Regarding My Article on Stereotyping and Gifted Children

Stereotyping and the reality of gifted children. Gifted children come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of traits and quirks. Lets look at the whole gifted package.

In my first article on stereotyping gifted children, I described, briefly, some stereotypical characteristics associated with gifted children: eager to learn and easy to teach, organized, possessing a love of reading. These characteristics, or qualities are just a sampling of those I've seen expressed by kids and adults not familiar with the totality of the gifted package. In reality, our gifted darlings come in all shapes and sizes, from all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, across every demographic gridline, and with any combination of personality traits and, well, quirks. Overall, stereotyping is simply a bad manner in which to choose the people you will interact with; but that is another article for another topic. Specifically referring to gifted children, however, stereotyping leads to misidentification, unrealistic expectations, and the singling out of some really great kids who want to do nothing more than be accepted for who they are. I use the word "ignorance" in the article in its definition as, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, "a lack of knowledge of education, or an unawareness of something, often of something important." Making uneducated decisions is a bad idea. Making uneducated decisions about situations that are potentially harmful to people, especially children, is unjustifiable. Everyone has his or her own idiosyncrasies - it's what make the world an interesting place. I would like to see adults take a stronger hand in pointing out that different is not necessarily better, worse, bigger, stronger, etc. Different is simply different. And difference is what makes us eager to get up and see what the world has to offer each and every day.