Davidson Gifted Perspectives
A Davidson Institute Video Series
Explaining Giftedness to Others
How to discuss a gifted or twice-exceptional diagnosis with a child.
8/22/23
Encouraging Reading in Young Scholars
Some gifted students show their interests and talents in a particular area early. In our community, we see many students who show strong number sense and an early preference for mathematics. But parents often think about how “well-rounded” their student is becoming, and they wonder how to strengthen skills that might not be preferred by a child.
10/29/25
Extra Curriculars and Socialization while Homeschooling
When homeschooling enters the conversation, there are often a lot of myths that parents have to wade through. Often, there are concerns about how their children will socialize or how the parents will juggle work and homeschooling.
10/28/25
Shifting Screen Time
Gifted students are passionate, curious, and often highly driven to achieve their goals. Sometimes, parents struggle to see why their student loves video games so much and can easily spend hours gaming on any given day.
10/28/25
Being "That" Parent
One of the things that we hear from parents of gifted children is that they are often perceived as “pushing their student too hard” or bragging about their child. In reality, many gifted children have a high drive to learn and have different learning needs than other children around their age. How do you advocate for your child and communicate with others when there’s this sort of misunderstanding?
10/27/25
Homeschooling Multiple Children
If your family has more than one child, you’ve probably asked yourself, "If we homeschool them, how will that work for me?" One parent in a recent virtual event wanted to know just this.
10/27/25
Homeschooling for 2e High School Students
As children get older, parents often expect that they can do more things independently. For some homeschooling families, it’s expected that a high schooler is able to manage their own time, stay on task, and be consistent in their schooling every day. But what’s “normal” when a student is on a different developmental timeline?
10/27/25
Working Parents and Homeschooling
Many families curious about homeschooling face a common roadblock –they work outside of the home and struggle to picture how homeschooling will work around a schedule like that. But fear not! Many parents have worked and successfully homeschooled their students.
10/23/25
Homeschooling 2e Students
Homeschooling has recently become a popular topic of conversation! Are there any particular considerations to make for 2e students, like social-emotional development or executive functioning skills?
10/22/25
High School Diplomas and GEDs for Young Scholars
Some parents are worried that if their student takes a non-traditional path, future endeavors will not look as favorably at them. Additionally, rumors persist about homeschooled students’ readiness for the “real world.”
10/22/25
Support for Unschooling
Not every gifted child is keen on academics, and traditional schooling situations may not be a fit. One of the educational alternatives in our community is unschooling, which takes a child-led approach, centering curiosity and interest.
10/20/25
Multipotentialism and "Giving Up" Subjects in High School
Multipotentialites often struggle to choose one path. These people have strengths and passions that pull them in many different ways, so choosing a path for say…. post high school, can be difficult.
10/17/25
Questions to Ask a Middle School
School choice and starting at a new school is something that we talk about often in the Young Scholar community. We have many families who change schools every year, and many of the families in our program are also faced with the natural transitions from elementary to middle to high school.
10/16/25
Twice Exceptionality and Following Through
Sometimes, students have more ideas in their heads than there is time in a day. Sometimes, students struggle to make their ideas come to life, translating from what’s inside their head into the real world. How can twice exceptional students build some of those follow through skills to help them get better at manifesting their ideas into realities?
10/13/25
Talent Development: Finding Intersections
Often, parents of gifted children notice that their children have a ton of niche interests and they aren’t sure how those interests fit together or how to nurture their children’s passions in a meaningful way. Our director of Family Services shares her thoughts.
10/13/25
Finding Activities for Young Scholars
Talent development, that is, finding activities that line up with your Young Scholars passions, interests, and strengths, isn’t always easy. In fact, when Young Scholars are working at a different level than their age-peers, it might present a specific challenge for the profoundly gifted family: Does the student do an activity that isn’t at their level, but is around age peers? Or do we focus on opportunities that only fit their level of ability? Are there other options?
10/2/25
Strengths Based Models in Public Schools
During a recent virtual event, a parent asked how to incorporate strength-based models and strategies in a public school environment. Our Director of Family Services shares her thoughts and insight on the topic.
2/4/25
Frustration Tolerance and School Struggles
We have a saying in our community that parenting a profoundly gifted child isn’t for the faint of heart. Their intensities can be, well, intense. So what are the educational options for parents with children who have intense behaviors?
2/4/25
Differentiation and Early Elementary
Our Director of Family Services discusses whether differentiation can be made “less obvious” and how to lessen anxiety around differentiated work for younger elementary school students.
2/4/25
Schools for 2e Children
One of the questions that many families have boils down to “what’s the best school for my child?” For families with twice exceptional children, that question has even more resonance. Is there a single school that can engage them in all of the ways that they need?
2/4/25
Building Community While Homeschooling
Recently, a parent shared that their student had been attending a gifted school, but, for this year, they had switched to homeschool. While they were at the gifted school, their son did have a community, but they’ve been ghosted now that they are homeschooling. With the boy’s birthday coming up, the parent didn’t know how to address the situation or talk about this.
12/9/24
Resilience and Sports
A family asked if resilience and grit are transferrable from sports to academics. Many families can relate to this one. This family shared that they can see their son working hard to improve his basketball skills, but he doesn’t work to the same level as his academics. Our Director of Family Services shares her thoughts and insights into the situation.
12/9/24
Self-Discipline Motivation and Enriching Gifted Children
Commonly, families in the Young Scholars program will tell us that their children are bored in school and so they are supplementing their education with outside enrichment options. But sometimes, because profoundly gifted children can develop asynchronously, they struggle with the self-discipline and motivation that it takes to participate in online enrichment themselves.
12/9/24
Adolescence and Profound Giftedness
Sometimes, people think of giftedness as an identity that only children have. There’s still a stereotype that someone “grows out of giftedness.” But, with giftedness being a brain-based difference, it’s more conducive to see giftedness as a lifelong cognitive profile.
11/5/24
What Options for Acceleration Can Parents Discuss with a School
Many families with profoundly gifted children are familiar with the idea that they might have to advocate for their student’s unique educational needs. But many families don’t know what to ask for, or how to present their ideas to a school.
11/5/24
Gifted Children and Physical Activity
We’ve heard from families in our community that some profoundly gifted children struggle with physical activity or “don’t like sports.” Many Young Scholars struggle with competition. So, what’s going on there?
11/5/24
Balancing Supplemental Academics with Being a Kid
During one of our recent virtual events, a parent asked a question that we get a lot on the family services team. The family wanted to know how to balance supplemental academics with just being a kid. As our Director of Family Services discusses, this is a big question, but one of the things to consider is that play might look different for PG kids.
7/30/24
Balancing Enrichment with After School Restraint Collapse
During one of our recent virtual events, a parent shared that they hear enrichment suggested frequently to help profoundly gifted students cope with in school boredom. But how is after school activities a solution when students come home melting down after trying to handle their school day?
7/30/24
Considerations For a Single Grade Acceleration in Early Elementary School
During one of our recent virtual events, exclusive to Young Scholar families, a parent asked how often single-grade acceleration works for students. They mention the possibility of their student ending up academically ahead, but physically behind.
7/30/24
Deadlines and the Development of Executive Functioning Skills
Recently, during one of our members-only Q&A events, a family asked if not setting due dates for their homeschooler would hinder the development of their executive functioning skills. Here’s a Family Services team member sharing her thoughts.
12/20/23
Empathy, Social Justice, and Current Events
During one of the most recent members-only virtual events, a few parents asked a Family Services team member to share her thoughts on gifted children’s heightened sense of justice and empathy.
Here’s the Family Services team member sharing a few strategies that our families use to support Young Scholars.
12/20/23
Acceleration and Executive Functioning
When making acceleration decisions, some of the most common concerns that parents have are executive function and social dynamics. Can a student be successful in a higher grade if their executive function skills are still developing? Can a student be successful on an accelerated track if they are still developing their social-emotional skills?
12/20/23
Balancing the Schedule
Balancing a family’s schedule can be difficult. Between school, doctor’s appointments, sports games, and anything else that comes along. But there can be some particular challenges that come with balancing schedules in a family with Profoundly gifted or twice exceptional children. Sometimes these kids are doing so many things and yet they are saying that they want to do more. How does that make sense?
11/1/23
Acceleration and Off Ramps
As a parent, it can be frustrating or confusing to make educational decisions for your child when anecdotal evidence and the findings from research don’t match up. With factors that are less predictable, like social changes and puberty, how do you know if acceleration is going to be the right choice?
10/11/23
Learning the Basics
Sometimes it can be confusing why profoundly gifted children can have a high-level conversation about something, but at the same time can’t seem to do the ‘basic’ skills that we think as coming before the high-level stuff. Is there anything you can do to help bridge those gaps and ease some of the frequent frustration or confusion?
9/26/23
Navigating the Social Landscape for Tweens
Parenting a profoundly gifted tween or teen doesn’t come with a roadmap. As parents of profoundly gifted tweens and teens, you may be worrying about their social life during these years. The landscape can shift quite a bit. Helping profoundly gifted tweens and teens to navigate social landscapes in a way that is authentic and genuine can be tricky.
9/26/23
Talking to Classmates About an Acceleration
Some parents have fears that accelerating their child will be misunderstood by their new class cohort. How would a child explain their acceleration or grade skip? What can parents say to guide their child?
9/6/23
Profoundly Gifted Kids Can Talk a LOT and Passionately About Their Interests
Many profoundly gifted children can be intensely passionate about their interests. Sometimes this means they want to talk A LOT about those interests. You may wonder: Should I just be a receptive, engaged listener? Should I be doing something differently to be more of a partner in the conversation?
8/29/23
Screen Time and Constant Stimulation
Some children are always “on” and needing stimulation. Does “having no chill” come with the territory of being a gifted kid? Is there research or a consensus on screen time for gifted kids? Hear our take!
8/29/23
Finding Multi-age Interest Based Community for PG Children
Making friends is hard. Making friends as a profoundly gifted or twice-exceptional child can come with some additional challenges.
8/22/23
Davidson Gifted Blog
Find information on education and support options, gifted resources, and more.
Strength-Based Parenting Gifted and Twice-Exceptional (2e) Children Requires Intentionality
Supporting A Child’s Strengths from the Start Parenting a twice-exceptional…
8 Myths About Gifted Students Debunked
The concept of “giftedness” tends to be misunderstood. This lack…
Online Programs for Gifted Elementary Students
Online Programs for Gifted Elementary Students According to the U.S.…
Finding and Building Community as a Profoundly Gifted or Twice-Exceptional Family
This article has been adapted from a virtual event presented…