High Costs of Raising Gifted Children

Raising children today is an expensive proposition for any parent; but, perhaps even more so for parents of children identified as gifted. At this week’s chat, we discussed primarily economic factors; but many people expressed concerns related to social and emotional costs. It was noted that this as well as several other related topics will have to be considered in upcoming chats.

One of the first expenses encountered by parents can be that of out-of-school testing; either to dispute in-school testing or to provide testing that the school is unwilling to do for a wide variety of reasons. Testing may include both intelligence testing, mental health testing; etc. Also, it often needs to be repeated if initially done early, when the child enters the teen years. Financially, testing can cost thousands of dollars and involve travel expenses to distant testing facilities. These costs can be out of reach for many families.

When advocacy fails resulting in a gifted child not receiving an appropriate education, many parents turn to homeschooling, charter schools, private schools or residential schools. There are some schools for the profoundly gifted in the U.S. which are free or low-cost, but available seats are few and far between. Again, these options are not feasible for all parents.

Homeschoolers often must provide their own curriculum and with gifted children this can mean buying multiple years’ worth of materials every year. Add to this loss of income for a parent provider, extracurricular activities, online classes; and you can see how quickly expenses can add up. Private and charter schools can mean added transportation costs.

Parents of gifted children are always looking for ways to enrich and supplement their child’s education regardless of where they attend school. These costs can include summer camps, online coursework, tutoring, additional reading materials, and educational games/toys.

The chat then turned to the question of costs associated with Early College. A form of acceleration, there are costs of which many people were not aware. Besides the fact that college expenses can come years earlier than anticipated; there are issues pertaining to differences in the awarding of scholarships (merit scholarships are rarely offered to a transfer student), qualifying for financial aid, and loss of child support in the case of divorce. Age-related costs include transportation costs (student not old enough to drive), participation in field trips and college abroad programs (parents generally need to accompany student), work-study (student not old enough to work), and even using campus health centers.

The costs of providing for the many needs of a gifted child do come with a price tag, and it often can be very high. Although gifted children may be more expensive to raise than their age peers, #gtchat has provided links below to articles with practical advice on how to mitigate those expenses and find the best solutions to finding appropriate educational and enrichment opportunities for your child. A transcript of this chat may be found at Storify.

Global #gtchat Powered by the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented is a weekly chat on Twitter. Join us Fridays at 7E/6C/5M/4P in the U.S., Midnight in the UK and Saturdays 13.00 NZDT/11.00 AEDT to discuss current topics in the gifted community and meet experts in the field. Transcripts of our weekly chats can be found at Storify. Our Facebook Page provides information on the chat and news & information regarding the gifted community. Also, checkout our Pinterest Page and Playlist on YouTube.

About the author: Lisa Conrad is the Moderator of Global #gtchat Powered by TAGT and Social Media Manager of the Global #gtchat Community. She is a longtime advocate for gifted children and also blogs at Gifted Parenting Support. Lisa can be contacted at: gtchatmod@gmail.com