Liora Sido was only two years old when she was speaking fluently and urging her mum to turn on the subtitles for the shows she was watching.
“She really liked them because she could read along,” said mum Tanya.
“We went through that whole process of formally recognising her abilities and giftedness. Her IQ was 147, which means she's in the top one per cent of the population in terms of her cognition.”
Liora, from Sydney, told The Feed her interests outside of school include studying the United States' presidents, studying plastic pollution and its devastating effects on the environment and writing non-fiction about personal events in her life.
“[Writing] really helps me let out my thoughts,” said the now seven-year-old.
Liora is in Year 2 and said she is often bored and disengaged from the content she is learning.
Liora reads in her bedroom. Credit: SBS The Feed
“I feel sad and annoyed because the questions are a bit too easy and the teachers wouldn’t give me harder stuff.”
Tanya agrees.
“Her brain needs a lot of challenges to be engaged, she disengages very quickly,” she said.
“She found some symptoms of COVID that were very easily replicated and she would basically fake COVID symptoms or dramatize them to get off school.”
Because of Liora’s IQ, she is considered gifted, meaning she processes information faster than her peers, allowing her to learn at a quicker pace, putting her ahead of the curriculum.
Penny Willoughby, an education consultant specialising in gifted education, said many gifted children aren't reaching their potential.
“Gifted children are children who have an extra ability above and beyond the average child, " she said.
"Generally, it's defined as around about the top 10 per cent.
“Gifted children have quite different learning needs. They learn often a lot faster, they think often a lot more deeply or a lot more conceptually about things, and so their pace of learning is faster.
“Many of these children are reaching their potential, but a lot of them aren't. The research that I've seen shows that around about a third aren't, which is really quite shocking.”
The NSW Government offers opportunity classes for gifted students in Years 5 and 6, before they are able to go to a selective high school. But before these grades, there is no formal way to educate gifted students.
Tanya says that should change.
“There needs to be a lot more education of staff to recognise these kids early on before they get disengaged and get into patterns of negative behaviour,” said Tanya.
Penny said that there must be more flexible teaching, not just for students with learning difficulties, but also for gifted students.
“The 'one-size-fits-all' in schools I think is really an outdated notion,” said Penny.
“There's something we call open-ended learning where you have a lesson where everyone's essentially doing something similar, but they're all doing it at different levels.”
The NSW Education Department said it seeks to cater for gifted students below Year 5 through the policy.
"Before Year 5, all public primary schools develop the talent of high potential and gifted students, under the High Potential and Gifted Education policy," a Department spokesperson told The Feed.
The 'twice-exceptional' student
“A twice-exceptional child is one who has what we call double-exceptionality, " she said.
"They are gifted in some way, but they have something that really interferes with that. So it could be physical or it could be something like ADHD or autism.”
Max Drew, 8, from Melbourne, has an IQ which puts him in the top one per cent of his age group.
Eight-year-old Max has an IQ which puts him in the top 1 per cent of his age group. Credit: SBS The Feed
“Max is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder level two, he's also diagnosed with ADHD, he's diagnosed with severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder from the education experience that he's had sadly, and OCD,” said Kim.
Kim said it was a tough process getting Max extra intellectual support at school, and because he was “disengaged and bored” during the day, he would come home and the family would “cop it” when he arrived home.
“I don't think the school was equipped to have a twice-exceptional student in their school,” she said.
“His reading fluency was 100 per cent, but his comprehension was 33 per cent.
“His psychologist at the time basically explained to her (his Year 1 teacher) that he's got a different learning style to most children, but she just refused to work with us when it came to Max.”
Kim said Max was often in trouble, and sent to detention.
Penny said this reaction from teachers to twice-exceptional student’s isn’t uncommon.
“Often the focus is on their behaviour because their behaviour doesn't conform or they're not able to follow instructions.
“A lot of the reason why children aren't identified and catered for is absolutely because there's not a good understanding sometimes of what we mean by giftedness and definitely not of 'twice-exceptional'.
“When that's not recognized, then teachers don't realize they need to do something different for those children.”
Penny said that every school, private or public, is able to target and cater efficiently to gifted and twice-exceptional students.
“Money is not a big factor, It's more about the commitment from the school,” she said.
“I've come across schools, who've got no money spare and yet they find creative ways to do it, they have the enthusiasm from the teachers, they find different opportunities for those children and they just make it happen.
Home-schooling option for gifted kids
Catherine Miedecke told The Feed her four school-aged gifted children are home-schooled because it provides her kids with greater opportunities.
She said the decision came after her children were either skipped a grade at school or received subject acceleration, but still were not academically stimulated. They needed more, and the education system wasn’t prepared to give it to them, she said.
“It's incredibly frustrating, it demonstrates a lack of understanding around the gifted child and what their needs are.”
Son Rupert, 8, skipped the first year of school and went into grade one.
“I felt relieved that I didn’t have to be in prep, and I also felt happy that I was in a better class,” he said.
“It was pretty much math and handwriting, no history at all. It was like 1 + 1 and it was so easy. I wanted to learn about Sudan and the war, because I love history.”
Now learning at his home in Tasmania, Rupert said he much prefers it.
“The work is a lot better, it’s a lot harder and I am learning a lot more subjects, like geography and a bit of history,” he said.
Recognising their abilities
Tanya said beside Mensa, a society for people with high IQ’s, there is no real way gifted and twice-exceptional kids and adults can come together and connect with one another.
“You just have sprinklings of gifted children everywhere, sprinkled throughout the education system. And there's no real means to bring them together, especially in the early years,” she said.
“it was really when we found Mensa… when she started finding peers [that] she realised she wasn't the only one, [and] that other kids had similar interests.”
Kim said that with the correct nurturing, these children are able to do incredible things in the future.
“These kids can go on to do brilliant things. They'll send people to space, they will just excel.”
