Supporting a child with high intellectual potential (HIP) calls for an understanding of the child’s specific needs and an approach adapted to support them. In this article, we give you a few tips to support a HIP child.
Understand them, to grasp how they work
A parent whose child has just been diagnosed as HIP often feels at a loss. They do not know how to react or how to support their child.
The first step in supporting a child with high intellectual potential is to understand them, in order to grasp their needs and offer them a reassuring, caring setting. Indeed, a HIP child often shows the following character traits, which can be unsettling for parents:
- Heightened sensitivity: a HIP child is more sensitive than other children. This shows in the intensity of their emotions, their moods, their touchiness or their sense of injustice or inequality, but also in their imagination and their frustration.
- A very quick mind: a gifted child learns very fast; they understand and take in new information quickly. They also have a great thirst for knowledge and are bursting with ideas. Their cognitive abilities are higher than those of average children, whom they tend to find slow.
- Unusual social behaviour: it is not always easy for a gifted child to fit into society. They often feel different or out of step with other children their age and prefer the company of older children or adults. Moreover, a child with high potential tends to observe a lot, which can pass for shyness.
Support them and talk with them
Take the time to talk and communicate with your child with high intellectual potential. Explain their difference to them openly. This will help them better understand certain gaps with others or certain misunderstandings. Talk with them, show them that you are listening and attentive to their well-being and needs, and that they should not hesitate to confide in you if something worries them. Help them build their self-esteem, encourage them to express their feelings, reassure them about their differences and congratulate them on their successes. The key with gifted children is to show kindness. That way, they feel confident and reassured.
Communicating with a gifted child is important not only to meet their intellectual needs, but also for their emotional, social and overall well-being. It opens the way to suitable support, caring backing and a strong, fulfilling parent-child relationship. Gifted children need more affection than others and ask for more reassurance; this special relationship with their parents will therefore do them a great deal of good.
Offer them a suitable school setting
HIP children have above-average cognitive and intellectual abilities. They understand faster, are quicker and everything comes more intuitively to them.
HIP children are, moreover, recognised by the French Ministry of Education as “pupils with special educational needs”.
A caring, adapted and collaborative approach is needed. To keep them from getting bored or under-stimulated, either the child skips a grade, which answers their need for intellectual stimulation, or the school curriculum is enriched with additional, more complex or in-depth activities.
The problem parents of gifted children often face is a lack of teacher training. For a child to feel fully fulfilled at school, it can be worthwhile to enrol them in a suitable school. The teaching staff, fully aware of their specific needs, can then support them as well as possible and provide an environment in which they can thrive intellectually. This is the case at our school for gifted children in Paris.
Keep them busy and stimulated, intellectually and socially
Children with high potential constantly need to be stimulated, or they quickly get bored.
Parents are therefore advised to:
- Get them involved in extracurricular activities: sport, music, dance, DIY, chess, theatre…
- Regularly invite their classmates home: encouraging social interaction is important to prevent the isolation that tends to affect HIP children.
- Encourage them to play: a gifted child is a child first and foremost and needs to have fun. Sometimes you can play with them, but let them get bored too; it is important that they give free rein to their imagination and creativity.
- Buy them books: children with high potential have a great thirst for learning. If they are passionate about dinosaurs or gemstones, buy your child books on the subject to satisfy their curiosity.
Get help from a professional
Supporting a gifted child is not always easy for parents and can be a source of suffering. If, despite all your efforts, you struggle to communicate with or understand your child, to meet their expectations or to manage their frustrations, do not hesitate to seek help from a specialist. There are many psychologists who specialise in high intellectual potential. They will be able to reassure you and help you better understand your child’s particularities.
We hope this article will help you turn your HIP child’s difference into a strength, through suitable support. Would you like information about our École Galilée and its school setting adapted to children with high potential? Do not hesitate to contact us!