I would urge you to avoid terms like "gifted". Unfortunately, labels like this can become weapons, burdens or both.

It's not helpful for children, in general, to live under a label derived from a single characteristic e.g. carrot-top, fatty, spastic etc. Being bright is not an affliction, but it can arouse much jealousy and while many things can be bought, intelligence is unattainable for the great majority of people. It therefore behoves the minority to use their gifts in a sensitive way; in a perfect world they would be used for the common good.

If you'll allow me to be a little bit didactic, I'll share some thoughts. Please ignore them if you wish.

If your child is fortunate enough to be clever, then you need to deal with the issue thoughtfully. First, if you have more than one child, be very careful to make no differences between them - all children have strengths and weaknesses and you must try to help them develop their abilities where they are strong, and learn to cope in the areas where they do not excel.

Ask yourself what you want out of your own life and try to imagine how you could guide your children to an ideal adulthood. Remember, it's not what YOU want for them, it's what they might want for themselves if they knew what you know.

Remember that you cannot plan for them - just try to give them the ability to plan for themselves.

If you Google "child, gifted, genius" you will find among the chaff, a large number of sites that offer signs and definitions, largely handwaving, but as long as you treat them with deep reserve, you might benefit. Just don't take anything too seriously, and whatever you do, don't take anything you read as definitive!

For one thing, any one thing you read will apply, at least arguably, to at least some children, and often equally arguably, not to some particular child.  The concept of giftedness in a child is variable, poorly-defined, arbitrary, slippery, and heavily emotion-laden. In my personal opinion it also is not homogeneous, in that it is perfectly possible to be gifted in certain respects and well below average, or even markedly deficient, in others. Conversely, when a child shows an impressive aptitude in several respects, it is quite likely to show above-average aptitude in others as well.My wife and I were active in a local gifted-children group for some years. The group had been established in response to a short-lived testing program in the local education department. It happened to be a university town, so the supply of well-favoured, intelligent children certainly was very high, but one of the first topics that arose was the question of how we were to define "giftedness".

I insisted, eventually successfully, that we applied no formal qualifying test; we did not really know what to test for, nor what standards to set for any given test. Instead we followed the principle that any children who simply were there to gratify their families' vanity, or because they had an undoubtedly gifted sibling, soon would drop out for sheer boredom. Anyway, if any borderline cases benefited from their participation that would all be harmless profit.

This principle proved very powerful; we had some children with talents that left me breathless, even in retrospect. We probably had something like 50% of mediocrities or worse, but I cannot remember that they caused any noteworthy problems. Of course, we may simply have been lucky,Permitting myself some handwaving on my own account, what struck me most about dealing with those children was that you could teach them apparently anything, as long as you made it interesting (for them at least)  and never went more than one step beyond what they already knew at any one time. This applied even to abstruse and counter-intuitive material. They also were very good at handling conditional thinking ("what if" and "if not, then what") and abstract ideas. Bear in mind however that this might have had more to do with my own types of interest and own style of thought, than anything I had not imposed on the children in the first place. Other instructors might have come to different conclusions.

"Genius"? I don't know. I cannot remember anyone using that term in any serious connection for years, if ever.

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This answer is not scientific ~ mainly personal, anecdotal & biased

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I have met many 'gifted' people & as Jon says they range from one trick ponies to broad spectrum polymaths.

I have concluded that it's vital to strike a life balance no matter how wide/narrow your spectrum is. Being a communicator, having empathy & kindness, possessing curiosity about people & the world, being observant ~ THESE to me are the most important qualities a human can possess.

A phenomenal ability at chess, music, maths , art or jumping should not preclude exercising the other parts of the intellect. I have very rarely come across a 'gifted' person who is able to open a door for me into their special world. I suspect this is mostly due to an imbalance in their intellect. Why are footballers & test pilots so unengaging when relating a notable incident in their careers ? Might the space program have survived longer if the astronauts had been a little less of the 'right stuff' & had developed a decent vocabulary ?

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Some of the poorest social experiences I've had has involved (at separate events) classical musicians ('cept for the brass section who were serious drinkers), dancers & strangely enough actors. With the actors I think it was because when conversing it's 'all about them' which gets old very quickly

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On the other hand 'normal' people down the pub rarely talk about their line of work for long & will quickly get on with bonding ~ with males this is usually banter & insults, while females prefer to talk intimately & gossip about any member of the group who has the courage to wander out of earshot. [that was a generalisation]

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Keeping company with a group of people who have a joint obsession only works for me when the group includes a rounded character who can interpret.

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Michael

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