In today’s media and news, I feel like I hear more stories about the benefits of sharing emotions and discussing mental health than I ever did growing up. This is a wonderful thing and through popular media including television and movie portrayals and celebrity confessions, we are growing more accustomed to talking about historically taboo or just unknown topics surrounding emotions and mental health.

With great strides being made in these conversations, it seems important to discuss emotional intensity among our country’s brightest, and sometimes most vulnerable, youth.

The Davidson Institute has a great explanation for why gifted youth tend to experience more intense emotions, saying, “Intellectual complexity goes hand in hand with emotional depth. Just as gifted children’s thinking is more complex and has more depth than other children’s, so too are their emotions more complex and more intense.”

Gifted youth are often more aware of and affected by their surroundings. Children who feel things with great intensity experience the world in a different way than their non-gifted peers. Emotional or physical reactions to events can last longer for gifted children. These experiences of heightened stimulation observed in many gifted individuals are referred to as intensities or Overexcitabilities. Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski identified five overexcitabilities and their associated behaviors:

1. Psychomotor: Characterized primarily by high levels of energy
2. Sensual: Characterized by a heightened awareness of all five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing
3. Emotional: Characterized by extreme emotional sensitivity
4. Intellectual: Characterized by deep curiosity and thought
5. Imaginational: Characterized by vivid imagination and visualization

The first step in managing intense emotions is identifying and understanding them. If you think your child exhibits overexcitabilities, talk to your child about how they feel and react to certain situations. Healthy discussions around expressing emotions make everyone feel safer and more understood. Starting these discussions at a young age enforces good habits for the future.

How exactly do these overexcitabilities manifest themselves? It varies from child to child, but there are common behaviors associated with all five overexcitabilities.

• Psychomotor responses can include pacing, rapid talk or use of hand gestures
• Sensual responses can include sensitivities to clothing textures, food tastes or a need for physical displays of affection like cuddles or hugs
• Emotional responses can include intense feelings of empathy or compassion, depression, anxiety or loneliness
• Imaginational responses can include visualizations, use of metaphorical speech, dreaming or magical thinking
• Intellectual responses can include constant curiosity, deep thinking or a propensity towards solving puzzles and problems

Understanding what emotional intensities are and the behaviors associated with them can help with misdiagnosis or just plain misunderstanding. While some of the more extreme behaviors associated with overexcitabilities can be worrisome for a parent or educator, such as a child’s depression or anxiety, there can also be a wonderful bright side to overexcitabilities.

Some of the benefits of overexcitabilities can include:

• Empathy and compassion towards others
• A desire to solve major world problems
• Creativity
• A high sense of self-awareness
• Enthusiasm
• High energy

Intense emotions don’t always need to be feared or regulated. They are what make so many gifted children wonderfully unique. However, for the times that overintesities do need to be managed, here are some strategies:

• Meditation
• Yoga
• Outdoor physical activities such as going on walks, hikes or playing at a park
• Quiet reflection time
• Journaling or drawing
• Encourage discussions about how your child feels and why they feel the way they do

I hope this blog post helps with identifying and managing intense emotions in a gifted child. IEA’s Gifted Resource Center also hosts a list of books, articles, programs and professionals that can be used as additional sources of information about overexcitabilities.

Gifted kids spend a lot of time in their heads. They devote considerable energy to thinking, wondering, analyzing, drafting, problem-solving, inventing, calculating, composing, planning, investigating, comparing, contrasting, formulating, predicting…and so on. They have great practice living inside their heads and tend to naturally gravitate to these cognitive habits. Thus, gifted kids often view their minds as the central foundation of their identity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but an identity based solely on intellect is an incomplete one. It is imbalanced and neglects the truth that gifted kids are also emotional creatures who long for connection with others and to a sense of purpose. To attain more balance, gifted kids need the opportunity to quiet their minds and devote time and space to exercise their hearts.

Yunasa offers just that. This week-long summer camp allows the opportunity, time, and space for gifted kids to practice getting out of their heads and to value other aspects of the self. In its mission to develop the whole child, Yunasa emphasizes five aspects of self: the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual. These five domains are cultivated throughout the week, helping campers broaden their sense of self beyond intellect and integrate all five domains into a unified identity. After my visit to Yunasa West this June, I can confidently attest that this is a place where gifted kids learn to love themselves and find a sense of belonging among a community of peers.

At Yunasa, I observed intentional cultivation of each of these five aspects of self:

• The physical self is developed through traditional camp activities such as ropes courses, rappelling, kayaking, archery, and more. Campers are encouraged to tune in to their physical body through daily yoga or Tai Chi.
• The intellectual domain is nurtured through discussion of what it means to be gifted, learning about overexcitabilities, and other topics campers choose during workshops. Campers share their passions with one another and engage in stimulating conversation with camp Fellows, who are experts in gifted development and education.
• The emotional life of a gifted kid is celebrated at Yunasa. Campers have daily practice with guided visualization, breathwork and other tools to listen to and regulate their intense emotions. Fellows and camp counselors are closely attuned and responsive to the emotional needs of campers. Campers are encouraged to share their feelings with others in a safe, nonjudgmental, and supportive environment.
• The social benefit of being in community with other gifted kids is a powerful element of Yunasa. For many gifted learners, it is challenging to find a peer group and they feel isolated as they move through childhood and adolescence. There is psychological safety in being able to freely express oneself, knowing Yunasa is a place where gifted kids are valued for their idiosyncrasies. Campers connect with like-minded peers as well as with counselors and Fellows who get them and support them.
• The spiritual traditions that are incorporated into the week help campers connect to the natural world around them and to a sense of purpose. Native rituals, yoga practice, labyrinth meditation, and the spectacular beauty of the outdoor surroundings are all pathways for campers to open their heart and spirit to something bigger than themselves.

When I was at Yunasa West, I saw that the kids brought their complete selves to camp and there they had a chance to let it all out.  From belting out Disney songs at the campfire variety show to tenderly supporting a crying friend, from boisterous team spirit during Yunasa Olympics to mentoring a younger camper through homesickness, and from energetic dancing at the camp social to a caring resolution of a painful misunderstanding, I witnessed a sense of comfort among Yunasa campers. I witnessed a deep level of acceptance for one another and for oneself. I witnessed a strong and connected community. Yunasa provided the opportunity for each aspect of self to be valued, supported and celebrated.

The thing is, whether or not we intentionally cultivate these five domains of self, gifted kids already are whole people (and always have been). But they may not know this about themselves. As they tend to live in their heads, they may be taken aback when an emotional meltdown shows up out of the blue or when interpersonal conflict explodes in their face with no apparent warning. Even when attending primarily to the intellectual self, the other four domains still operate beneath the surface, responding to internal states, external environments, and important relationships. Just as a smartphone app running in the background still saps memory and energy, the unattended domains of self are still present and influential. For example, a gifted kid may always have that intense emotionality running in the background (and may be exhausted by it!) even when emotions are not readily apparent. Yunasa helps campers become aware of all five domains of self, to appreciate each one, and how to care for them all.

Yunasa helps gifted kids get out of their heads. My time at camp showed me how powerfully meaningful Yunasa can be. I saw campers grow in self-love, appreciation for emotions, and ability to forge deep interpersonal connections. It was truly an honor to share this time with Yunasa campers, counselors, staff, and Fellows, and to witness campers finding balance within themselves.

Samantha Outcalt works as the staff Psychologist at Sycamore School, a Preschool-8th-grade independent school in Indianapolis with a mission for serving gifted learners. There she directs a social-emotional wellness program, offers individual and group counseling to students, and provides consultation to teachers and parents. She can be reached at outcalt.samantha@sycamoreschool.org.

Click here to learn more about Yunasa. Be the first to know the Yunasa 2020 dates by signing up for IEA’s E-Newsletter. 

As part of the festivities, we will be honoring two groups instrumental to the founding of IEA.

IEA Senior Fellows

The Senior Fellows have years of experience working with gifted youth and shaping gifted discourse. Their expertise was crucial to the development of IEA through the research and implementation of the awarding winning Yunasa camps.  Their years of service as facilitators at Yunasa and advisors to IEA remain invaluable.

Dr. Patricia Gatto-Walden is a licensed psychologist who has worked holistically with thousands of gifted and profoundly gifted children, adolescents, and adults for more than 35 years. In her adjunct educational consulting practice, she has helped parents, educators, and administrators understand and accept the multifaceted inner world and needs of gifted individuals. Dr. Gatto-Walden additionally provides two-day comprehensive family retreats, entitled “educational consulting and family renewal,” which blend counseling and consulting services. She is a featured speaker at gifted conferences and educational workshops throughout the nation.

Michael M. Piechowski, Ph.D. is the author of Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright and Living with Intensity (with S. Daniels). Earning a PhD first in Molecular Biology and later in Counseling Psychology, he served as a faculty member at three universities and one small college. He has published extensively in the areas of emotional development, developmental potential of the gifted, and emotional and spiritual giftedness. He is one of the original designers of Yunasa. In 2016 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by SENG and the NAGC Global Awareness Network Annemarie Roeper Award.

Stephanie Tolan, M.A. is author of 27 books of fiction for children and young adults, including the Newbery Honor Award-winning novel Surviving the Applewhites and Applewhites at Wit’s End, Listen!, Welcome to the Ark, Flight of the Raven, and Ordinary Miracles. Her non-fiction writing includes Guiding the Gifted Child (co-author), Change Your Story, Change Your Life, and an article about highly gifted children that has been translated into more than 40 languages, “Is It a Cheetah?” She is a well-known lecturer and advocate for highly gifted young people.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has been a pivotal supporter of IEA since the organization’s inception. Their generosity has assisted IEA in its general operations, public policy efforts, and technology program.

In 2014, with generous support from Sarah D. Barder, The Bradley Foundation has continued to fund the  Caroline D. Bradley Scholarship initiative.  Since its inception in 2002, the program has awarded 293 high school students with merit based scholarships. These students are provided with the resources and guidance to find and attend an optimally-matched high school program that meets their unique intellectual and personal needs. This guidance and support continues throughout their high school careers.

Support from The Bradley Foundation has enabled IEA to serve thousands of gifted children over the years and continues to help us fight for a population very much in need of services.

Join the Celebration!

Join us on February 9th at our 20^th Anniversary Celebration, to be held at The Annandale Golf Club of Pasadena, and help show our appreciation for these and other exceptional advocates for gifted education.

To sponsor and/or purchase tickets or a program ad to the event, click here.

Overthinking. The irony in writing about this topic is that I kept overthinking it. What direction should I take? What tips should I offer? Where can I find the best research? What if my post doesn’t hold up against the others?

Overthinking, along with its siblings perfectionism and anxiety, is common in gifted kids. Psychology Today attributes this in part to overexcitabilities and the mind not being able to ever really turn off. Gifted kids also tend to have lots of channels in their brains, meaning more information to mull over and think about, easily leading to overthinking.

As a chronic overthinker, I wanted to explore the reasons behind overthinking, how it can hurt and what we can do to rein it in.

Why do we overthink?

Why does this happen in the first place? Why do our brains run wild? In an article published in Scientific American Mind entitled “Why We Worry,” science writer Victoria Stern did a deep dive into the causes behind chronic overthinking. In summary: it’s all about control.

“Chronic worriers operate under the misperception that their overthinking and attempts at controlling every situation allow them to problem-solve and plan for the future,” said Stern. “Instead their thought pattern hinders cognitive processing and also causes overstimulation of emotion- and fear-processing areas in the brain.”

Overthinking and worrying trick our brains into believing that we are preparing for any situation, that we can handle any outcome, positive or negative. In reality, while this may work in the short-term, it ultimately harms us.

Dr. Michael Stein, a psychologist based in Denver, attributes worry and overthinking to a fear of being uncertain about the future. When we experience this fear our brain jumps into “analysis mode” and starts beginning to prepare and think over every outcome. This thinking ignites our minds and creates a temporary comfort to deal with uncertainty.

The Problem of Overthinking

In addition to driving us bonkers, overthinking has negative effects on our mental and physical health.

A study from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology noted that overthinking can cause us to dwell on our mistakes and shortcomings, increasing the risk of mental health problems.  This can often cause the overthinker to fall into a viscous cycle of ruminating more and more while their mental health is declining.

Unsurprisingly, overthinking can also lead to emotional distress. To self-treat that distress, some overthinkiners resort to unhealthy coping strategies, like alcohol, food or addictive substances. It can also lead to a negative mood, anger and irritability. Overthinking can have physical effects, as well. Studies have linked overthinking to poor sleep quality, since the mind often won’t turn off even for sleep. It can also lead to an increased heart rate and other physical symptoms of stress.

How Do We Stop?

If only I knew! Breaking the habit of overthinking is difficult, but here are some strategies you can try.

• Take Action
  If you are a chronic overthinker, you probably have a tendency to get stuck in the “analysis” phase of a situation. Taking an initial step to solve the problem, even if it’s small, can help bust the overthinking cycle. For example, if you are overthinking about applying to college, start drafting an essay or working on your resume or even filling out a practice application. The act of doing something can get you out of your thoughts.
• Mindfulness
  Mindfulness takes practice, but has many benefits, especially for overthinkers. This meditation practice emphasizes focusing on the present moment, not the future or the past, which can help us disconnect from worry. Mindfulness has known to be beneficial for the gifted in calming intensities. Try bookending your practice with a quick calming yoga routine.
• Busy Yourself
  Sometimes simply redirecting your attention can do the trick to calm a busy mind. Absorb yourself in a hobby, whether that be exercise, crafting or playing with your family. Or get some household chores done to engage your attention elsewhere. Even getting lost in a book or movie (especially if it’s theme is disconnected from your worries) can help.
• Rename Your Thoughts
  Rename your thoughts with what they really are: self-doubt, anxiety, fear. This may help you to realize how much you are exaggerating your negative thoughts and bring your thinking down a level to really focus on the actual problem at hand.

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

The gifted brain is a unique place. In fact, it is so unique that many of the complexities of giftedness are still not fully understood. Still, there are some common quirks that have been identified as being associated with the gifted brain.

Overexcitabilities

Dambrowski identified five overexcitabilities that he believes are strongly connected to giftedness: intellectual, psychomotor, imaginative, sensual, and emotional. These overexcitabilities give gifted individuals some of their unique traits, but can also make it hard to function within a traditional classroom environment.

Psychologist Carrie Lynn Bailey noted in Overexcitabilities and Sensitivities: Implications of Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration for Counseling the Gifted:

“A challenge for gifted individuals is that they can often be viewed negatively, or pathologically, particularly in educational settings.”

So how do you deal with a gifted child with overexcitabilities? An article from the California Association of the Gifted suggests a combination of teaching stress management techniques, ensuring clear verbal and nonverbal communication skills and creating a comforting environment can help gifted children manage their overxcitabilites.

Social and Emotional Vulnerabilities

Many gifted children are very emotionally sensitive. A passing comment that may seem harmless to you can be crushing to a gifted child, who could internalize and overanalyze it. Because of their high-sensitivity, gifted children often perceive others to have a lower view of them than they actually do, leading to social issues, such as interacting and bonding with their peers and teachers.

The article “The dark side of being the ‘gifted’ kid”  highlights the extremes of gifted social and emotional issues. It notes that many gifted kids live in a world that doesn’t fully understand them, leading them to feel isolated and lonely. The author suggests gifted students should learn in environments that focus not just on their brains, but also the “fragility of their hearts”.

(Hoagie’s Gifted Education Page has a plethora of resources on the social and emotional lives of the gifted for further reading.)

Twice-Exceptional

Twice-exceptional children demonstrate both giftedness and a learning or emotional disability, making them the most under-identified group in today’s schools, according to the National Education Association. These students are often forced between choosing programs that serve their giftedness or their disability. Consequently, they are often underserved.

This “quirk” of the gifted is often difficult to diagnose even by professionals. SENG notes that even those in the gifted community have trouble imagining a gifted child with a learning disability. Luckily there is a growing awareness of 2e and, as a result, more resources available on serving these children.

If your child has been diagnosed as twice-exceptional or you expect they may be, the 2e Newsletter has some helpful tips for serving 2e students.

Although we still don’t understand everything about the gifted brain, identifying the quirks and giving students, parents and teachers the tools to deal with them is a win-win for everyone.

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Nicole LaChance graduated from Michigan State University with a B.A. in Journalism before moving West in pursuit of milder winters. Prior to joining the IEA team, she spent time working in marketing for an architecture firm and completed two years of national service in the AmeriCorps program. Over the past few years she has worked with nonprofits to communicate their message and impact to the world around them, work she is excited to continue at IEA. When not at the office, she enjoys reading, cooking, traveling wherever she can and making bad puns.

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

Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children and lives outside of San Francisco.

At my son’s kindergarten parent/teacher conference, his teacher played a game with my husband and me. She put 3 marbles on the table and asked us to close our eyes. When we opened them, we saw 2 marbles. She asked us how many she was holding in her hand. When we told her “one”, she repeated the game with 4 marbles.

Our son’s teacher told us she played this game with each student until the child no longer gave the correct answer. All the children in her class stopped at 10 marbles, except my son. She played with him until she had 20 marbles on the table. Then she stopped. She told us that he was clearly very good at math.
I left the meeting feeling proud of my son’s talent and satisfied with the teacher’s assessment. My husband wasn’t.

“Why didn’t she keep going until he gave the wrong answer?”

From that moment, “good at math” wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to know his limits. Then I wanted him to learn something new. Thus began my search for the perfect test: the one that would convince his teachers that he needed something different from the rest of the class.

I started with an IQ test. That was a terrible idea. I learned that he not only had exceptional perceptual reasoning abilities, but he also had excellent verbal abilities. When I shared this information with the principal, she was wary. What kind of parent gives her 5 year old child an IQ test? Clearly, I was one of “those” parents. I not only complicated my search, I acquired a label that would follow me throughout my son’s elementary school years.

The psychologist who administered the IQ test also gave him the Wide Range Achievement Test. His Reading and Arithmetic achievement scores placed him in 3rd Grade. I approached his 1st grade teacher with these scores and asked if she could give him 3rd grade level work. She was sympathetic to my request. She thought she could deliver an appropriate reading curriculum. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the resources to deliver a 3rd grade math curriculum in her class and the school would not allow him to sit in a 3rd grade classroom.

I decided to make alternate arrangements for math. I enrolled my son in an online math program through the Educational Program for Gifted Youth (“EPGY”). He worked on the computer at home and brought the homework assignments to school. Finally, I understood what my son knew because I saw it on the computer screen every day.

I remained optimistic when my son started 2nd grade. I gave up on the advanced reading curriculum, but I continued to advocate for accelerated math. I doubled my efforts. My son took the Sequential Test for Educational Progress (STEP) for mathematics computation. The test detailed scores in reading and whole numbers, fractions, decimals, percentages, denominate numbers and algebraic manipulation in math. He scored at a 5th grade level. Armed with the STEP results and the completed EPGY math curriculum, I tried again.

His 2nd grade teacher was hostile. Through her behavior and comments, she delivered two messages to my son. First, he is not as smart as he thinks he is. He may be good at adding, subtracting and multiplying numbers, but he didn’t understand math concepts. (Later, I would learn his conceptual math abilities are particularly strong.) Second, he needed to be quiet about his abilities, or risk being ostracized by the class. Given the teacher’s hostility to my son, I did not push acceleration. She allowed him to work on word problems independently, but that was all.

I brought out all the big guns in 3rd grade. I not only had him take a second STEP test for math, I contacted Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth for an Educational Evaluation. Two Ph.Ds wrote a 3 page Educational Evaluation that concluded: “To avoid repetition of material and the subsequent boredom and decrease in motivation, (my son) should be allowed to work on fourth grade-level math or higher.” The teachers refused. I gave up. We hired a tutor so he could learn new math concepts after school.

By 4th grade, I learned that no test was going to convince any teacher at our school that his math curriculum should be accelerated. I sat in a room with my husband, the principal, my son’s 4th grade teacher, copies of the California Education Code, the school district’s policies, and the book Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented, and I got mad. I got leaning-over-the table-finger-poking-red-faced-mad. My surprised husband (the reliably hot headed one) jumped into the fray and suggested that “we all step back and try to find some common ground.” It worked. We got the teacher to pre-test our son before each math lesson. If he demonstrated mastery, he was allowed to skip the lessons. We kept his tutor. When he tested out of a concept, he was allowed to work on the tutor’s assignments during class. In addition, the classroom teacher did not assign him any homework.

So, what did I learn from all of this? I learned that a good assessment (or several) can let you know what your child needs and give you the conviction to fight for it. I learned that no test will convince a teacher, not otherwise inclined, to deliver an accelerated curriculum if he or she lacks the resources or motivation. I learned that when nothing else works, righteous outrage sometimes is the catalyst to make things happen. I learned that to be productive, outrage must be coupled with a reasonable proposal. Most importantly, I learned that my son is the most accommodating child in the world to put up with all this nonsense.

What has your experience been with effectiveness of assessments in getting your children the accommodations they need? Please share with us in the comment section below.

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Children who feel things with great intensity experience the world in a different way. Gifted young people are often more aware, stimulated, 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.

Intensities can be characterized by:

• Extreme feelings: positive or negative feelings; complex emotions; connection with the feelings of others; grand laughter and tears
• Physical reaction to emotion: stomachaches and headaches; blushing; rise in body temperature
• Strong affective memory: re-living or re-feeling things long after the triggering event; nightmares; elaborate daydreams connected to actual events

Psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski studied the mental health of gifted youth and adults. He described the areas of heightened stimulation observed in gifted individuals as “overexcitabilites.” The five areas of overexcitabilites are:

1. Psychomotor: extreme physical activity and movement; rapid talk; pacing; use of hand gestures
2. Sensual: perceptiveness of sensory experiences; unusual awareness and enjoyment of sensation
3. Imaginational: clear visualizations; metaphorical speech; dreaming; magical thinking
4. Intellectual: need to question or analyze; delight in the abstract and theoretical; puzzle and problem solving
5. Emotional: intensity of feeling and relationships; natural empathy and compassion; susceptibility to depression, anxiety, or loneliness

Dr. Michael Piechowski, who studied alongside Dabroswski, has dedicated much of his life to researching the emotional and spiritual aspects of gifted children. In his book ‘Mellow Out,’ They Say. If Only I Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright, he stresses the need to “give voice to the emotional life of bright young people, to show how their intensities and sensitivities make them more alive, more creative, and more in love with the world and its wonders.”

Piechowski, along with other gifted experts, teaches gifted children a variety of techniques for coping with their overexcitabilities. For Caroline, this required her teachers, parents, and siblings to understand and embrace her overexcitabilities. At the same time, Caroline learned exercises to calm her senses and help her focus.

Guided imagery and meditation are excellent tools for those like Caroline learning to master their sensitivities. A good place to start is with a simple exercise. Have your child close his or her eyes, breathe deeply, and say with the breath,

“Breathing in I calm my body,
Breathing out, I smile.”

Learning to use the mind to control the body through exercises like this — along with overall awareness and understanding — is an important step in mastering intensities.

For more strategies, see our post 15 Strategies for Managing Your Gifted Child’s Intensities.

Does your child experience any of these overexcitabilities? What coping techniques have worked for you? Please share with us in the comment section below!

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We are excited to share this post as part of the New Zealand Gifted Awareness Week Blog Tour. Gifted children worldwide share many unique characteristics, including intensities. It is important for those who are in the lives of these gifted individuals to better understand these characteristics in order to help nurture and support their intellectual, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical growth.

Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children who lives outside of San Francisco.

I feel responsible to a number: my son’s IQ score. I’ve spent 9 years struggling with my relationship to it. I’ve gone from feeling absolved of any responsibility to taking full responsibility for what the number means for his future. Eventually, I found a peaceful place in which the number and I can coexist. I just needed to see his IQ score for what it is: an invitation to challenge my assumptions about what giftedness means and to educate myself about my son’s needs.

I received my son’s IQ score by accident. I shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, I hired a psychologist to have him assessed. She told me that she was going to give him a test to “see how he learns.” She was, after all, an expert, and I needed help. I had no idea that this was her euphemism for an IQ test.

I contacted the psychologist when my son was in kindergarten. He was multiplying and dividing large “defense” and “attack” points while “dueling” with his older brother during Yu-Gi-Oh games. At the same time, my son’s intense nature took a turn for the worse. He cried every day on the walk to school. The timing of these two events made me wonder if his mathematical talent was connected to the distress he experienced on the way to school. It seemed coincidental, but I wasn’t sure.

My husband and I talked about what to do. I thought he should be tested. I had no idea what he should be tested for, but I was sure that there was some sort of test that could help me better understand my son. My husband made a prophetic statement. He said, “Before you get him tested, you should know what you are going to do with the information.” I thought he was crazy. How could I know what to do before I got the results?

When I received the results, I still had no idea what to do with them. Everyone else, however, thought they knew exactly what they meant and what I should do. According to my friends, my son was “cream,” as in “the cream will rise to the top.” Homework would be easy, GPAs would be high, and I didn’t need to do anything. The teachers at my son’s public school seemed to agree with this assessment. Their idea of differentiating the curriculum for him required no work on their part. They assigned projects and expected my son to extend and enhance them on his own. I call this type of differentiation “smart kids will act smart.” He didn’t oblige, so I changed tactics.

I swung wildly to the other extreme and took full responsibility for ensuring that the promise indicated by the number was realized. We hired tutors and subscribed to online learning courses. We enrolled him in an independent school for gifted children. After all, if the IQ number represented my son’s ability, then a subpar GPA or SAT score would reflect an inadequate educational or family environment, right? This view of his IQ score fit my “middle child” sense of responsibility perfectly. It just wasn’t true.

The substantial resources we directed to my son’s education turned out to be money and time well spent, though not exactly for the reasons I expected. I was not guaranteeing excellence; I was addressing challenges. I needed to reevaluate my assumptions about my son’s education much the same way that parents with children who have learning differences need to adjust their expectations about their children’s needs.

It turns out that his emotional intensity is connected to his gifted intellect. His sensitivity to sensory stimulation exhausted him and made him irritable. His aptitude for pattern recognition caused him to overcomplicate simple tasks. His classmates’ reaction to his developmental asynchrony caused him to “dumb-down” his performance. When we changed his environment, he found peers who were similarly excited about learning and teachers who understood his occasional outbursts and celebrated his creative problem solving. He developed new passions and let some of his anxieties go.

With the help of organizations like the Institute for Educational Advancement that study and support gifted children, I learned about my son’s needs. I still get it wrong, and it’s those stories I like to share because I learn more from my failures than my successes. As part of the gifted community, I think it is our responsibility to share our stories so that we feel less isolated. So, I’ll start with this story, because I am, above all, very responsible.

What was your experience when you first found out your child is gifted? Please share with us in the comment section below!

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