Not putting unreasonable expectations on the children is very important, and you’re right that not telling the caretakers is potentially a good way to achieve this. Excellent point.
That might be, but I could find points for the opposite as easily. After all, we are expecting the child to help save the world. If a child is to become someone of exceptional importance, then probably some sort of special treatment can help tutor them into that role. Take the Dalai Lama: he’s raised into his role since birth.
Studies such as https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf indicate that, if you take a genius child and make them go through normal school with their average age-peers (with no grade-skipping or other academic acceleration), then things go much worse than if you let them skip two or more grades. So you may want to make sure that the parents will (a) notice that the child is a genius and (b) take at least semi-appropriate action.
Of course, keeping a genius with regular age-peers is only one case of “failing to recognize a child’s special needs and accommodate them”. But it’s a remarkably common one: in the study, 33 of the 60 exceptionally gifted Australian kids were not permitted any grade-skipping at all.
Not putting unreasonable expectations on the children is very important, and you’re right that not telling the caretakers is potentially a good way to achieve this. Excellent point.
That might be, but I could find points for the opposite as easily. After all, we are expecting the child to help save the world. If a child is to become someone of exceptional importance, then probably some sort of special treatment can help tutor them into that role. Take the Dalai Lama: he’s raised into his role since birth.
Studies such as https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf indicate that, if you take a genius child and make them go through normal school with their average age-peers (with no grade-skipping or other academic acceleration), then things go much worse than if you let them skip two or more grades. So you may want to make sure that the parents will (a) notice that the child is a genius and (b) take at least semi-appropriate action.
Of course, keeping a genius with regular age-peers is only one case of “failing to recognize a child’s special needs and accommodate them”. But it’s a remarkably common one: in the study, 33 of the 60 exceptionally gifted Australian kids were not permitted any grade-skipping at all.