So you think your child is gifted.

Two letter writers this week provide valuable insights into family life when at least one offspring is a "gifted child"...

ST, June 24

I think the most important takeaway is not to deny the child his or her right to a normal childhood.

There is no lack of online material on gifted children. These ones below are just two such resources:

Common Characteristics of Gifted Individuals

http://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources/my-child-gifted/common-characteristics-gifted-individuals

Characteristics and Behaviours of the Gifted

http://www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html

"Kiasu" Singaporean parents might want to take note of this extract below:

Identifying The Gifted 

1. Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.
2. Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.
3. When Thomas Edison was a boy, his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
4. F.W.Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21. But his employers would not let him wait on a customer because he "Didn't have enough sense."
5. A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had "No good ideas"
6. Caruso's music teacher told him "You can't sing, you have no voice at all."
7. Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.
8. Wernher Von Braun flunked 9th grade algebra.
9. Admiral Richard E. Byrd had been retired from the navy, as, "Unfit for service" Until he flew over both poles.
10. Louis Pasteur was rated as mediocre in chemistry when he attended the Royal College
11. Abraham Lincoln entered The Black Hawk War as a captain and came out a private
12. Fred Waring was once rejected from high school chorus.
13. Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.