Why Parenting a Gifted Child is Lonely

Gifted. The word itself is loaded, and confusing. For this post, I’ll go with what I feel to be the most accurate definition of “gifted.” From the National Association for Gifted Children,

“Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as an exceptional ability to reason and learn) or competence (documented performance or achievement in top 10% or rarer) in one or more domains. Domains include any structured area of activity with its own symbol system (e.g., mathematics, music, language) and/or set of sensory motor skills (e.g., painting, dance, sports).”

(Some have suggested we drop the word gifted, and adopt other terms like, “asynchronous learner, outstanding talent, or accelerated.” The very debate about using the word is polarizing and isolating to those of us raising children like this. )

Parenting a gifted child is lonely.

Why is it lonely to raise a gifted child? Well, for starters, we are in the minority. If you look at that definition from NAGC above, it talks about the top 10%. (For the sake of this post, I’d like to focus on academically gifted children, because I feel that children gifted in other ways, be it musically or athletically, are a whole other ball of wax so to speak, and perhaps a little less isolated, depending on the circumstances.) For…