Family relationships: gifted children and talented children
Your family is the safe place where your gifted child is accepted, loved and valued for who they are. The thing your child most needs to grow up happy and healthy is your family’s love and support.
Your family is also the place where your child learns to accept and value others for who they are. Although there might be a difference between what your child can do and what other family members can do, you all have your own strengths. You can help your child recognise these by pointing them out. For example, your child’s sister might be good at martial arts, and their brother might be a great gardener.
Accepting and valuing differences in people can make it easier for your child to get along with people outside the family too.
When you celebrate everyone’s strengths, it helps everyone in the family to feel good. And when all your children feel that you love and value them equally, they won’t feel that they have to compete for your affection and attention. This can prevent sibling conflict and fighting.
Family routines and rules: gifted children and talented children
Family routines and family rules are good for family relationships. They help everyone in the family feel safe, secure, valued and like they belong.
Family routines
Routines help you make time for all family members and their interests. For example, you might have a weekly kickabout at the park when you pick up your child from school on your day off.
But it might sometimes be challenging to get your gifted child to follow routines. For example, it might take more time to get your child to come to dinner if they’re reading. Or your child might come up with a lot of good reasons why having dinner doesn’t suit them right now. In these situations, it’s important to plan transitions. For example, give your child a warning that dinner will be ready in 10 minutes, so they can get to a good stopping point in their book. You can also show interest in their reading and reassure them that they can keep reading after dinner.
Family rules
Rules make it clear how you all want and expect to be treated. For example, ‘Please ask and get permission before you borrow someone else’s things’.
But your gifted child might have a lot of questions about rules. For example, when you ask your child to clean their teeth, they might say, ‘Why is fluoride good for us? How do you know?’ Or your child might ask challenging questions about the values your rules are based on. For example, ‘Why is swearing bad?’, ‘Why do we have to share?’ or ‘Why do we pray?’
Your child is asking because they’re curious, and it’s OK if you don’t know all the answers. It’s a good opportunity to talk together about your rules and values.
As the parent of a gifted child, you might need to be prepared to explain, discuss and negotiate your family routines, rules and values. Planning can help when it comes to handling tough topics with children and difficult conversations with pre-teens and teenagers.
If you’re juggling children’s needs with work, chores and other parts of family life, it’s important to look after yourself with sleep, healthy food, physical activity and time to do things you enjoy. This is good for you, and it also helps you give all your children the support they need.
Positive attention: important for gifted children, talented children and siblings
Positive attention helps all your children feel secure and valued.
You might need to put a lot of time and attention into supporting your gifted child’s learning needs or helping them develop their talents – for example, by driving them to music lessons or sports practice. But if your gifted child has siblings, you’ll need to make sure your other children get your time and attention too.
Here are ideas for making sure that all your children get the attention they need to develop their interests and strengths:
- Use a schedule or calendar so you can see whether everyone is getting time and support for their interests. For example, this might be taking your gifted child to enrichment classes or helping their sibling with a school project.
- Look at what you can change to make sure that everyone’s needs are being met. For example, your son’s music lesson might be at the same time as your daughter’s soccer practice. Maybe the music lesson can move to another time, or perhaps your daughter could go to practice with a friend.
- Share time as a family in ways that help everyone feel they’re supported and can contribute. For example, you could have a family ritual like a weekend bike ride or movie night.
- Make time for family meals. When you’re all together at meals, you can encourage everyone to share things they’re grateful for or interesting things they learned during the day.
All children can behave in challenging ways if they don’t feel supported and valued. You can encourage positive behaviour in children and positive behaviour in pre-teens and teenagers by taking the time to listen to your children’s feelings and solve problems together.
Talking with siblings about gifted children and talented children
It’s important to choose your words carefully when talking with your other children about your gifted child.
Sometimes even using the word ‘gifted’ when talking about your child’s advanced abilities might make their siblings feel jealous, competitive or less valued. Instead you might say, ‘Lea has the kind of brain that likes to be challenged by learning a lot of new things’.
If your other children have questions or you want to give them some information, keep it simple and to the point. For example, ‘The tests showed that Jakov’s brain learns very quickly. The information in this report will help Mum, me and Jakov’s teachers find the best way for Jakov to learn’.
It’s also important to avoid labelling your gifted child as the ‘clever one’, the ‘artistic one’ or the ‘special one’. Your child’s abilities are just one part of them. Labels like this might make your other children feel they’re less special than your gifted child. And they might also make your gifted child feel they’re special only because of their gifts and not because of all their other special and lovable qualities.
Advanced natural abilities run in families. If your gifted child has siblings, there’s a strong chance that they might be gifted too. But they might not be gifted in the same way. For example, one child might have advanced musical abilities, whereas their sibling might be passionate about languages.