They are the mother of two forgotten children. I write it here, but in everyday life I learned to avoid saying it. I don’t talk about it more easily, I don’t say it anymore, I don’t share it anymore. It is as if to pronounce that word – surplus – could turn into a pride, into a boomerang and in misunderstanding. So I choose silence, as if it were a form of protection.
Unfortunately I’m not the only one to do it. As a contact person of the Arborescence Association, I see how much this silence is, unfortunately, very widespread. Many parents, after an evaluation or a simple intuition, stop talking about it. Not because they do not feel the need to share and be supported and understood, on the contrary! But because they are afraid: fear of judgment, trivialization, false myths, yet another phrase “but in the end they are only intelligent children”. Or: “Eh, now they are all surplus”, “but it seems to me a normal child like everyone else”. All things I felt personally told myself. So it happens that that silence may seem reassuring. When, however, gradually, it becomes a cage. You are only lost in your “trouble” (and the parents of children Gifted know very well how well these children can be intense and complex. You also risk even worse, to transmit to children the idea that their diversity is something to hide. That it is something wrong. Last night, while falling asleep, my son, 6 years just completed, thinking at the beginning of the elementary school, he said to me “I am better not to say to the new teachers. I am different and I’m crazy.
My son at six is a child who reads the encyclopedia, who asked himself deep questions about the meaning of things and life itself. Which feels emotions so great that it suffer in such an intense way that it is difficult even to explain it. My son feels things differently. He can’t forget anything. He asks for consistency and sincerity, but often remains disappointed by adults. It has concerns that at 6 years of age they should not have. He thinks, for example, that he will have difficulty finding a partner with whom to have children because he imagines that it will be difficult to find someone similar to him. Or fall asleep in anxiety for drought. And a thousand other examples that would need a separate book to be recommended. He has already experienced, despite his small age, that silent pain, made of renunciation and self-censorship.
The paradox is that these children, despite having extraordinary abilities, encounter great difficulties right at school. The lack of adequate stimuli often leads to drops in performance that do not depend on inability, but on boredom and frustration. Many struggle to socialize because their language and their interests do not coincide with those of peers (at 2 years of age mine proposed to peers to play to take the measures with the roller meter for example) and end up feeling different, isolated, sometimes even wrong. There is no lack of emotional consequences: anxiety, perfectionism, low self -esteem, up to the risk of school abandonment. Growing up a lot, unfortunately, hikikomori become. All this remains an invisible phenomenon, even if it concerns important numbers: estimates say that in Italy between 5 and 8% of students it could be surpassed, that is, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of children. One or two in each class!
For too long, the school has not been able to give adequate answers. The 2019 MIUR note had inserted them among the BES, but an organic regulatory framework was missing. Today, finally, something seems to move. The new bill on surplus, approved by the Senate Culture Commission, officially recognizes the pupils with high cognitive potential, introduces dedicated referents in each institute, provides for mandatory training for teachers and the possibility of personalized paths up to include, for some high school students, contemporary access to the University. It has been an expected step for years, which brings us closer to what has already happened in other European countries.
In this scenario, the role of associations such as arborescence is fundamental. Spaces are created in which parents can tell each other without fear, they offer tools to dialogue with the school, we support children because they do not feel alone. Tutoraggi are made with teachers and training courses for them. Stimulating events are organized for these children.
Emilia Amodio, president of the Association, says it well: “Silence is understandable, because it arises from the need to defend itself. But it is also a mistake, because it makes the real needs of these children invisible. Pustation is not a defect to be ashamed of, nor a privilege to be flaunted: it is simply a characteristic to be recognized and accompanied. Speaking serves to build alliances, to drop prejudices and to guarantee our children.”
Silence isolates, while the word builds. Today more than ever, we cannot afford to remain silent. For our children and for all those who come, it’s time to make noise.
And to you, my puppy, I want to leave him written again clearly here too: you are not “crazy” nor “wrong”. You are special as you are and this diversity is your biggest strength! Do not allow anyone to let you doubt this, not even your inner self who tries to self-sacristan!
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