Giftedness In Early Childhood Education

Gifted children are often persevering, creative, resourceful, and original. They demonstrate their talents at the academic level by making maps, science experiments, games, dancing and creating poetry, among other activities.

Giftedness in the period of early childhood education is a little known subject, as many parents are unaware that their children have this intellectual condition. Early assessment of a child’s abilities to determine whether or not he is gifted is essential to focus on developing his potential.

A child is said to be gifted when he has an IQ greater than 130. However, these little ones are difficult to detect, as the student population generally equals or exceeds this numerical range. Furthermore, in some cases, these children have bad behavior and poor student performance.

To avoid discouragement and boredom at school, it is necessary for parents of gifted children to help them through this stage of education. On many occasions, schools do not have adequate professionals to assist these children in a special way, thus triggering their low academic productivity and low appreciation or use of their potential.

Characteristics of the gifted according to age

babies

• They demonstrate great precociousness in learning.
• Awaken interaction with the environment quickly.
• They respond more quickly to visual and auditory stimuli.
• They have a photographic memory.
• They start talking prematurely.

Kids

• They are very competitive and want to be the best.
• They learn quickly and develop their skills to the fullest.
• They are persevering and like to express when they feel proud of themselves.

teenagers

• Great cognitive ability.
• High level of reflection for concepts about social, moral and cultural values.
• They like to talk to older people.
• Great self-esteem and self-confidence.

Adults

• Excellent performance at work. They look for good jobs and usually specialize in something.
• They remain isolated.
• High capacity to solve problems of any kind.

How to take advantage of children’s giftedness skills?

These little ones  have above-average intellectual capacity. However, not all are super-intelligent.

There are many hardworking and productive children who do not have a high IQ. The best way for these geniuses to demonstrate their skills is with schoolwork and specific problem solving.

These little ones  need educational programs that help them to develop their intellectual level to the fullest. There are many models that can exploit their potential if applied with regularity and discipline. Here are two examples of them:

Acceleration

The objective of this educational model is to place the child in the level that corresponds to him according to his intellectual level and not according to his age. It is usually evident at the first academic level.

By following this mechanism, the student will be able to enter a university earlier, take specializations, postgraduate and master’s degrees.

In addition to what has already been mentioned, this method assesses a child’s cognitive abilities more rigorously and, as a result, their talents in higher studies will be put to maximum use.

The great advantage in social terms is that the difficulties caused by the immaturity of classmates and boredom in the classroom will be avoided, since they already master the content with ease.

This educational system also has its drawbacks. One of them is that, when advancing to a more advanced level,  the student will not have the necessary maturity to face the most difficult challenges due to age. This can have negative consequences at the family and social level.

normal classroom

This is the most common model. It refers to  keeping gifted children in the period of regular kindergarten. There, they will interact and express themselves with students of the same age and advance at a slower pace, without impairing their knowledge and taking advantage of all possible resources to make significant progress.

As an advantage, these children can be perfectly educated in heterogeneous groups, enjoying their skills and talents and being treated as equals. However, they can receive special attention or help to make the most of their potential.

The more specific disadvantage is that, being in a normal classroom, the student will be content just to stand out and reach first place in the grades without exerting a minimum of effort. It may be that, in this way, all of the child’s intellectual abilities are not explored and developed as they deserve.

To adequately address giftedness in the early childhood education period, it is necessary to assess the positive and negative aspects of each method used to educate high-IQ children.

Helping them to explore their full potential in the educational model that best suits them, without pressure or high expectations, should be the goal of parents and teachers. The idea is that they themselves demonstrate with facts everything they are capable of doing.