Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Does your gifted child shows signs of asynchronous development? Asynchrony is defined as differing rates for physical, cognitive and emotional development. A gifted child may have a chronological age of 8 years, a mental age of 12 years, and an emotional age of 5 years. What do you do at home to help your child with their asynchronous development?
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Parents (and teachers) may not always be aware of the a child’s differing rates of development. Often when the child has a has a high mental age (compared to their chronological age) they are treated as someone who is older and more mature. The child’s advanced vocabulary and intellect often misleads people in thinking that the rest of their development is at par with their mental age. This is usually not the case and was not the case with my two gifted children. It took a while for me to recognize this with my oldest child, but I was able to apply lessoned learned with my youngest. Academics and mental challenges were easily mastered, but when it came to other things (physical and emotion) they did not come easy and often caused angst. For example, my son thought he was going to take off the training wheels on his bike and ride it on the very first try. When he was not successful after a few attempts he threw a fit and refused to try anymore. This caused me great frustration because I felt he was acting like a baby (I incorrectly based my image of his emotional and physical age on his mental age). A year later when he was more physically and emotionally developed, he tried again and after several failed attempts he finally learned to ride the bike. It was essentially the same situation when my younger daughter tried to ride a bike. She also became upset when she did not ride it on the first couple of attempts, but this time I was more supportive and patient. The difference was my better understanding of her physical and emotional development (as compared to her mental development). She learned to ride the bike the following year. ---Mario
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's hard to tell what my daughters "mental age" is comparable to? She's extremely mature, and even looks older, but she's so overly sensitive she cries to the slightest mishap. Such as... if anyone were to raise their voice at her, or even just blame her for something, she'll hide her face with tears flowing.
ReplyDelete-Shannon
I have some of the same issues with my daughter. She is very embarrassed if she is hurt or makes a mistake around other people.
DeleteMine is the same way, the pouting and crying if she's corrected or anyone makes fun of her is epic. We're working on helping her develop a thicker skin, but it's tough.
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ReplyDeleteWe had an interesting conversation with my 2nd grade daughter last week. We got a call from her reading teacher that she was having trouble in her small (3 students) group - interrupting, correcting the other kids and the teacher, talking out of turn, etc. Teacher was concerned that she wouldn't be able to participate if she didn't improve in this respect. So we had a long conversation after dinner one night about being respectful - since she can read it, spell it, use it in a sentence, I guess we assumed she really knew what it meant. But it took her father and I describing the actual behaviors we were looking for in that situation, and even role playing a little bit, to help her understand. Two days later, we got a call from the teacher saying her behavior was much improved, and even described back to us some of the behaviors we had role-played. It's sometimes hard for us to remember that, while she's articulate and an advanced reader, she's only 7 and doesn't have the lifetime of experiences we do to inform her interactions with her peers. Once we take the time to teach, however, she's a quick study and can put the behavior to good use. It was a big moment for us. --Eileen
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