Gifted and talented children might behave in challenging ways because they question rules, feel frustrated or lack learning opportunities. You can tailor strategies to support children's behaviour, social and emotional needs.
Self-Esteem Issues
Studies have shown that the more intellectually gifted a child is, the greater the risk of social difficulties and unhappiness. It's important to keep an eye on your child's self-esteem and work with her teacher and school counselor if she's really struggling.
nobody else seems to feel like this.” Emotionally intense gifted people often experience intense inner conflict, self-criticism, anxiety and feelings of inferiority. The medical community tends to see these conflicts as symptoms and labels gifted people neurotic.
They have emotional challenges.
Gifted children and adults have an intense inner world. They are hypervigilant to their environment and have a keen awareness of what others are doing, thinking, and feeling. As a result, they can pick up on things that others might miss and make connections more easily.
Gifted trauma stems from childhood issues with feeling like you don't belong anywhere because of your gift. Bullying, starving for mental stimulation, school mismatch, and other issues specific to the life experience of the gifted child may also contribute both to the main mental health issue and gift-specific trauma.
Gifted children may be under-stimulated or bored in typical social or education settings, [which] may result in behavior challenges like school refusal, tantrums, distractibility, or general acting out.
Social Skills
The problems gifted children sometimes face with socializing often stem from their asynchrony and educational setting. Asynchronous development, or uneven development, is often considered a core trait of giftedness.
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. High energy and alertness can become frustration.
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.
Signs of giftedness can appear as early as infancy and continue during the toddler and preschool years. Testing for giftedness and high IQ, however, usually takes place around age 5.
Giftedness, we learned, often comes with intense emotions, quirks, anxiety that manifests as anger, intelligence that can read as argumentative power struggles, and sensitivity to stimuli that can mimic processing disorders.
Just because gifted children are often emotionally sensitive and can be profoundly empathetic very early in their development does not mean they can always access that empathy, however.
A gifted child's IQ will fall within these ranges: Mildly gifted: 115 to 130. Moderately gifted: 130 to 145. Highly gifted: 145 to 160.
Many gifted children are strong-willed and, as gifted children perceive the world very differently than their parents, it often leads to confrontations.
Research reflects that giftedness does “run in families”: for a gifted child, their genetically-related relatives — siblings and/or parents — are likely to also be gifted, though there are plenty of exceptions.
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.
Although gifted children generally do well, they may show behaviors that mimic ADHD. For example, they may appear hyperactive because they ask many questions and are so excited about learning. Or, they may fail to participate in age-expected activities because of their over-focus on an area of interest.
In many ways, your gifted child is just like other children who want to do what they want to do when they want to do it. However, gifted children are incredibly determined. They have an advanced vocabulary and can argue their case like an experienced lawyer.
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.
Gifted kids are not naturally more defiant than typical learners. However, when they are, it's a sight to see (preferably from the duck-and-cover position). Many of the readers of this site are gifted adults, and friends, we're not always awesome at handling defiant kids.
Common Characteristics of Gifted Children:
Ability to comprehend material several grade levels above their age peers. Surprising emotional depth and sensitivity at a young age. Strong sense of curiosity. Enthusiastic about unique interests and topics.
The most common mis-diagnoses are: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (OD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Mood Disorders such as Cyclothymic Disorder, Dysthymic Disorder, Depression, and Bi-Polar Disorder.
Gifted children can be argumentative and/or manipulative. Even though a child might be able to present a logical or convincing argument, they still need boundaries and discipline around their behaviour else they learn that these undesirable behaviours get them what they want.