144: Supporting Your Gifted Child

Is your child gifted?

Do you wonder if they're gifted but aren't quite sure?

Do you want to know how to support your gifted child's learning in a way that doesn't pressure them or make them resist working with you?

If so, this episode will help.

I have to say, I wasn't sure where this one was going to end up.  I was really uneasy about the concept of giftedness from the outset, perhaps because the way I had previously come into contact with it was through our conversation with Dr. Allison Roda, from whom we learned how some parents manipulate the Gifted & Talented program in New York City to perpetuate segregated education.

But even so, I tried to go into the research with an open mind.  What if it's just the G&T; programs as they're set up in New York City that are the problem, not the entire concept of giftedness itself?

The good news is that there's a good deal of evidence on what kinds of programs benefit gifted children.  And in this episode I end up arguing that we shouldn't just put gifted children in them, but that all children would benefit from learning using these methods.

You Are Your Child's Best Teacher

If you're the parent of a child who's old enough to ask questions through the end of elementary school and you want to:

Support their intrinsic love of learning and confidence as a learner...

WITHOUT doing worksheets or curriculum, (unless your child enjoys doing them!)...

WITHOUT just spending your time on reading and math, but instead...

Using your child's interests as a jumping off point to deep, intrinsically motivated learning...

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Jen Lumanlan 01:00

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  Today we’re going to talk about a topic that was actually requested by the members of my Supporting Your Child’s Learning Membership. They wanted to understand how to support gifted children and I have to say it initially made me feel uneasy, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. Perhaps it had something to do with the episode I did a year ago on White privilege in schools where I interviewed Dr. Allison Roda and we discussed how gifted and talented programs in New York City, where Dr. Roda works and studies, primarily benefit middle-class White students. But despite this, I went into the research with an open mind. What happens if giftedness really is a thing, and it’s just that programs, as they’re defined and used in schools, are broken?  And it turned out that that question really got to the heart of the two things I want to look at in this episode. Before we get into that, I just wanted to remind you of two things: firstly that the You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher workshop is getting started this Monday, September 13th.  If you want to support your child’s intrinsic love of learning -whether you’re homeschooling or they’re in school – the workshop will help you to start using your child’s interests as a jumping-off point to deep, authentic, self-driven learning that will be so much more fun and memorable than curriculum-based learning that doesn’t interest them, and that they end up resisting. You’ll get one short email each day with an activity to do that doesn’t take a ton of time, and you’ll also join a private Facebook community where you can learn from and with all the other parents in the workshop too. You’ll come out of it with a