Gifted students are outstanding learners who are not usually considered at risk of academic failure or problems. However, gifted students can still underachieve. There are risks related to the student's giftedness.
Research has shown that gifted students experience heightened sensitivities and advanced emotional processing. These abilities are often put within the framework of Dabrowski's concept of overexcitabilities, which describes the heightened sensitivity and intensity for gifted children in 5 key areas.
A gifted child can lose interest because she is not challenged or motivated. Gifted children can be difficult to match with an appropriate class because, although they are cognitively ahead, they may be socially younger than their age peers, which can result in behavior problems.
Academically gifted students are bored with the curriculum content which does not meet individual needs. Underachieving is a learned habit that gets more difficult to break as time goes on.
Long attention span: Gifted kids frequently have a longer attention span than their age peers. On the other hand, they might have issues with attention and focus. Those children are called twice-exceptional or 2e kids. Sensitivity: Both emotional and tactile sensitivity are common among gifted children.
Many gifted children may exceed the academic ability of their peers, but lack other basic skills. For instance, a student may be able to multiply, divide, and tell time early on, but struggle to tie their shoes, ride a bike, or remember to bring their backpack to school.
Gifted children often struggle socially and emotionally. Social interactions are difficult and they don't always know how to behave or read cues from others.
While gifted children are able to learn easily and with greater ardor, they often do not excel if they lack a challenging and stimulating environment. If a gifted child loses the motivation to learn, “he or she may not do well in school, although achievement test scores will usually remain high.”
In Genius Denied, the Davidsons describe the “quiet crisis” in education: gifted students spending their days in classrooms learning little beyond how to cope with boredom as they “relearn” material they've already mastered years before. This lack of challenge leads to frustration, underachievement, and even failure.
The Gifted Child's Struggle
Giftedness can create problems and conflicts; being a gifted child can also mean difficulty socializing with age peers, thinking styles that don't always mesh well with the demands from the environment, even children who see themselves as little adults, challenging teachers and parents.
Gifted children will only achieve true success if they enjoy the area of their natural talent, choose to pursue their talent, develop the skills necessary to maximize their gifts, and make every effort to fully realize their abilities.
When researchers compared a control group of gifted students who didn't skip a grade to those who did, the grade-skippers were 60% more likely to earn patents and doctorates and more than twice as likely to get a Ph. D.
Some of the most common problem areas for gifted children include the following: Sensitivities and Overexcitabilities. Social Skills. Perfectionism.
Signs of Burnout in Gifted Students:
Student feels a sense of dread each day around going to school, clubs, or other activities. Student experiences more frequent anxiety or panic attacks. Student has change in sleeping and eating habits. Student feels overwhelmed or helpless by small setbacks.
Despite their astonishing intellect, gifted children can display a surprising level of immaturity at times. They may melt down at the most inopportune moment, embarrass you with their lack of social skills (often due to asynchronous development), and refuse to use that logic you know they possess.
Become more aware of the characteristics, needs and issues of gifted children. They need help in “being different.” The lack of empathy and rejection by others, including adults and peers, is commonplace for many of these children.
So when gifted children become gifted adults, they fear failure and are less likely to take risks. They may also maintain that sense of perfectionism, and as such, are never happy-- because who can be perfect, much less all the time?
According to the Davidson Institute, “the definition of gifted child burnout is chronic exhaustion that stems from a mismatch between the individual and their current educational environment.” In other words, this means that when a student becomes tired of dealing with pressures of perfectionism placed on them at a ...
IQ and other tests for giftedness are optimal around age 5.
Gifted children are born with above-average natural abilities. Talented children have developed their natural abilities to a high level. Children can be gifted and/or talented in many areas, including sport, art, music, intellectual ability and more.
Gifted children tend to be very strong-willed and determined. They may become very frustrated when they are prevented from doing something that they want to do.
The research shows that while children are born with the potential to be gifted, the environment and nurture plays an important role in developing those innate abilities. In fact, researchers estimate conservatively that environmental influences can add 20-40 points on measured intelligence.
Signs of Giftedness in Children Include:
an insatiable curiosity, as demonstrated by endless questions and inquiries. ability to comprehend material several grade levels above their age peers. surprising emotional depth and sensitivity at a young age. enthusiastic about unique interests and topics.
It is extremely difficult to find someone who truly gets you in this world when you are gifted or twice exceptional. Rarely finding someone with whom you can relate or who makes you feel understood, inevitably leads to loneliness. If you are identified as gifted you have a cohort of roughly 2% of the population.