Characteristics of Gifted Children

If you are specialised in the subject of gifted children, then a child who is gifted should be quite easy to spot, but it is not usually an expert who notices a gifted or creative child it is usually a member of a child’s family or a close friend who passes comment about the child being bright during their early years development.  There are many characteristics to these children which can be key to determining whether or not you have a gifted child.  Comparisons with a child of the same age can also be useful, as by doing this it often enables a gifted child to be detected, as a gifted child usually stands out in a crowd of children of the same age. 

There are many types of gifted children, some of the characteristics to look out for are for instance if the child shows a particular interest and science and/or literature, if a child can provide answers to a question very quickly and is extremely alert, is emotionally very secure, is always wanting to learn and do new things, has new ideas and is resourceful – often being able to solve a problem with creative ideas, is often puzzled by what has been said and reads into something perhaps more so than needs to be at times.  Has a superior memory and is able to use information which has been learned in a resourceful way, has a lot of commonsense, uses an extensive number of words in the correct context, often picking up on words that wouldn’t be used in everyday language, is friendly, independent and outgoing.

Every child is different and every gifted child is different, a wide range of knowledge and what is know about gifted and creative children can be found on the internet.  No two gifted children are the same, and where one can thrive in a particular subject another can find this quite tiresome. 

A child who is gifted often has good leadership traits, they are often looked to by others in school for an answer to be provided.  If you think that you  have a child who is gifted and they match some of the criteria above then it is worth having this checked out, if your child does fall within the gifted bracket then school can make provisions for this to ensure that a child uses their full academic ability.