Gifted brains also appear to be both more active and more efficient on a neuronal level. Research has shown gifted children to have increased cell production that in turn increases synaptic activity, adding up to more intense thought processes.
Gifted children seem to have a higher volume of grey matter in some regions of the brain that helps them compute information better than their peers. Grey matter comprises the frontal cortex as well as certain structures that affect thinking: Frontal lobes handle complex analysis and decision-making.
But being gifted means a lot more. It means a child's brain works differently – it's wired to absorb, master, and synthesize information more efficiently and effectively than an average person's.
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.
Ability to see things from a variety of perspectives
Gifted students often find unique ways to view a situation or problem. They use their creativity and abstract thinking skills to find unique perspectives and solutions to problems, even when there is an easier way to go about solving.
Gifted children often set very high standards for themselves and get frustrated when they can't meet them. This can sometimes result in tantrums and other difficult behaviour. It's great for your child to work towards high standards. But your child needs to understand that they can't have high standards for everything.
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. These students may be college age intellectually but still 12 in terms of their social skills.
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.
Most gifted kids can learn and process information faster than kids their age and comprehend material several grade levels above their peers. But they are not always well-behaved, high-achieving students. In fact, neuroscience experts say that giftedness looks different in each child.
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.
I want to emphasize that giftedness is one form of neurodiversity, and it is not exclusive. Many people have giftedness as one part of their neurodiversity experience, and they may also have other kinds of diagnoses, for example ADHD.
As a result of these special brain characteristics, gifted thinkers typically enjoy benefits including more vivid sensing, prodigious memory, greater fund of knowledge, more frequent and varied associations, and greater analytic ability.
People with higher psychometric intelligence have, on average, larger brains, and possibly faster neural conduction speed. A few small functional brain-scanning studies suggest that, in healthy individuals, people who are of higher IQ have lower cerebral metabolic rates during mentally active conditions.
It's often observed that gifted children benefit from a more accelerated pace of learning than most other children. While science supports this observation, it does so with some caveats.
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.
Kids designated as gifted have long been thought to be more at risk of emotional issues, and to carry some of them into adult life, because of various factors: the National Association for Gifted Children, for instance, identifies "heightened awareness, anxiety, perfectionism, stress, issues with peer relationships, ...
Raising a profoundly gifted child is no different. However, the types of challenges may be. Generally, these children require more intellectual stimulation, even as infants, than other children do, but most families are able to respond adequately to this need in babyhood and the toddler years.
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.
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.
While other forms of burnout might be tied to the workplace, or the emotional labor involved in care-taker roles, gifted child burnout is often tied to an educational system that the child finds repetitive, unrewarding, without autonomy, unfair, or not aligned with their values.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd)
Traits such as intensity, impatience, sensitivity, and high energy are common in children with ADHD, as well as in gifted children.
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.