Month: February 2016

For those who do not know, I have a gifted consultancy with a website, and I can be contacted via email through the website. As it is available on the world wide web, I sometimes get email enquiries from other parts of the country. Last August I received an email from a mother in Ballarat, Victoria, who thought she had a very gifted little girl, and had read my article on early entry (available on this website). She wanted more information, and I sent her some advice.

I suggested that she should have her little girl’s IQ tested, so that she had some credible evidence to show the school where she intended to enrol her child. Yesterday she contacted me again to thank me, and to let me know the outcome of her attempts at enrolling her daughter in a school. Suffice it to say that the first school would not enrol her child, as they thought her too young. But mum did not give up, and finally found a school principal who was willing to enrol her child. She writes that her daughter had no problem settling in, and was more ready than some of the older children who are in her class. The story made the front page of the Ballarat Courier. Please find the link for the local news story.

I have been away this weekend and during a leisurely Sunday morning I had time to read the Sydney Morning Herald (28-29 March 2009) where I found an article on p. 3, “Youngest Kindies Catch Up”, and could hardly wait to get home so I could share the news with you, my reader.
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It has long been known that gifted children tend to have imaginary friends. Now there is Australian research to support this observation.

The first large Australian longitudinal study on the effects of child care on children’s adjustment and achievement indicates that long hours in care, and multiple care arrangements in the early years (for example, the baby or young child would attend a number of different care situations each week such as be with the nanny in the morning, dropped off at long day care during the day and perhaps attend a family day care carer’s home some of the time), were predictors of lower literacy scores.
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I went to Macquarie University today to listen to a presentation by Professor Michael Keane, a distinguished finance and economics researcher at the University of Technology. As you may have guessed by now, my interests are somewhat removed from the cold world of ‘human resources’, productivity, and statistics, and the only reason I went to listen to this presentation was the unusual research topic, especially coming from an economist.
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It is rare for me to get feed-back on the outcome of recommendations I have made as a psychologist as a result of assessing children for giftedness. But the other day when I was invited to my twin-grandchildren’s ‘Grandparents Day’ I had a really sweet experience, and it had nothing to do with being a grandparent.
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Research shows that parents are generally correct when they suspect that their child is gifted. Typically these children are great conversationalists, often using sophisticated language that stops you in your track. They are quick at learning, have amazing memories, and thrive on complexities. But some children I have tested turn out not to be academically gifted, and it is not easy to face the parents and give them the bad news.
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The IQ test has been on the nose for a long while now, although in the not-too-distant past it was held to be the only sure way to assess academic giftedness. One of the issues confronting IQ tests when their respect began to unravel, was that they can only measure academic ability and not other forms of giftedness.
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The Sydney Morning Herald conducted a long investigation into childcare, which led to a number of articles about the state of childcare in NSW a couple of weeks ago. They were not the type of articles that would bring comfort to a mother who is sending her child to childcare.
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I am often asked by parents of young gifted children who want to do what is best for their child where they should send their child to preschool, e.g., what type of preschool would best support their child’s gifted needs. By the time they ask me, they have often already made some inquiries and visited some preschools, and quite frequently they have secretly settled on a Montessori preschool, attracted by its logical academic-style program. So when I advise parents that Montessori preschools may not be the best choice, they can’t really understand why I would have that view.
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