Copiii supradotați au nevoie de mai mult decât școală | Dr. Vanessa R. Wood

Copiii supradotați au nevoie de mai mult decât școală | Dr. Vanessa R. Wood

Transcript

So I would first ask, I would be curious to know, what is the environmentthat that these kids are coming from? Are they coming from all differentent evironments? Are there some similarities within the environments? We have noticed specifically with our research with the highly—profoundly gifted that environment is key and this is something so not only the environmental influences but also their social influences. So the ability to have like-minded peers, mentors and even practitioners that are part of their environment and the learning experience. So, I would say I would want to dive into the children that you studied and find out:

Where are they coming from?

Who are the teachers?

How many children are in the classroom?

Are there like-minded peers for them within that classroom?

Is there movement allowed in theclassroom?

Is physical activity part of the curriculum?

I would be curious to know what thecurriculum is?

Is it very academic based or do they also include the social emotional components that areessential for the development of any young child through adolescence?

Again, back to the physical component, is there any focus on the development oft their physical being?

Certainly emotional development, right, in order to have that emotional regulation that you’re speaking of they need to have like-minded peers who understand them so that they can be validated and build their self-confidence as we spoke about in the presentation.

It’s absolutely essential, when the parents are informed of their children’s development and their educational needs and really their social emotional development, that’s actually the most important thing because if we aren’t feeling a sense of belonging, if weare not grounded in who we are then you know you can’t move up, if we refer to Maslo’s hierarchy and needs, it’s a basic need to have your emotional needs and physical needs and sense of belonging met.

It’s very intriguing. I would love to see the results and again tease out where are these children coming from.

I would love to know more about the parents and what they were observing such as the behaviors of the children, any unique behaviors. From very early on we notice very distinct and unique behaviors from highly—profoundly gifted children. Really their developmental trajectory can be seen as being different all the way from birth. I’ll just mention real quick, many parents inform us that it was actually in the hospital when they were having their child that the nurse would inform them, we’ve never seen a child this alert. So right from birth being able to interact with their environment with people. And, then we saw development, developmental milestones continuing at an advanced and asynchronous level. Some would go way up others would be typical, almost staircase level of development which actually Dabrowski is famous for in his theory of human development. Yeah, we are missing development. We’re so focused on the academic side and certainly the education side but we need to include all areas of development within our education. So not just focusing on our cognitive development but also focusing on social development, emotional development, physical development as I keep mentioning and even building compassion and altruism and moral development that a lot of the times we don’t see implemented as part of the curriculum in schools.

So our work specifically is focused on overexitabilities in children. In our study and in the research panel that we presented today, there’s been several studies, three, fou, and even more studies in the last couple years showing that children with these overexitabilities which is the super stimulus of the nervous system which goes back to your study and your brain mapping, we’re finding that they have higher levels of stimulation within their nervous system. So we call them overexitabilities and you see it in many different areas, emotional, intellectual, psychomotor which is that physical activity, even sensual. The aesthetics are a huge part of the gifted experience. So being aware of all of these characteristics and unique behaviors, and really the developmental trajectory is important for us to be aware of so we can identify these children who are really doing amazing things. And just to watch them and to see how they develope when we actually provide the environmentand, really the opportunity to let them lead because they have a lot of this inside them. And so when we follow the child, and let them follow their autonomous forces, it’s amazing what they can do.

Parents, believe in yourself because you are the biggest and greatest advocate for your child. Really, we’re finding many of the studies are involving parents and they are essential to the success and the development of their children.

Yes, so we need to train our teachers and it’s really difficult because we need to find people who are credentialed in giftedness and especially the highly—profoundly gifted population, many are not credentialed. A lot of people don’t have this information. That’s why we’re here today to disseminate the research and to educate all stakeholders. We need to educate parents, teachers, counselors, psychologists and even pediatricians because we know from birth they see the child and the parents in their office quite often; They can be a great influence and change the trajectory of the development and learning for that child. So, it’s essential. Parents are essential. Teachers are essential. And we need to give them the information and the training they need to help identify and get these kids on the trajectory that that they need to be on.

Vanessa R. Wood, Psy.D., Clinical Psychology; M.A. Gifted Education, President, The International Gifted Consortium (IGC), Research Center Highly—Profoundly Gifted

Interviewed by: Gabriela Maalouf, Clinical Psychologist, Educational Expert, Dan Voiculescu Foundation for the Development of Romania