Being the Mother of a Gifted Child
Mothers spend many hours with their children each day. They observe them closely and interact with them in a variety of contexts. In fact, they’re the best at predicting their abilities, skills, interests, and needs. Therefore, being the mother of a gifted child means you play an extremely important role in your little one’s development.
In fact, very often, mothers are a key factor when it comes to identifying giftedness in children. What’s more, they’re also important when it comes to psychological intervention and the correct response to their children’s specific needs for educational support.
Being the mother of a gifted child
Being the mother of a gifted child isn’t an easy task. However, it’s very enriching, given that it gives mothers the opportunity to raise and educate children with extraordinary abilities.
Despite this, parents shouldn’t treat their gifted children any differently than they would another child. They simply need to learn to adapt to their way of being and their needs .
Families play a fundamental role in developing the potential of children that are gifted. Therefore, family members – especially mothers – should seek out the resources they need to respond to their child’s intellectual, emotional, and social needs.
With this in mind, it’s important to contrast your impressions early on with your child’s school. What’s more, you should be sure to be informed regarding the following processes:
- Detection.
- Evaluation.
- The availability of educational support.
In this sense, educational intervention won’t be successful without cooperation and commitment between a child’s family and school. In other words, there must be fluent communication between the contexts where children spend most of their time.
Intervention objectives when you’re the mother of a gifted child
Mothers of gifted children shouldn’t forget to provide the care, affection, and support that every child needs. What’s more, they need to concentrate on offering them an education that suits their needs. But in doing so, parents need to be careful to avoid exerting too much pressure or making excessive demands. At the same time, parents shouldn’t overstate some of their abilities in front of others.
Therefore, we can say that the fundamental objectives of family intervention are the following:
- Maximizing students’ personal interests, without losing sight of the balanced development of all their capacities.
- Encouraging participation in a variety of activities (educational, athletic, recreational, etc.) without overwhelming children.
- Adapting the family’s demands to a child’s possibilities.
- Maximizing children’s intellectual autonomy and self-esteem.
- Making sure children have a social life. This means providing them with opportunities to relate to children their own age and establish friendships.
- Maintaining a good relationship with gifted children’s schools.
“Expecting all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting all children the same age to wear the same size clothing.”
– Madeline Hunter –
Importance of the relationship between family and school
As we’ve already mentioned, it’s important for families and schools to maintain a good relationship. This way, they can plan together and the gifted child can sense coherence between the two contexts where he or she develops .
Finally, professionals at the school should carry out periodical evaluations of the chid’s educational supports. Of course, the gifted child’s family must participate in this process, which will help to:
- Introduce changes and improvements in the learning process.
- Analyze educational strategies.
- Coordinate means of psychological intervention.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Albes, C., Aretxaga, L., Etxebarria, I., Galende, I., Santamaría, A., Uriarte, B. y Vigo, P. (2013). Orientaciones educativas. Alumnado con altas capacidades intelectuales. País Vasco: Servicio de Imprenta y Reprografía del Gobierno Vasco.
- Bellver, I. (2013). Niños y niñas con altas capacidades intelectuales. Pautas para padres y madres.
- Chocomeli, M. F., Falcones, A. y Sánchez, J. M. (2011). Unidad 9: Alumnos con altas capacidades. Universidad Miguel Hernández: Máster Oficial en Formación del Profesorado de ESO, BACH, FP y EI.