There are a lot of myths out there about gifted students. Today I want to highlight and debunk some of the most common ones we hear in the course of our work advocating for gifted kids.

Gifted Students Don’t Need Help

Gifted students have great potential, but they, like any other student, need guidance and support for it to be fully realized. Left without help, gifted students can become bored and unchallenged, leading to a dislike for school and low-achievement. The guidance of a teacher, parent, counselor or other supportive adult is crucial for the success of a gifted student.

Students with Learning Disabilities Cannot be Gifted

Some gifted students are twice-exceptional, meaning they also have learning disabilities, which makes it harder for their giftedness to be recognized. Most of these students have the problem of things at school being too hard or too easy and are often not served and challenged at the level they need. It is important for these students to both be challenged and receive help for their learning disability.

Gifted Students Always Get Good Grades

Gifted underachievers are a very real thing. Some students are bored and disengaged from being unchallenged in the classroom, therefore they stop really trying to get good grades. Other students spend so much time on academic pursuits unrelated to school that required work goes uncompleted. These students greatly benefit from the support of an adult to help break the cycle of underachievement.

Gifted Kids Excel in All Areas – Academic, Social and Emotional

Asynchronous Development, in which gifted kids develop academically, socially and emotionally at different levels, is one of the signature traits of gifted children. For example, a first grade student may be reading at a sixth grade level, but be communicating below the ideal for their age. This can sometimes lead to social struggles in school.

Teachers Love Having Gifted Students in the Classroom

It is often thought that gifted children are model students, but, in reality, they can be disruptive and have behavioral issues that frustrate their teacher. However, this can often be avoided when students are engaged, challenged and matched with a teacher who understands and enjoys gifted children.

All Gifted Kids are the Same

Gifted kids are just as varied and diverse as everyone else! They have a wide range of abilities and interests, as well as social and cultural backgrounds.

What myths about gifted students would you like to debunk?

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It’s a question almost every parent of a gifted child struggles with at some point: should my child skip a grade (or more)? For many gifted children, grade acceleration is beneficial. Students are placed in classes where they are truly challenged and with peers more on their intellectual level. But, for some children, skipping a grade can be harmful to their social and emotional development. Being away from age group peers and automatically viewed as the “whiz kid” has the potential to lead to bullying or other emotional damage.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. (Frustrating, I know.) However, there are some common pros and cons to guide you as you make the decision.

Pros

Academic Satisfaction
Several studies have shown that children who accelerate do not suffer academically. In fact, their grades are often higher than their peers who did not accelerate and on par with older students in their grade-level, according to SENG. Accelerated students also report increased interest in and enthusiasm for school, leading to a higher rate of academic satisfaction.

Community of Intellectual Peers
Several studies have noted that, when students are among intellectual peers, they feel better socially and perform better academically. Allowing a child to skip ahead places them in learning environments with students who, while not their age, are on par with them intellectually. This community is invaluable for all children, but can be particularly meaningful for gifted students who have never before experienced it.

Reduced Behavior Problems
Behavior teachers see as trouble-making is often boredom for the gifted student. These students spend up to 50% of their class time waiting for other students to catch up and grasp the material. As a result, they engage in activities to occupy their downtime, which can include distracting other students and disrupting lessons. However, when students feel challenged by academic material, they are less likely to cause problems in the classroom. Additionally, being appropriately challenged can help behavior later in life by building appropriate coping skills for encountering obstacles.

Cons

Emotional Unpreparedness
Since gifted children sometimes experience asynchronous development, they may be academically advanced but emotionally immature. If a child is already lagging behind their peers emotionally and socially, acceleration into an older age group could intensify the problem, especially if there are not many other accelerated students. While certainly not an issue for all gifted children, it’s important for parents to consider their child’s temperament and if they can handle the pressures of being the young kid in class.

Unexpected Challenges
Gifted kids who are being considered for acceleration are often used to being at the top of the class. When moving up, this may change and can present frustration for some students. Parents should prepare students for this ahead of time, support them as they adjust to the new environment and ensure them they are not a failure if other students are above them or the arrangement doesn’t work out.

Bullying
Bullying is an unfortunate reality in the modern school system, most notably for any child perceived as “different.”  Ken Newman, who skipped a grade in elementary school and went on to attend Cornell University at age 15, recounts being bullied in high school for being smaller and younger-looking than his classmates. This can be especially prevalent in middle school, where the differences of gifted kids are most likely to be noticed. Luckily, incidents like Newman’s are more outliers than the norm, but they still happen on occasion.

If skipping an entire grade isn’t ideal for your gifted student, there are other options.

“Skipping a grade isn’t the answer for every gifted student,” said Maureen Marron of the Connie Belin and Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development. “Acceleration means matching the curriculum to a student’s abilities. For one student, that may mean grade skipping; for another, it may mean acceleration in a single subject, like math; for other students, enrichment-based activities in the classroom are all they need.” Other acceleration options include starting kindergarten early, enrolling in high school AP courses or advancing to college.

At IEA, we believe every child has a unique set of needs, and whether or not grade acceleration is the right choice depends on the needs and personality of your child. And no one knows your child like you.

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This post is part of the Hoagies’ Gifted Blog Hop Grade Acceleration. Please click the image below to keep on hopping!

Linnea is a Certified Mindfulness Facilitator and a Mindfulness coach, teacher, and facilitator. She often teaches Mindfulness at the IEA Academy.

Those who spend time with, raise, teach, and care for young gifted people agree that these individuals are different from their peers in both wonderful and challenging ways. The stories are anecdotal but the research is clear: The gifted person’s experience of the world is quantitatively and qualitatively different from those we might describe as more “neuro-typical” in their development. If we take a moment to empathetically step into the shoes of a gifted child or teen, it is not difficult to understand the vulnerability of these young people as they grow and develop.

Mindfulness is a powerful tool that can be used to address a variety of the needs of gifted children on several different levels and in different areas of development. I’ll go into this in a bit more detail but, first, what is Mindfulness, and how can it help a gifted child as they grow, learn, and move out into the world?

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being in the present moment with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with “what is.” It is learning to gently and non-judgmentally guide your attention to the natural unfolding of your own human experience as it occurs – sensory, emotional, and mental – which grounds you in a more direct, and often joyful, experience of life. So, right away, we see that the practice of Mindfulness offers a level of self-acceptance and self-compassion that the world around a gifted child may not.

As parents and educators, we can do our best to find the right environments for gifted children to thrive but, oftentimes, we end up having to accept that there is no “perfect” place for them to grow and learn. The public education system in the U.S. is not designed to meet their needs – socially, emotionally, or intellectually. In addition, each gifted child is different, and the more gifted the child, the more difficult this search can become. So some of the tools in the gifted student’s tool kit must serve to help them become self-aware enough to accept their differences, advocate for themselves, be resilient in the face of adversity, reach out to others for help and companionship, and have compassion for and acceptance of themselves and others.  Mindfulness is one such tool that can help in all these areas.

Let’s look at some of the well-documented challenges that some gifted, particularly highly and profoundly gifted, youth can face and how Mindfulness addresses these.

1) Stress/Anxiety

Since gifted children are often asked to adapt to a world, culturally speaking, that they are out of sync with, stress levels can be higher for them from the get go, especially in unfamiliar situations. In addition, the gifted child often has very high expectations both for themselves and others that can lead to self-induced stress. Some gifted children also have an additional layer of what could be called “existential stress” whereby they become chronically worried about, for instance, global concerns like world hunger, war, or global warming.

In clinical studies, Mindfulness has been shown to actually reverse the brain patterns that are activated during biological stress. Mindfulness also helps the child become aware when unnecessary worry is taking place. Mindfulness gives gifted children and teens a “jump start” to begin recognizing when their thinking is driven by unsubstantiated fear and a vocabulary to describe the experience grounded in their physical body. In addition, the practice of Mindfulness itself has no “goal.” There is no one “right” way to do it and no measurement of success, thereby allowing the gifted child freedom from the potential inner tyranny of being “right” or “perfect” or “not disappointing anyone.”

2) Overexcitabilities/Intensity

Research has shown that we learn best in a relaxed and open state of being. Ironically, it can often be hard for gifted children to find a relaxed, open, receptive state. They tend to receive the world’s stimulus more intensely and have trouble filtering that stimulus. It is vital the gifted child have some way to return to a mind-body connection to ground his or her experience in the “here and now.” Mindfulness provides just such an anchor. As children begin to strengthen their attention and awareness in the moment, they have a visceral experience of “space” around their intense experiences. They can slowly begin to trust in their ability to “choose” their response when confronting overstimulation, rather than simply reacting to it. Mindfulness empowers them to come “home” to themselves.

3) Asynchronous Development in Executive Functioning

Many gifted children struggle with executive functioning tasks such as organization, study skills, and switching attention. According to a 2006 article published by the NIH, this appears to be attributed to a slower development of the cortex of the brain in certain areas of high IQ kids. The cortical layer starts out thinner and develops more slowly, while other areas of the gifted brain appear to be operating far more efficiently and effectively than their same age peers. And, don’t you know, Mindfulness has been shown to actually thicken the brain’s cortex! It also helps train one’s awareness of their attention, eventually giving a child or teen an increased ability to place their attention where they choose as opposed to operating on autopilot. This may be, in part, why researchers believe Mindfulness helps with ADD and other issues related to attention regulation.

4) Social Development

It is natural for everyone to have some feelings of anxiety in social situations, particularly new ones. However, if a gifted child or teen repeatedly has the experience of being misunderstood, negated or even ostracized, his or her social anxiety may increase over time. We all have the need for connection, love, and acceptance. It is wired into our human DNA. So how can Mindfulness help? First, it helps individuals become more emotionally resilient. As they begin to neutrally observe their own feelings, thoughts, and sensations, they learn about themselves. This learning gives them more perspective about situations they encounter. For instance, they may begin to recognize the internal warning signs that tell them a social situation is not right for them and ask for help to change it. If they feel rejected, they may be able to see that that person was not able to act with compassion instead of feeling they themselves are “unlikeable.” It may give a gifted teen the self-awareness to honor his or her authentic self instead of using a great deal of energy to “be funny” or “be popular” or “be pretty.”

Mindfulness does not take away our pain, emotional or physical, but it teaches us how to navigate it and to notice when we are adding to our struggles with stories like, “I am weird,” “No one likes me,” or “I guess this is because I’m gifted. I wish I were normal.” We create these stories, quite naturally, to understand our world and feel some sense of identity in it. But sometimes they no longer serve us, and Mindfulness can help us see this and open a compassionate space where once there was none. And, interestingly, in my personal experience of working with gifted children, it is that open, compassionate space where gifted children find self-love and the ability to share their authentic selves openly and joyfully with others.

Next Steps

So where can your child learn the practice? If you can find a Mindfulness class for your gifted child or teen, that will provide the best initial experience and a place to practice with others. Since the practice stresses non-judgment and compassion, a seasoned teacher should be able make sure that your child feels safe and welcome even if it is not a class for the gifted per se. Most of these classes do follow a structure, however, with some level of behavioral expectation. So if you child is not ready for this, there are also coaches like myself who will work to tailor at-home classes for your child and/or your family. For very young children, a kid’s yoga class is a great place to start. Yoga offers them an introduction to the mind-body awareness skill set they will use in their Mindfulness practice later on. Finally, a wonderful gift to offer any child is to learn the practice together. As a parent or teacher, I encourage you to take a class yourself, for adults or educators, and then re-teach from your own experience once you have a regular practice yourself. Because the practice is very individual in nature, it is this authentic teaching from one’s own experience that truly brings the practice to life.

Linnea is a regular Mindfulness teacher for IEA’s Academy, leads various Mindfulness classes in the LA area and consults and teaches privately.  She can be reached through her company website, www.amindfullifela.com,  and followed on Twitter at @LinneaPyne.

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Defining “Gifted”: Asynchronous Development

There are many definitions of giftedness, none of which are universally agreed upon. However, IEA advocates for this definition:

“Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.” – Columbus Group, 1991

Similar to how students can experience gaps in learning (for example, a student enrolled in calculus who is unable to solve basic geometry problems), children who develop asynchronously may experience “gaps” between their intellect and other parts of self. One such occurrence is found in learners who encounter psychomotor setbacks with coordination or writing skills, despite their deep intellectual capacity. Often, gifted learners experience frustration and a widening gap between their intellect and their social and emotional behavior. Because asynchrony often creates these developmental gaps, it is crucial to provide appropriate resources and opportunities that best identify, challenge, and assist each gifted child’s specific needs.

Overexcitabilities

Intellectual and emotional intensity is an extremely common characteristic in gifted children and adults. Children who feel things with great intensity experience the world in a different way. Gifted young people are often more aware of, stimulated by, and affected by their surroundings. Emotional or physical reactions to events can last longer than expected and are often replayed in the child’s mind. Kazimierz Dabrowski coined the term “overexcitabilities” to describe intensities in five domains: intellectual, imaginational, sensual, psychomotor, and emotional.

More than Achievement

It is a common myth that gifted children automatically perform well in traditional school environments.  Gifted children are not intrinsically motivated by good grades; they are more passionate about the acquisition of knowledge than performing rote tasks. This causes a problem when the school structure and grades rely on repetition and memorization. Bored, unchallenged students may disengage from the learning process, which can lead to underachievement or academic failure.

More than a Test Score

Though testing can be a helpful source of information to assess students’ abilities, it does not give a full picture of who the students are, what they care about, and what they are capable of accomplishing. Many factors, including learning disabilities and developmental asynchronies, can profoundly affect a student’s scores. It is important to look beyond GPAs and IQ scores when assessing a child’s gifts.

Feeding their Minds

Gifted students learn differently from their age mates: they learn at an accelerated pace; delve into topics of interest with greater complexity, scope, and depth; and approach learning from a more intuitive and sensitive point of view. They thrive on discovery for learning and the flexibility for exploration to feed their ravenous hunger for knowledge. Just as the human body needs nourishment to survive, the gifted child’s mind needs to be fed. When gifted kids are not learning, they often become anxious, worked up, and tired.

Highly gifted kids will typically change educational environments several times over the course of their K-12 education in an attempt to find the right accommodations or fit between the school system and the student. When a highly gifted child is successful in a single school system, it is often thanks to acceleration.

Acceleration is an extremely viable option for students who need additional challenge in the classroom. This can take several forms, including grade-skipping, single-subject acceleration, or classwork performed in more depth or at a quicker pace. Advanced online resources are also becoming a more viable option. If your child’s school will allow use of such resources, take them up on it.

Needs beyond the Academic

Gifted children are more than their minds. While intellectual challenges are necessary to keep one engaged, gifted children need more than intellectual stimulation to thrive. Along with advanced intellectual capacity, these individuals also have social, emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. Children with unusually advanced intellectual abilities are uniquely vulnerable to social and emotional challenges stemming from their asynchronous development, which can make it difficult to navigate a world that does not readily understand them.

Gifted students not only think differently, they feel different from their age-level peers. Children who are significantly different from the norm are in need of differentiated programs designed specifically to meet their unique needs.

Gifted children need intellectual peers and gifted peers. They notice differences between themselves and their classmates; they have different vocabulary, different interests, a deep passion for learning, and endless curiosity that they don’t see often in their age mates. This can be confusing to them, especially during the early years of school. It is important, therefore, for them to be with other gifted children and understand that they are not alone.

Understanding and acceptance of giftedness – and the unique joys and challenges that accompany it – is crucial during childhood and adolescence, as these are critical stages of development.

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This post is part of Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page’s August Blog Hop. Check out all of the other great blogs participating in Hoagies’ August Blog Hop!

Brianna has worked at IEA since 2011 and with gifted students since 2009. She graduated from Biola University with her BA in Humanities and English and is particularly interested in how literary art can inform issues in human psychology about how individuals conceive of themselves and make decisions. 

The word “normal” is often casually batted across the field of developmental psychology, and I shudder at the implicit limitations of such a word. Sure, “normal” is a practical point of reference for understanding how children grow, in what ways and at what ages. When used descriptively, it can be a useful tool for seeing general patterns of physical, cognitive, and emotional development. The harm seems to come when we choose, often without realizing, to see normative development through a prescriptive lens. To prescribe “normal” as the measure of a healthy, happy child may confine us to a definition too narrow to allow the perspective that each child is a unique instantiation of life, and therefore will develop in his or her own unique way.

For those parenting a child at either end of the bell curve, the normalcy lens can cause more trouble than not. Any parent of a gifted or special needs child (or in some cases, the twice-exceptional child) can attest to the fact that, if normal is the rule, their child is indeed the exception. For these parents, it can be a challenge to let go of normative expectations and accept their child’s distinctive development.

These variations from the norm can be hard to define. Gifted has often been conflated with achievement and accolade, with success being the primary identifier of a truly gifted child. This seems a narrow perspective, considering the thousands of underachieving and at-risk gifted students across America, to give one example. It also fails to account for the notion that gifted children don’t develop in a linear, synchronous way. Parents often speak of their gifted child embodying many ages at once, oscillating from an “old soul” to an emotional 3-year-old from one minute to the next. Imagine, for instance, the gifted child who spends her weekends learning computer languages like Java and C++ but who falls to pieces if asked to perform a repetitive task like copying vocabulary words ten times. How can we best define this simultaneous abundance and lack, which to us can appear so out of the norm?

In 1991, a group of gifted education specialists (both parents and professionals) came together to ask the question – “What is gifted?” They gathered in Columbus, Ohio, (giving them the name “Columbus Group”) to search for an answer to this deceptively simple question. One member, Stephanie Tolan, recalls: “…we agreed that in almost every way these children were out of sync with expectations, norms, and averages” (Off the Charts, 14). Indeed, the gifted child will no doubt disappoint or confuse the parent who prescribes to normative expectations.

From their discussion, the Columbus Group conceived of the concept “asynchrony” to describe the basic features of the gifted child. Their child-centered – not product or achievement centered – definition has been adopted by many gifted organizations (IEA included), schools, and educators as the most inclusive explanation of the gifted individual.

“Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally” (Columbus Group, 1991).

For young gifted people, the pressure for normalcy can easily sneak its way into their self-perception, either through internal or external influences, or both. Acceptance of their giftedness as an integral part of self is crucial during childhood and adolescence, as they are in the most critical stages of development. Asynchrony, not normalcy, should be the lens through which we understand the growing gifted individual, and should provide educators and parents alike a better framework for helping them to learn and grow into their best possible self.

If you are interested in learning more about asynchrony, I strongly recommend Off the Charts: Asynchrony and the Gifted Child. Among the contributors are IEA Senior Fellows, Dr. Michael Piechowski, Stephanie Tolan, and Dr. Patricia Gatto-Walden, as well as Yunasa Fellow, Dr. Shelagh Gallagher. We are honored to have an ongoing relationship with some of the most renowned experts in the field today. To learn more about it or order it online, please visit Royal Fireworks Press.

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1. Some definitions address the “asynchronous development” found in gifted kids. One such definition comes from the Columbus Group (1991):
   “Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.”
   This is the definition we use at IEA.
2. Through the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act – part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – the federal government currently defines gifted students as:
   “Students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.”
3. In Gifted Children: Myths and Realities, Ellen Winner defines giftedness with these three atypical characteristics:
   • Precocity – “They begin to take the first steps in the mastery of some domain at an earlier-than-average age. They also make more rapid progress in this domain than do ordinary children, because learning in the domain comes easily to them.”
   • An insistence on marching to their own drummer – “Gifted children not only learn faster than average or even bright children but also learn in a quantitatively different way.”
   • A rage to master – “Gifted children are intrinsically motivated to make sense of the domain in which they show precocity.”
4. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) defines giftedness as the following:
   “Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as an exceptional ability to reason and learn) or competence (documented performance or achievement in top 10% or rarer) in one or more domains. Domains include any structured area of activity with its own symbol system (e.g., mathematics, music, language) and/or set of sensorimotor skills (e.g., painting, dance, sports).”
5. Most states also have their own definition of “gifted” for program and funding purposes. To see your state’s definition, look here: http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/52/28/5228.htm. It is important to note that few districts differentiate between the different levels of giftedness. A child who scores in the 130 – 140 range on an IQ test is very different than the child who scores in the 150 – 180 range.

While no two definitions are the same, there are a few guiding principles which can help structure our thinking about giftedness.

• Annemarie Roeper, who developed the Annemarie Roeper Model of Qualitative Assessment, helps bring together many of the different theories with her conception that “giftedness is a greater awareness, a greater sensitivity, and a greater ability to understand and transform perceptions into intellectual and emotional experiences.”
• Some believe there are many areas of giftedness, not all of which are what we typically think of as intellectual. The following are six categories of giftedness to which experts and definitions often refer:
  1. General intellectual ability
  2. Specific academic ability
  3. Creative ability
  4. Leadership ability
  5. Visual and performing arts ability
  6. Psychomotor ability
• While some define giftedness based on IQ score, IQ tests do not always tell the whole story, and identifying solely based on IQ tests can ignore many kids considered gifted by other criteria.
• “Gifted” is not the only word that can be used to describe these incredibly bright and talented young people. (For an exploration of the various terms most often used, take a look at Stephanie Tolan’s post “What is in a Name?”) The word itself is not what is important. Neither, in many ways, is the definition. What is important is that we identify these highly able young people and help them reach their full intellectual and personal potential.
• Gifted children, no matter how you define or identify them, have different educational needs than their age-peers. Their education needs to allow them to grow with their unique intellectual development.

Due to the variety of definitions in the field, it is often more effective to use specific descriptions of your child’s abilities and insights. This may make it easier for others to understand your child’s needs.

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