9 Tips for Homeschooling Gifted Children
1. Disdain Busywork
Your child wants to learn, so don’t slow him down! If he has mastered multiplication, why are you still spending an hour a day reviewing it? Yes, he does need some review, but we’ve seen way too many families focus on completing every problem rather than mastering the material. One way to test this is to have him complete every other review problem on only the most essential pages and see how he does. If he can prove he knows it, he doesn’t need to be spending quite as much time there.
2. Go Deep
Allow breathing room in your schedule so you have time to investigate the earth’s gravitational pull or the advantages and disadvantages of hair sheep vs. woolly sheep. Remember that your child is asking to learn, so why pull him away from the subject that's fascinating to him? After all, we know that the material we're interested in sticks with us so much better than things we learn only because we must.
3. Go Fast
If your child wants to take three science courses this year or race through two math levels, why not? Homeschoolers can absolutely rock this because there is no one holding us to a “traditional” pace!
4. Encourage Completion
Sometimes, it seems there is a touch of ADD in every genius. Give your child as much flexibility as you possibly can, but also keep in mind that you’ll be doing him a disservice if he never has to tackle something he doesn’t feel like working on. Sometimes, he may even be surprised to realize that the very subject he dreaded is the springboard for a whole new area of investigation!
5. Give Space and Opportunities
If you can keep mandatory studies to a minimum, you’ll give your child more opportunities to accelerate his learning where he is gifted. Common sense, perhaps, but also worth deliberately thinking through as you plan your school year.
6. Work on Weak Areas Carefully
While you definitely want to help your student overcome his struggles, you also want to be careful that a weakness in one area doesn’t impede his progress in other ways. For instance, a child may struggle with writing because his brain works much faster than his hands. While we still encourage working on handwriting skills, we also suggest that his parents try teaching him to type and allow him to complete writing assignments on the computer. This lets him continue to build his writing skills instead of holding him back because of his lack of handwriting speed.
7. Emphasize Humility & Service
We have met way too many children who are obnoxiously convinced that they are geniuses, and everyone needs to be in awe of their abilities. Your child will be much healthier (and happier!) if he realizes these 4 things:
- His identity is never found in his brainpower.
- Even as gifted as he is, there are many things that others do better than he does.
- He is much more than his brain. Don't weigh him down by constantly telling him how big his brain is. (Should he lose his edge, he won't lose his worth!)
- His gifts are not for himself alone but for serving others.
Of course, the goal is not to shame, insult, or degrade him but to give him a framework from which he can truly thrive and be free to learn. With a proper perspective, he’ll be able to enjoy learning without the burden of constantly assessing his genius or worrying about what people think of her.
Encourage his learning, but don’t forget to cultivate his character. In 10 years, his response to rebuke will be much more telling than his test score this year, so don’t put an inordinate stress on intellectual pursuits.
8. Talk--a LOT!
Talk about what he’s interested in. Talk about the theories he came up with today. Talk about his daydreams. Talk about what he wants to study next. Talk about why he may actually need to master that most-dreadful-of-subjects, whatever that may be. Not only will you be able to impart your years of wisdom to him, but you’ll also know well the subjects he’s interested in so you can link those to his other studies, the places you’re visiting next week, or that interesting article you read yesterday.
9. Relax!
Your child is a wonderful gift, but don’t feel the need to maximize his potential at every moment. As a side benefit, just relaxing about his genius may, in fact, increase it. Our own family found that some of our best test scores came after a year off of most formal schooling. Not what we would have planned, but a very valuable insight. Living life also equals learning, so maximize that!