Home as the First Learning Environment for

have the most important role in developing giftedness of their child. P. D.

Renshaw and R. F. Gardner (1990) studied the interaction of parent-child

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diads working on novel tasks and found that parents interpreted the tasks and selected teaching strategies in two ways. Some considered the learning goals and used indirect strategies in support. Others considered performance goals and adopted direct strategies. These two approaches created very different learning environments. Parents who used the direct approach were concerned with accurate performance and therefore intruded promptly if the child made an error and corrected the mistake. Those parents who used indirect ap-proaches gave more explicit guidance on how to correct errors and realise a solution so that the responsibility for the task remained with the child and errors were viewed as a natural part of learning. These children had a better capacity to problem solve and to regulate their learning.

In my study I could not identify these previously presented of ap-proaches of parents’ educational strategies. According to parents’ answers about how they support their child’s learning, I found that parents mostly used indirect strategies in support. Parents mentioned that they wanted to support their child’s learning if the child needed help. They reported that their children also needed quiet for their own learning and that they came to ask for advice on more difficult problems. Parents wanted to be good listen-ers and they wanted to encourage their children in learning even in most spe-cific or abstract tasks. All parents were also very interested in supporting their children’s free-time pursuits. Finnish children had a lot of hobbies in arts and sports where they needed their parents support. Parents reported that they participated in transportation and encouraged their children to practice new skills several times a week.

In this study parents characterised their children with four aspects. Af-terwards we combined the two middle dimensions and used three dimensions for the description of a child. Finnish parents characterised their children as more talkative (51,5%) were characterised as very talkative) and said that they speak about their activities at home compared to 35,3% of the Estonian parents who said that of their children were very talkative. Nevertheless, most Estonian children (64,7%) were characterised as not at all easily depres-sive. One reason for easily depressed Finnish children may also be that more parents of these children are divorced in Finland (24,2%) than in Estonia (13,9%) although the difference is not statistically significant (p >0.05). The difference to Finnish children is significant (p <0.001): 54,5% of Finnish children were characterised as more easily depressed. It is difficult to know why there is this kind of difference in parents’ assessments; we only know that Finnish children were characterised as more talkative than Estonian

chil-dren. According to Joan E. Grusec and Norma Mammone (1995, 59) easily depressive behaviour may alter parental thinking by priming memories of difficult interactions with children. However, my questionnaires of parents’

that kind of explanation could not be found.

It was also very interesting to see which kind of educational methods parents have used during the past year. It may also be the question of positive thinking and educational methods of Estonian parents. Estonian parents use significantly (p <0.001) more rewards (36,44%) than Finnish (12,1%), who encouraged (66,7%) significantly more (p <0.001) and use a confidential conversation (48,5%) significantly (p <0.001) more often than Estonian par-ents (used encouragement 33,3% and conversation 12,1%). Perhaps there is a need for more positive conversations as referred to in the study of Grusec &

Mammone (1995). Estonian families who have more economic problems have perhaps also developed models of surviving positively. On the other hand, children in both countries had social contacts and friends; Finnish chil-dren had more friends (59,3% in Finland had many friends, while 40,7% in Estonia had many friends). Estonian children also lived more often in closer connection with their grandparents, which gave them a more secure social network. According to Naomi Sankar-Leeuw (2002), parents of gifted chil-dren mentioned as beneficial additional information on raising a gifted child.

Firstly, they needed information on disciplinary techniques for coping with anger and high emotional rage, frustration and the child’s need for independ-ence. Secondly they needed information about learning styles, thought proc-esses, and types of intelligence needed to deal with a system which holds gifted children back.

All Finnish children watched TV at least one hour per day while 22,9%

of Estonian Children spent more than two hours with TV programs. Estonian children watched statistically more TV series and music programmes than Finnish children; they also liked to watch more full-length features and news than Finnish children, who watch more children’s programmes and children’s animated films. The motivational aspects of media as an environmental cata-lyst it would need more deeply research. When reporting children’s inter-views, some descriptions of media are reported.

According to parents’ descriptions and interviews with children, play was important for gifted children. According to parents, children in both countries enjoyed playing at home and outdoors. They also preferred older playmates although Estonian children preferred younger playmates (28,9%) more often than Finnish children. More than half of the Estonian children

were boys and this may be why Estonian parents more often describe car and computer games as favourite activities of their child. Finnish parents scribed more make-believe games while Estonian parents more often de-scribed games in which some rules are needed such as table games. It was interesting that many Finnish parents mentioned woods and nature in re-sponse to a question about the child’s favourite place to play.

According to the Finnish parents’ answers to the open-ended questions on the questionnaire all parents had noticed that their child had a special tal-ent. Most parents said that it manifested as quickness in learning new tasks and interest and ease to solve problems. Parents described their children as active and independent learners who constructed plays, games, little build-ings and all kind of constructions with their hands using different kinds of materials. As the most salient features in their child’s developmental history they mentioned that many of these children had learned to read and write independently. “At the age of 4 he called me with his father’s mobile phone.

He had selected the numbers by himself. He loved to look in the telephone catalogue and from there he learned numbers independently and he wrote them on all papers and napkins.” writes the mother of a Finnish 6-year-old boy. Parents also mentioned arts, and said their children shared an eagerness to paint, sing, dance and write. “He draws wonderful pictures, with messages and he even writes his own stories about them”, writes the mother of a 6-year-old Finnish boy. “She has a natural skill for using colours and forming shapes in a very personal way. At music play school she also started to play kantele and she was very eager to play it every day; she created her own melodies and independently made harmonies for familiar songs” writes the father of a 6-year-old Finnish girl. Parents also mentioned motivation and self confidence and said that children enjoy learning new tasks and are eager to participate in what adults are doing, learning or studying: “He always wants to participate in whatever I’m doing. He is more eager to solve prob-lems than I am; for example, if I’m repairing some machine, he helps and we both enjoy it.”

When parents were asked about their priorities regarding their child’s school environment and teaching, most of them mentioned a safe and motiva-tionally better learning environment. Some parents mentioned that they hoped the teacher would be friendly. They wanted quiet for working and they valued good, professional teaching. Many of them wished for a lot of arts and crafts in the curriculum of the first school years, while some of them hoped for foreign languages in the school program and at least so-called ‘language

showers’. Some parents mentioned that they hoped for good friends for their child: “I hope that the school climate is peaceful. I hope that they value new ideas and are given time to develop them. I hope that my child will find some good friends there” writes the mother of a 6-year-old Finnish girl. Parents were also asked what hopes they had for the future of their child. They wanted their children to be healthy and to grow into balanced adulthood, with good values like honesty or helpfulness. They hoped their children would have self-respect. Some of them mentioned that they wanted their children to be good citizens. “I really hope that he will grow to be a happy and balanced man, who would not have to face too many difficulties in his life, who, when older, would be grateful for his life and the things that he did.” writes the mother of a 6-year-old Finnish boy or “I wish for her a happy family life in the future and I hope that she could maintain her creativity and sensitivity. I hope that she will be loved and respected as she is and for whatever she wants to do.” writes the mother of a 6-year-old Finnish girl. Some parents had high hopes for their child’s future and they wished for them more than they had: “I want him to be healthy and to be able to struggle for his own way in this life. I want him to be more successful than I have been”, writes the father of a 6-year-old Finnish boy, who had had some health problems and perhaps, due to that, some unfilled hopes in his own life.