Working Parents Raising Gifted Children: Unique Methods for Enriching Their Lives
Use your career to enrich your gifted child's life...
Get kid-friendly activities sent to you!
Get the Best Kid-Friendly Activities
Sent to You Weekly!
Isn’t that what drives many working parents to pursue a career about which they are so passionate? Isn’t that an important value parents demonstrate every day? For young gifted minds, it is an opportunity to learn about something new and contribute to adult conversations (because their same-age peers are probably disinterested in the job responsibilities of civil engineers).
Often as young as age 3, many new students enter the doors of Village East Gifted confidently announcing their plans to attend MIT or Harvard. Or their desires to be orthopedic surgeons, lawyers, firefighters, teachers, engineers, video game designers, inventors, nurses, entrepreneurs, CEOs or CFOs (they know the difference)…“just like my mom (or dad)”.
Start using your intelligence and professional expertise to help enrich your gifted child’s life:
- If you can, start early (age 2-3) and find a gifted program that offers continuous, advanced studies to strengthen skills in all academic areas (not just the ones in which they excel).
- Teach your child everything about your work and discuss your day-to-day experiences on the job.
- Start a club of working families with gifted children and plan field trips to intellectually and academically stimulating destinations.
- Select, simplify, and introduce the basics of your profession using trade magazines, articles, websites, or field-related literature.
- Show your child how to collect facts about a new topic and use PowerPoint (second grade and older) to creatively and sequentially present them.
- Schedule community service activities to demonstrate the importance of working while also “giving back” to those in need.
Lastly, play long board games that involve life skills, decision-making, and strategy while savoring some fireside s’mores with your little person of “big dreams”…because they will come true sooner than you think.