Grandparenting

Identification

Current grandparents of gifted grandchildren will likely have already experienced the ups and downs of educating their own high-ability child, or they may, themselves, have been participants in postSputnik gifted programs. This does not mean, however, that grandparents will easily recognize giftedness in young children.

Questions of the identification of giftedness might occur if a grandparent's own child was neither recognized nor selected to be part of a school's gifted program. Other problems with recognition of gifted traits might occur if the grandparents raised an underachieving gifted child, one for whom there was a large discrepancy between measured academic ability and subsequent performance at academic tasks. In terms of recognizing gifted traits, grandparents can roughly be divided into four major groups. First are those whose own children were identified as gifted and who continue to learn, as adults, with an expectation of achievement. Second are those whose children may have been identified as gifted, but who were “unsuccessful” in school for a variety of reasons. Third are grandparents who believed they recognized gifted [Page 404]traits in their own child, but were not validated by schools. Fourth, there are those who did not recognize the gifted abilities in their own child, although they were present. Each level of experience with the success of raising a gifted child will influence future relationships with gifted grandchildren.

Grandparents who have an understanding of giftedness can focus a parent's attention on a child's abilities and can then serve as both a sounding board for the parent and a supportive advocate in the school.

Advocacy

Advocacy includes several levels of outreach to advance the needs of gifted and talented learners. Grandparents who have developed skills in working with educational institutions through their own parenting of gifted children are positioned to be effective advocates at a personal level for their gifted grandchild. These grandparents can offer thoughtful perspective through experience. However, grandparents who struggled with finding appropriate educational options or who had negative encounters with schools may need to acknowledge their biases before they can be helpful advocates.

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