NOTE TO PARENTS (AND GUARDIANS)

If you are reading this note, it is because you believe, or your child's teacher believes, that you have a gifted child. Naturally, you are excited and proud, and rightly so, and now you want to know how best to nurture your child's potential.

Nurturing your child's giftedness requires acknowledging that your gifted child is, first and foremost, a child, with the same basic needs as all children: love, acceptance, trust and security. It is a well-refuted myth that gifted children will realise their potential if simply left to their own devices. It is essential that you, the parent, support, understand and know your child so that your guidance will be relevant to her/his unique needs. Parental guidance has a definite goal - being to assist your child to reach the stage of being able to exercise choices and make decisions independently, on own initiative, and with full responsibility.

Gifted children need emotional support and not only intellectual stimulation. The important thing to remember, as a parent, is that you need to recognise, accommodate and encourage the special abilities of all your children, while taking care not to put any one of them on a pedestal. Which is why you should reward the behaviour and not the person. For example: "That was a graphic and creative composition you wrote for homework," and not: "You are a gifted writer." By making any one child the focus of family attention, you will cultivate sibling rivalry, resulting in rejection and isolation of the 'favourite'. You should also be aware that the 'gifted' label has disadvantages: gifted children are often mistrusted, and their success regarded by peers, and even some adults, as given, rather than earned. When discussing your gifted child with other adults, especially in his/her presence, accept sincere, focused acknowledgement of your child's gifts graciously, and share this with her/him to develop a sense of self-worth. Conversely, discourage adulation of your child by benevolent relatives, as this could lead to an unhealthy and unfounded sense of superiority in your child.

Remember, pushing your child to achieve will have a negative effect, inducing feelings of guilt, and may even drive your child to exaggerate achievements, merely for the sake of placating you, the role-model. In fact, pushing is often cited as a cause of under-achievement and apathy in gifted children. Beware the trap of becoming fiercely competitive on behalf of your child and remember - your child's goal in life is not to achieve what you never did. It is only through intimacy and sincerity that you will earn the trust and respect which must form the foundation for your relationship with your child. In return, enthusiasm, a keen sense of humour and insight will be demanded from you.

This brings us to the question of authority. Children, like adults, will co-operate if treated fairly and honourably, but you will do them no favours by bowing to their every whim. You will need to establish firm, fair discipline at home, matched by a candid openness to questions that challenge the status quo. Often the best response to those 'difficult' questions is to embrace the challenge, and commit to finding the answers with your child.

Your next challenge will be to develop your child's compassion for fellow human beings into a desire to serve his/her community. Success in this area will give your child fulfilment, instil a sense of duty to share her/his gifts, and help bring about a better world.

Finally, given the gifted child's notoriously short attention span, you will need to provide an example of commitment to the task at hand, patience with unforeseen hurdles and the endurance to finish the race!

The author of this note, Malcolm Ferguson, would like to acknowledge Dr Cecilia Jansen of the University of South Africa, whose Masters thesis, 'Guidance for Parents with Gifted Children - a paedogogical perspective', served as a useful guide.