The Gifted Children's Coordinator position for East Central Ohio Mensa is presently open - please contact our president or any officer if you're interested in taking on this interesting and challenging role.

Thanks to Bill Maki for kickstarting the update of this page!

Resources for Parents and Mentors of Gifted Children

As the parent of a precocious child, you may suspect you have a gifted personality loose in your house. What works with other kids is not working with this one. Well, don't fret. There are support systems available to assist you. You don't have to go it alone when you work with a gifted child.

Have the child tested by a certified psychologist. Now, that is not scary. Your school has access to one. Even if you are not attending the public schools, in Ohio your local public school system will provide you (as a taxpayer) with assistance in getting an assessment of your child. Talk to your child's teacher, principal, or the local board of education.

The only test honored by Mensa for for admission of children under age 14 is the Stanford-Binet LM test. Other tests may be used by the school system, per their stated policy, to identify gifted children. For children older than 14, your local Mensa chapter (that's us) can administer the Mensa admissions test. So one way or the other, your question is settled.

So after the tests you now know that your child is gifted. What do you do? There are many resources to aid the parent in bringing out the best in a gifed child. The links listed below are part educational, part assistive. You can find links to Mensa, the Department of Education for the State of Ohio, the Ohio Association of Gifted Children, and many more.

As the parent, you will be pressed to keep the child involved. After reading some of the characteristics of gifted children, you may have ideas of after school activities that would appeal to their interest. If the child is bored in school, have the child "test out" of their grade and be moved up to the grade they can handle. Your third grader may be capable of doing 7th grade work! Be proud! The current advice is to let the child work at his/her level and not hold them back. They will make friends in all the classes they attend.

Attend our monthly meeting and bring your Gifted Child(ren). Once members, they can access over 100 special interest groups on the Mensa website. They can talk to older Mensans about how they got through school.

The following list may help you get started finding resources:

1. American Mensa - on our main page select the heading Gifted Children - there are seven subheadings for your use
2. Ohio Department of Education has two areas to read:
   • under Learning Conditions and Support of Gifted Children there are subheadings
   • under School Options there is another subheading for Gifted Children
3. If you enter "Ohio and Gifted Children" on a Google search, you will turn up many websites and articles on gifted children. The following is just a sample of what you can find:

Related Links - Gifted Children

Please advise the webmaster of broken or inappropriate links below, or of additional web resources related to gifted children.

Worthy of discussion?

Stuff for fun

Related Books - Gifted Children

Title: Keys to Parenting the Gifted Child - Third Edition

Author: Silvia B. Rimm
Publisher: Great Potential Press, Scottsdale, AZ US
ISBN: 0-910-707-74-X
Katie Couric describes Silvia as "a welcome voice of calm and reason -- someone who offers practical advice, with almost immediate results. She's a guardian angel for families who need a little or a lot of guidance." Her book covers the "keys" (42 in all) that are important in helping your children experience the joy of learning, including parenting with a united front, homework issues, creativity/pretending/lying, underachievement, perfectionism, peer pressure, risk-taking for shy children, and gender issues. Silvia appears regularly on NBC's Today Show, hosts a nationally broadcast radio program, is director of the Family Achievement Clinic, and has served on the board of the National Association for Gifted Children, among other honors.

Title: Gifted Children and Gifted Education

Author:Gary A. Davis, PhD.
Publisher:Great Potential Press, Scottsdale, Arizona
ISBN: 0-910707-73-1
At age 6, Joshua was a music student at Julliard. He made his concert debut playing Haydn's "D-Major Piano Concerto" with the New York String Society, but this didn't matter. In the first grade, he had to spend hours with the other children clapping the rhythm for quarter notes. If Frankenstein and Pinocchio were children, do you think the former might be diagnosed as gifted and the latter as "having trouble thinking logically?" That's one of the questions that Gary asks, as he begins each chapter with a humorous version of a children's tale to explain how to detect and cultivate talents in gifted children. Topics include how to identify giftedness and intelligence, understanding educational policies and how to deal with them to advantage, describing methods for effective grade and subject application, enriching programs to ensure that children reach their potentialm teaching thinking skills, and recognizing counseling needs and problematic tendencies.

ECOM Past Activities for Gifted Children

A note from Jeffrey Meade, past Gifted Children Coordinator: Many children attended the 2004 and 2005 young Mensa activities.  ECOM's roving monthly game night can be a time for your whole family to attend. Bring board and video games.  At the Regional Gathering several teens enjoyed each other's company as they blipped and bleeped the game controllers. We parents need to arrange additional contact by proposing, orchestrating, and attending museum tours and engaging events.

To find out about some activities our kids have already enjoyed,
click HERE.