Preschoolers whose giftedness is identified are a rare breed even within that very small group, because they have not yet been to school and an educational professional is therefore not usually the one to call attention to their needs. Like all gifted children, they are by definition a very small proportion of the population (generally in the top 5% in intelligence). In fact, “more than 80% of parents can identify their child’s giftedness by age 4 or 5,” according to Joan Franklin Smutny, Ph.D., in her book, Teaching Gifted Children in the Regular Classroom. Ask the parent of a child who is well ahead of developmental milestones, though, and you will quickly discover that, yes, they exist. To begin at the beginning, there are those who doubt the very existence of such a creature. Hertzog, Ph.D., in Early Childhood Gifted Education (2008) “They can be rattling off the price of the green beans they notice from the seat of the shopping cart one minute and having a tantrum because their mother did not buy the cookies they wanted the next.” Is there such a thing as a gifted preschooler? It is highly unlikely, therefore, that their needs were radically different only a few months prior, when they left preschool. In our Kindergarten, it is evident from the very beginning of the school year that the students are not only ready for, but hungry for, challenging intellectual engagement. Indeed, our experience at Grayson confirms this understanding, perhaps most clearly with precisely the children at issue. While comments like this are common (and even understandable!), research confirms that the needs of gifted children are very different from the needs of typical children, and that those differences exist from the very beginning of their lives. It is easy to imagine objections to any kind of academic curriculum for preschoolers: “These three- and four-year-olds are little children, first of all how can they need the rigor or structure of a formal education until they are older?” “They’re only babies ! Shouldn’t they just be playing and napping?” For these youngest learners, these two developmental trajectories are especially tightly-linked: their intellect is the “long pole in the tent” of their identities, even at a young age. Seeking an environment attuned not only to their intellectual capabilities, but also to their unique social-emotional development can be a crucial, if challenging, undertaking. Rather, having been gifted since birth, they have been busily feeding their hungry minds - and, most likely, exhausting their parents - with their bottomless curiosity and thirst for novelty and for ever more knowledge. Gifted children, who thrive in an environment specifically designed to challenge them at their level and to teach them at an accelerated rate, of course have to come from somewhere, and do not suddenly “become” gifted overnight just before beginning Kindergarten.
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