The third right in Del Siegle's Siegle's Gifted Kids' Bill of Rights is about passion, the kind of passion gifted kids have toward their talent areas. Siegle believes that gifted kids have a right to feel that passion without apologizing for it. 

It's not so much that gifted kids literally need to say "I'm sorry."  It is more that they can be made to feel guilty when they pursue their talent with their typical intensity.


  I also don't believe it's just passion toward their talent that gifted kids can be made to feel guilty about. It can be their intense pursuit of any interest.

When my son started third grade, he had just come back from Space Camp, where he won an award. He had been fascinated with space since he was three years old and the trip to Space Camp what he felt was the first step to becoming an astronaut.  He had lived and breathed space for years.  Until third grade.

The teacher seemed to feel that my son was just too interested in space.  Everything he did, she said, had something to do with space, and, she told me, "We have to get space out of his head."  She never explained to me why that was important, but she succeeded. By the end of that school year, he had completely lost his interest in space.  I often wonder what my son's life would be like now had the teacher accepted my son's passion for space and nurtured rather than smothered it.

Have you ever noticed that your child's teacher didn't seem to accept your child's passion for a subject?