When the conditions listed above do not exist,
They can have trouble adapting socially.
Being gifted means having different psychosocial needs. Social development and social skills can occur differently in gifted students. Their social interaction with same-age peers may not align well during childhood and adolescence.
Your children may feel empathetic with others but others may reject them. The first trait can cause frustration and self-doubt; the second can cause sadness or confusion. Other aspects of giftedness can cause big emotional reactions that are hard to handle.
Self-Esteem Issues
Being gifted academically can make a child feel different from her peers and may even lead to the child being bullied and becoming depressed. Studies have shown that the more intellectually gifted a child is, the greater the risk of social difficulties and unhappiness.
Both giftedness and autism fall on a spectrum, so while there may be individuals who clearly fit into one box or another, some behaviors might be more ambiguous and require additional information, context, or professional opinions.
While gifted children may not be any more susceptible to mental health issues as other adolescents, there are certain aspects of giftedness that may influence or amplify a gifted child's experience of mental health issues.
Those who are considered “gifted” are especially likely to experience depression, particularly existential depression, a type of depression that centers around thoughts about life, death, and meaninglessness as the name might suggest.
Gifted adults have normal feelings of anxiety, inadequacies and personal needs. They struggle to have these needs met and taken care of just like all human beings do. Gifted adults are often confronted with the problem of having too many abilities in too many areas in which they would like to work, discover and excel.
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.
Making friends is often fraught for gifted children. They may find it difficult to find friends in a typical school environment or extracurricular activity. The more gifted they are, the more difficult it may be for them to find social connection with other children their age, and understandably so.
They like to learn new things, are willing to examine the unusual, and are highly inquisitive. They tackle tasks and problems in a well-organized, goal-directed, and efficient manner. They exhibit an intrinsic motivation to learn, find out, or explore and are often very persistent.
External Pressures
High demands from otherwise well-meaning adults can serve as a great source of anxiety. Gifted children often wonder if they can keep up and what else will be expected of them. Those are the big four stress factors for gifted kids. Perfectionism, social problems, sensitivity, and outside pressures.
In general, gifted children and adults tend to: Stand-out intellectually, with sophisticated thinking styles that integrate generalizations and complexity. Learn quickly and deeply (and do not need as much practice) Be independent thinkers, who do not automatically accept decisions.
Even though the gifted are no more susceptible to mental illness than anyone else, some gifted children and teens struggle with overthinking, worry, or cautious alertness. Their nervous system seems wired for heightened reactivity. For some, obsessive thinking transitions into anxiety.
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.
Gifted persons are more likely to make sense out of their intellectual experiences than the average person. Another important difference is in the desire to know complex ideas. Average persons have less desire to know ideas for their own sake.
Common social and emotional experiences for gifted children can reflect: differences in their abilities compared to same-age peers. tendencies toward introversion and perceived issues with social acceptance. conflicts or anxieties associated with their inner experiences of giftedness.
About 70% of autistic people have an intellectual disability, which means they have an IQ lower than 70. The remaining 30% have intelligence that ranges from average to gifted. Autism and intelligence are two separate characteristics. A person can be autistic with any level of intelligence.
Not every child displays intensity in all five, but it is understandable that gifted children who tend to have vivid imaginations, overanalyze, or over-empathize may be more likely to experience anxiety. In particular, OEs that lend themselves to catastrophic thinking may increase a child's risk of anxiety disorder.
ADHD AND GIFTEDNESS are sometimes described as having the same or similar characteristics. However, one diagnosis is considered a disability and one, a gift. Neither assumption is ideal in supporting the child identified with either ADHD, giftedness, or both, often referred to as twice exceptional or 2e.
The Disorder
There is no doubt that a gifted child can have Asperger's Disorder and that this combination has a profound impact on both social interactions and schooling (Amend & Schuler, 2004; Cash, 1999; Neihart, 2000).
The difference is that the gifted child may be more selective and able to filter out and discard certain sources of information whereas the child with Asperger's will not (Cash). The child with Asperger's will simply memorize everything there is to know about a cer- tain and sometimes bizarre topic.