While some gifted children may have a flair for the dramatic, that does not diminish the intensity of their emotions. These children may be experiencing what psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski called an emotional overexcitability. 2 That means that they actually do experience emotions more intensely than others.
If your child is gifted and talented, you might notice that they have very strong emotions, interests and opinions compared with other children their age. Sometimes gifted and talented children have trouble managing these strong feelings.
Because of their intellectual complexity, a gifted child can imagine a vast range of life scenarios that are unthinkable to the average child. They can and do feel with great intensity the emotions that are attached to each scenario and this can lead to them being overwhelmed by anxiety and fear.
Common Characteristics of Gifted Children:
Surprising emotional depth and sensitivity at a young age. Strong sense of curiosity. Enthusiastic about unique interests and topics. Quirky or mature sense of humor.
Signs of Giftedness in Children Include:
an ability to learn and process complex information rapidly. a need to explore subjects in surprising depth. an insatiable curiosity, as demonstrated by endless questions and inquiries. ability to comprehend material several grade levels above their age peers.
Social and Emotional Traits
They also can be perfectionistic, have high expectations of themselves and others, and have a well-developed, if not quirky, sense of humor. Gifted kids also tend to be intrinsically motivated, meaning they set goals and challenges for themselves rather than to get the approval of others.
Mildly gifted children learn faster than most of their same-age peers, know numbers and letters early, and are good talkers by age 3. Moderately gifted children love being read to at a very early age and know when to turn the page. By age 2, they know many letters and colors.
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.
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.
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.
They often attach so strongly that they become “clingy” and prone to loneliness. These qualities usually lead to conflicts if not properly understood.
Gifted children are challenging to parent in many ways. The more gifted the child, the more often it seems the more the parent is frustrated with the discrepancy of someone able to do school several levels above age level but unable to remember to take their finished work to school.
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.
"As many as one-third of gifted children may exhibit sensory processing disorder features, significantly impacting quality of life."
Giftedness falls into one or more of the following areas: intellectual, academic, creative, artistic and leadership.
One of the most common characteristics of gifted students is their ability to learn things early and rapidly. Many gifted students have excellent memorization skills, which aids in their ability to connect previous knowledge with new information, thus accelerating their acquisition of new concepts.
The eagerness in repeating the same task multiple times is not the characteristic of the gifted child.
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.
Ideally, gifted students require three components to maximize their potential: a safe and flexible learning environment, proper academic rigor, and dual focus on social-emotional learning.
Gifts become talents when they're developed and nurtured.
Many things influence whether a gifted child's natural ability becomes a talent. These things include family values, educational opportunities, personality and motivation, health and chance opportunities.
Signs your kid may be gifted
Keen observation, curiosity and tendency to ask questions. Ability to think abstractly, while showing signs of creativity and inventiveness. Early development of motor skills (e.g., balance, coordination and movement). Finds joy in discovering new interests or grasping new concepts.
The research shows that while children are born with the potential to be gifted, the environment and nurture plays an important role in developing those innate abilities. In fact, researchers estimate conservatively that environmental influences can add 20-40 points on measured intelligence.
In many cases, parents are the first to notice if their child is performing a little ahead of schedule in their development. Maybe the child learns to read or write faster than the kids around them, or maybe they just have an exceptional ability to learn new tasks.