All Children are Gifts

I recently saw a meme on Facebook, you know one of those pictures or videos that just keeps spreading around, that said “All children are gifted but some take longer to unwrap their packages”. I have never been a fan the word “gifted”. In a school setting, it just means that kids identified as gifted are eligible for certain services or programs. Special Education is basically the same thing - aren’t all kids special? Obviously, all kids are special and each child has his or her own unique talents and skills.Technically though, all kids are not qualified to participate in gifted programs or special education programs and never will be. This does not make them or their individual needs less important.

Although there is much evidence for the heritable factors of giftedness the term itself seems to de-value hard work, perseverance  and an aptitude for one or more subjects. One thing I never like to hear in my classroom is, “I’m bored”. I teach my students that if you are bored, it is because you are boring. At first that may seem rather harsh but most kids do begin to understand that a world of opportunity awaits for those that are motivated to pursue it. I teach younger students so I often give them ideas or strong direction about how they can extend their learning but I’ve never met a teacher (myself included) that would not accept a child created plan that was realistic for that child’s abilities. For example, “Teacher, would it be OK if I skip this fill-in-the-blank spelling worksheet and write a play that includes each one of these words instead?” That kind of motivation and outside the box thinking always gets an A-OK from me!

The other thing that I don’t like about the term “gifted” is that it makes it seem like giftedness is a gift from God and you either have it or you don’t. Giftedness primarily refers to high IQ. Many factors can effect this such as genetics, nutrition and environment. IQ used to be something that scientists perceived as being pretty stable over time. The brain is an amazing and miraculous organ though. Studies show that IQ really is a use it or lose it type of situation. There are a number of studies that show that the brain can change and become more efficient through practice thereby raising IQ (or cognitive) scores. The opposite effect can also happen with drops in IQ occurring because of a lack of environmental stimulation. So, all learning is valuable and helps kids to get “smarter”. An identification just helps people who work in education to adjust learning experiences to an appropriate level for individual students. Ultimately, IQ is just a snapshot of a moment in time in a person’s life, however, at that moment they are either gifted and need of specific services to address the level of challenge (and/or emotional needs) they will need or not.

Part of my disdain for the term “gifted” is also because it seems to be a word that triggers a deep emotional response and leads to memes that say, “all children are gifted”. All children are gifts but they are not all gifted. I, for one, would not want them all to be. I love the diversity of the human race. There are many things the world would be missing if all children were identified as gifted. “All children are treasures to be cherished and loved unconditionally no matter what.” I like that one - pass it on.