Erin Ryan
Arizona Woman
Jun. 6 2007 12:00 am
Most parents believe their child is brilliant, destined for greatness. But while some 3-year-olds love playing with blocks, a more precocious set is on its way to a degree in civil engineering. These children are exceptional. And to foster their gifts, they need constant stimulation and challenges.
Gifted children may have it easy when it comes to solving algebraic equations or comprehending medieval prose, but parents know it's a mixed bag of blessings and headaches. The difficulty in social settings, tendency to act out and emotional sensitivities of these kids may require more support from their parents than other children might need. For working mothers, this challenge doesn't always feel like a gift.
Dolores Letendre-Salisz noticed that as a toddler, her daughter wanted her blocks lined up perfectly, like a little architect. Grady Day impressed his parents by spelling signs and recognizing roads when he was 2. And when a kindergarten teacher told Denise Flynn that her son could count to 100 on his first day of school, Flynn asked, "Can't everybody?"
In Arizona, students who score at the 97th percentile or higher in state-approved tests of verbal, non-verbal or quantitative reasoning skills are eligible to receive gifted services in school. But testing doesn't usually happen until the child starts school, at which point the appetite for learning is already established.
To identify that intellectual prowess early on, parents often have to act as detectives. They learn to observe every detail of their child's behavior. For a parent who stays at home with a child, this may be obvious from birth. But for working professionals, the subtle clues can be hard to identify and even harder to verify without sounding like any other proud parent.
Time to observe
"You have to notice that they're reading so much or that they're not stimulated," Flynn says. "I would not have noticed the days when he just needed me to give him a hug if I was always at work. My job is to develop him into a leader. I've made the sacrifice of not working 60 or 80 hours a week."
The small-business model works for Flynn, 46, when it comes to keeping up with her gifted son. Her Glendale insurance business, Absolute Best Client Services, allows her a flexible schedule to keep Stephen, now 15, involved in everything from Project Excellence to baseball.
"You have to be active. Gifted kids are really sensitive, and you're not going to notice it if you're not there," Flynn says. "People at the schools know who I am, and they come to tell me about programs. That's because I've been involved."
As a part-time employee at Honeywell when her son was young, Joan Abraham noticed that her son, Travis, was bright, but she says she didn't want to be an arrogant mother, especially because Travis is an only child. She couldn't compare him with other kids. But on a play date, another mother noticed that Travis, one of the youngest in the bunch, was the most mature and articulate.
Abraham, 46, was at Honeywell until her son was 4 and then worked for a while as a consultant. She understands the need to observe Travis' habits and hone his talent. She's balancing her family's needs with her MBA-CPA business savvy by being there to drive her son to school and volunteer in his third-grade classroom. She recently started her entrepreneurial career as the co-owner of franchises - one in Scottsdale, another in the Arrowhead area - of My Girlfriend's Kitchen, a meal-assembly company.
'Balancing act'
Abraham says her son will read for more than two hours at a time if she doesn't give him a new activity.
"It's an all-or-nothing attitude. They will not come up for air," she says. "A lot of gifted kids are fabulous athletes, but you have to be careful because they might get too focused. You have that balancing act that you have to constantly keep."
Parents know that their children aren't sitting in their rooms solving math equations all day, but they do have an insatiable desire to learn. For Emmie and Elyse Salisz, 17 and 13, it's philosophy, poetry and most of all, ballet. Their mother, Dolores, is a teacher and their father is an engineer.
"My husband wanted them to be engineers, but these are fine-arts girls," Dolores says. "When a child has an affinity for a particular area, let them go with it."
The affinity led to 16 hours of dance per day last summer when Emmie tested her skills in a four-week intensive dance program in San Francisco. Even while watching television, her mother often finds her lacing up or adjusting her ballet shoes.
For Grady Day, the obsession is medicine. The 7-year-old is fascinated with diseases, and he wants to find a cure for AIDS. In between appointments and office work at Fennemore Craig, Grady's mother, Janna Day, 38, a director at the law firm, will stop at the library to check out books on medical histories and scientific findings.
His mother isn't the only one supporting his precocity. Because gifted kids typically gravitate toward each other, Grady's friends and classmates are just as encouraging of his passion.
"It's cute because they really appreciate each other's strengths," Janna Day says. "They'll be having a discussion and ask, 'Grady, what's that one disease?' "
Strength of leadership
Gifted children tend to be leaders - a great characteristic, except when they need to respect someone else's authority, like yours.
"When they're 3 years old and arguing about why they shouldn't go to bed, you want to scream," Abraham says. "My son can formulate an argument with you that is so detailed and has a list. He's either going to be a lawyer or a salesman. It's amusing, but challenging."
And from a practical standpoint, the constant questioning and thirst for information is tiring.
"You can't just say, 'Because I said so,' " says Shelley Ackerman Hirsch, founder and president of Paradise Valley Supporters of the Gifted and a parent of gifted children.
To preserve her sanity, Abraham found parenting groups in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley as a resource to recognize and understand her son's gifted tendencies.
"You learn that other parents have that experience, too. It's not just yours," she says. "When I understood that the behavior was typical, it helped me be a better parent. It made me more patient and compassionate."
At bedtime, Abraham now explains in a logical manner why Travis should go to sleep. If he brings up an argument, she counters with alternatives.
"I teach about leadership and negotiation in my consulting and 15 years of corporate finance, and here I am trying to negotiate with a 9-year-old. It's the same," she says. "He has to be comfortable with what he's getting. A lot of parents have their kids on allowances, but he has a chart of what he thinks he should get paid for his chores. He needed to take charge of it. He's 'Little Mr. Man.' "
Classroom challenges
Used to picking up new concepts with ease, gifted children are not always prepared with the skills to overcome obstacles.
"One of the things about being gifted and having that label that's hard is when he does have questions, he's afraid to ask," Flynn says of her son. "He gets frustrated and thinks, 'But I'm supposed to be gifted. I shouldn't need to ask.' "
Those challenges and arguments can try even the most patient teacher. Flynn says that if a gifted student can comprehend a highly complicated idea, like evolution, and if a teacher "dumbs it down" for the rest of the class, the student can become difficult.
"These kids are very bright; they can catch the teachers in something inconsistent," she says. "Then the kids think that the teachers aren't very bright, and they lose respect and don't listen."
Letendre-Salisz, 52, deals doubly with this challenge to her authority. A teacher with a master's degree in gifted education, she teaches a self-contained classroom of gifted fifth-graders at Sonoran Sky Elementary School in the Paradise Valley School District. Her first class included her younger daughter, Elyse.
"There were some quiet car rides home," Letendre-Salisz says.
As a teacher, she knows all the research, advice and statistics, but she still questions her decisions when it comes to school choices and time management for her two gifted daughters.
Abraham agrees: "There's so much you don't know as a parent. Just add this to the list."
This story originally appeared in Arizona Woman.
