My gifted child is bored / underachieving / misbehaving in school. What should I do?
When any of these situations occurs, the environment may be wrong for your child. Parents should investigate what is going on in school that doesn’t fit the learning, emotional and personality needs of their child. If the child is not given appropriate instruction paced correctly for him or her, this behavior may continue.
How do I pick a school for my gifted child?
This depends on where you live, what you can afford and how much role you want the school to assume, compared to the family’s role. You should take into account your child’s intellectual level, the overall intellectual average of the school and the flexibility of their instructional program. You should educate yourself on giftedness and school choices, and always visit the schools you are considering.
My child’s school does not offer anything special for gifted youth. What can I do?
Most schools have very little in place for gifted youth. The schools that have gifted programs often group same-age gifted youth together for enrichment classes for about one hour a week.
Parents need to educate themselves on the needs of their child based on their child’s level of intelligence and personality. They should use this information to work with the school to enact appropriate changes. If that doesn’t work, the parent should look at different schools or home schooling. If you choose home schooling, you may do some of the instructing yourself, pay tutors to do it at your home or in the school during the school day, or convince the school to allow your child to work on materials you’ve set up instead of some of the regular classes. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, but persistence and education will pay off.
How do I go about testing my young child?
This is a difficult question to answer. All available tests are standard score tests based on a ranking of all children who take the tests. The test will only tell you how many other children your child outscored; it will not tell you “how gifted” or how different your child’s thinking and reasoning are. The Stanford-Binet test is one test that can do that, but you must give your child the standard score test first or schools may not accept the results due to age. Another accepted examination for qualification to Mensa is Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence.
Source: Mensa International, Mensa Philippines
