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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
1. Identify talent
There is some problem with the fact that few people know what a gifted child looks like at an early age. When a person has already become Mozart or Einstein, we can easily draw conclusions: “It is not surprising that he discovered the theory of relativity! After all, he had already played the piano at the age of three! ”Popular misconceptions supported by popular culture also bring confusion. Everyone knows that if a child looks like a geek, he has a stutter, glasses with thick lenses and problems with peers, most likely this is the future genius.
Many parents jump up from the chair and shout that they have an indigo child, only after seeing how creative the guy is wrapping pasta on a fork
It is difficult to identify abilities by eye. Therefore, traditionally this question is given to teachers, educators in circles, coaches and organizers of olympiads: they have access to the average temperature in the hospital, so you can listen to their opinion. In America, superpowers are identified using tests that students undergo since elementary school.
We usually do not conduct intelligence tests in schools, and when the teacher reports that the child is gifted, he means that the schoolboy easily solves problems, remembers poems, grabs difficult topics on the fly, and shines with mature reasoning. That is, it shows academic talent. By the way, even with academic talent, a student may not shine on exams. For example, due to anxiety or the habit of double-checking the answer of a task six times. The test will not mark such a child, but attentive mom and dad will quite note it.
Another type of recognized giftedness - creative - is manifested in poems, poems and paintings, but, again, with an academic touch: if a child giftedly painted graffiti on the school wall, parents will, of course, be hinted at his abilities, but not in a laudatory way. That is, the school will notice giftedness if it is associated with academic performance and academic disciplines, and also if an attentive teacher comes across.
Modern psychologists believe that there are more types of giftedness. For example, the famous American psychologist Howard Gardner offers six types of intelligence, which means that there are as many opportunities to be gifted. Among them is linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic and personal intelligence. This view expands our ideas about talents and allows us to hope that at least in some sphere the child has a unique gift: “So what, that Nikita did not solve the problem. “You should have seen how he built the whole school in a row at the break and chastised the headteacher for failures in organizing children's leisure.”
We should be especially sensitive to children with non-academic abilities because in educational institutions it is customary to extinguish fantastic talents for tapping fractions or drawing caricatures.
2. Do not stick labels
Every year, the number of children with extraordinary abilities is growing, says the English psychologist and author of books on gifted children Joan Freeman. Of course, there is a suspicion that this is due to the close attention of the parents. Previously, having noticed how a child whistles the fifth symphony and adds three-digit numbers in his mind, no one ran to a special giftedness commission. Praise to the neighbors and that's it.
Today, talented children are under the scrutiny of both parents and specialists, and this can turn out to be a difficult burden. It is not clear whether the abilities will continue. “The child prodigy type of development is not always a guarantee of genius. Most of these children subsequently do not realize themselves in any way, ”says Viktoria Yurkevich, professor at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, head of the Moscow city center for gifted children.
In addition, there is always the possibility that you will be caught up with peers that are not so developed so far, that they will begin to show their tongues and call themselves “especially gifted”. And what is it like to disappoint parents who buzzed to everyone about the genius of the child and proudly wore his frog drawings in three projections for an exhibition in the museum? After that, I don’t even want to take a pencil in my hands. What if you fall from a height, suddenly you turn out to be wrong, suddenly you do not meet the expectations of the most dear people?
Joan Freeman found that those children whose parents emphasized their giftedness had emotional problems much more often than equally talented children, but with parents who did not show their joy. What turns out: just close your eyes to his genius? It turns out, no.
3. Create special conditions
Specialists agree that gifted children are highly cognitive. That is, they are interested in reflecting on number theory, composing a symphony about a donkey and digging into the verbs of the Chinese language. So, ordinary lessons in the third "G" class can not quench the thirst for knowledge of young talent. “Transfer Vanya immediately to fifth!” The class teacher agitates, pointing with her hand towards the audience, where all the guys are three times the size of Vanya. It scares.
The common opinion here is unequivocal: “We do not need any lead! If only healthy! ”
The frightening thing is that the child will not be able to find a common language with his comrades (he loves Pokemon, and they love counselor), that this will greatly damage his social status, and hence his self-esteem, that this will create knowledge gaps and turn him into a little outcast, who is hiding behind the case from the violin.
However, specialists involved in the long-term experiment SMPY (Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth) advocate for acceleration and transfer to another class. This experiment consists in the fact that for almost 50 years, scientists have recorded the successes of five thousand people who received maximum marks for a mathematical test at school.
SMPY researchers believe that a talented kid should spit on authority among classmates and focus on academic work, and the benefits of jumping over the class will certainly appear. If you cannot transfer to another class or specialized school, they recommend more modest measures, such as, for example, access to complex materials. Research scientists say that talented students who had more educational opportunities continued their careers at a higher level than equally smart guys, but without three tutors, five electives and additional online courses.
4. Caution with load
After you enrolled your daughter in the strongest gymnasium and ten new circles on the profile, it will be worthwhile to find out that coercive activity can break the whole passion of the child. “If abilities develop only in one’s favorite activity, then long-term activities themselves, conducted without a child’s desire, any additional activities from the point of view of developing abilities are either useless or simply harmful, as coercive activity increases the negative attitude towards it,” - makes conclusions child psychologist Victoria Yurkevich in the book “A gifted child. Illusions and reality. "
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