frame his needs in context and to help him manage and influence these. So I am going to label my son. Not because I want to impress. I need to label my son so that I think in context how to help him.

Sam is highly gifted. At 3 years of age he is doing the maths of an 8-10 year old with no signs of slowing down to this age gap. When Sam's mathematical age is 10 and his physical body and chronological age is 3, it creates challenges for him in our society where his peers - and our expectations - are of an average 3 year old.

Some of the challenges are:

• Social Isolation: Sam says he has no friends. They play silly games and they don't play with him. We need to recognize our 3 year old can feel socially isolated from his 3 year old friends. But I have no solution for this yet. Older boys don't want to play with Sam as there is age hierarchy with kids. And Sam, in every other way, such as physical, is still just a 3 year old. But I will keep working on this.

• Gifted peers: Even in the gifted community, finding another like-minded child is difficult. I'm not sure what Sam's IQ would translate into, but I suspect it's at the highly gifted end rather than the moderately gifted end. This is not an ego statement; it's a challenge on finding another 3 year old who thinks its fun to work out the 15 root of a number.

• Sensitivity: Sam understands more of the things we say and pays attention to this, even though we might think he is engaged in other things. He may also read far more into our non-verbal cues. So we need to be careful about managing ourselves - and others - around him.

• Teaching him about his difference - in a constructive way: I didn't want to tell Sam he was different. I didn't think this was a topic for a 3 year old. But maybe understanding Sam's difference will help him understand himself in context. I need to find a way to do this by making the result of the conversations helpful to Sam rather than causing him to feel isolated or pressured.