Identifying Brilliant Behavior Is Easy When Homeschooling
By Mimi Rothschild
So you think your child is pretty special, or perhaps even gifted? How can you tell if your child is exhibiting gifted behaviors, and what are they? Homeschooling gives parents the chance to interact with their children more closely in their learning environment. Parents can follow the pointers listed below to determine if their child is gifted.
Humor is an indicator of giftedness. Does your child have a keen sense of the comical? Do they tend to integrate this sense into everything, including homeschool lessons?
Motivation is another indicator. Gifted children may start homeschool before you do. They tend to have an intense drive to understand the world around them. This involves learning about the world, and creating new things in it. Gifted children may also have many passionate interests. At times these may seem unusual, and sometimes fleeting. Gifted children tend to be very interested in the world around them.
Is your homeschool child a communication whiz? Does he or she love to convey meaning and emotion through any means that comes naturally to him or her? This can be a sign of a gifted child. Gifted children also tend to be very inquisitive. This inquisitiveness tends to pervade every aspect of the child’s life. This can make homeschool an adventure in itself.
Gifted children also often demonstrate above-average problem solving skills, and a sensitivity to those around them and situations they find themselves. They may be highly intuitive, appearing to know or understand things with no prior experience. Others may have highly developed reasoning skills, and the ability to understand the implications of things far beyond what would normally be expected. Such children may love homeschool lessons involving chess or other strategy games. Imagination and creativity can also be signs of a gifted child. Gifted children come up with new and interesting ways to think about and influence their environment.
Probably the most obvious signs of gifted children are memory, knowledge and learning. They will pick things up in the blink of an eye, and perhaps have a memory that is photographic in nature. If you do a single homeschool lesson on the United States and your child has all the states memorized by the end of the lesson, you have witnessed a strong indication of his or her giftedness.
The final clue is that gifted children learn, learn, and learn. They learn fast and they learn easily. You may be run off your feet looking for appropriate and new homeschool materials, only to find that they are mentally digesting encyclopedias as light bedtime reading. Homeschool is a method that is perfectly suited to their needs. Just remember, brilliant children can be a joy to homeschool, but they will keep you on your toes.