I haven't done any surveys among the parents I know, but I bet we've all experienced this situation.
Suddenly your child says some curious word or has a more adult reaction than normal and the idea comes very quickly to your mind: “This kid of mine surely has high abilities.”
And you are so happy with that simple intuition.
Without any professional test results or any report from experts on the subject, you have already validated it.
You can even add: “He has very high capabilities.”
And from here you raise the topic in conversations with other parents, like the one who plants two seeds on the terrace and hopes that a whole fruit stand will suddenly appear by magic.
Sometimes other adults you know fall into the trap and encourage you.
“Well, the truth is that he is very smart.
He could have them, yes."
“Just like yours,” you answer to make yourself look good or sometimes you say it from the heart, because really the other kid is also very alert.
“Let's see if they give us a group discount at the smart school,” you end up laughing.
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If your child is a teenager with high abilities, help him understand what his strengths and weaknesses are.
And this does not always happen without foundation.
Because no matter how much love you have for your children, there will be qualities that you will not think of amplifying, because there is a certain objective scale with which to measure it.
For example, you won't dare to say that he is a giant if he is the same size as the rest of the class (unless you take him to school for giants.) But, on the other hand, when it comes to intellectual power, if you don't inform yourself or You measure it professionally, it is always open to sweeping speculations for home, which you allow yourself to proclaim in a subtle way.
If your child speaks early and a lot and is more alert than other friends of his who spend the day in front of a screen, it may be that he has older siblings who motivate him more, because you dedicate a lot of time to stimulating him... Every little bit helps.
Before continuing to happily distribute high-capacity cards, it is better to do a little research on the subject so as not to look like a cretin or create false hopes.
That's when doubts start to appear.
Because unless you take them to an expert and they give them a test adapted to their age, the signs to look for are somewhat generic, such as, for example, seeing if they demand a lot of attention, do not accept frustration, have a lot of creativity, if They talk a lot or ask a lot of questions with insatiable curiosity.
That almost all children already have that as standard, in their “And why?” stage.
Another filter that is not very useful for screening is that children with a high IQ do not want to go to school.
In that sense, at 8:15 in the morning, while they are still lazing in bed and the breakfast milk is cold, all children have high capacities.
Of course, there are much more concrete and serious factors, such as having a great memory or high sensory sensitivity, knowing the alphabet very early or knowing how to read before others.
But if we look only at these, the column loses my humor.
Since you don't want to make a fool of yourself in public by proclaiming from the rooftops something that you haven't proven, deep down you hope that high abilities will be detected by teachers, who know where to look and who have had hundreds of students to compare.
For this reason, we all think that very soon a note will arrive in the agenda or a call from school or a comment from the teacher in a low voice, so that other children of standard ability do not hear it.
As members of a secret and very smart lodge, the tutor will give us a fist bump as a secret password and confirm what we have always dreamed of: “Your kid is the smartest in the world, because it turns out that you are too.
We have never met such intelligent and modest people.
It is a great honor to be able to see you every day.”
But the courses pass and that moment does not come.
So the conclusion is obvious.
If teachers do not have high abilities, they cannot recognize your children's potential, right?
Or is it that... In the end what happens is that your child is simply a healthy, alert, extroverted child, eager to learn and who pays close attention and applies what he learns?
In the long run you will think that, perhaps, it is better this way.
Because you don't want your son to be separated from those his age.
You don't want him to have a different childhood.
You don't want him to go to university at 11 and end up playing world chess tournaments at 15, while he turns to drink and pills because no one can understand the complexity of his mind.
And of course, you don't want me to go all
Red Queen
chasing psychopaths.
Besides, it sure is very hard to raise someone much smarter than you and know that you are no match for his intellectual voracity.
In the end, with relief and comfort, you will look at your child, you will hug him a lot and without needing any test or professional study you will know that the best thing that can happen to him in life is not to be the smartest, but the most loved.
Martín Piñol
is the author of 33 books, his children's series
Monsters' Kitchen
has been published in several countries.
His latest novel is
The Shadow Club.
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