Emotions and emotional development: gifted and talented children. 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.
Many gifted children are highly sensitive individuals. 1 They may take things personally and become upset by words and deeds that other children may easily ignore or get over quickly.
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.
In the emotional domain, gifted children experience the frustration of an intellect that is miles ahead of their physical self and their educational setting. Furthermore, asynchrony can mean that gifted children may lack the emotional coping skills to process their big feelings and rich inner life.
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.
Become more aware of the characteristics, needs and issues of gifted children. They need help in “being different.” The lack of empathy and rejection by others, including adults and peers, is commonplace for many of these children.
Some say that gifted children are more prone to depression and suicide because of their heightened sensitivities, perfectionism, introversion, overachieving behaviors, existential concerns, and feeling like they don't fit in.
Signs of Giftedness in Children Include:
an insatiable curiosity, as demonstrated by endless questions and inquiries. ability to comprehend material several grade levels above their age peers. surprising emotional depth and sensitivity at a young age. enthusiastic about unique interests and topics.
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.
However, people who study and counsel gifted students say this is a potentially harmful misperception. These experts caution that while gifted children are not necessarily more at risk for low self-esteem than other children, their self-esteem issues are more likely to be overlooked.
IQ and other tests for giftedness are optimal around age 5.
Gifted children often struggle socially and emotionally. Social interactions are difficult and they don't always know how to behave or read cues from others.
Emotional intensity is positively correlated with intelligence and so the higher the intellectual level, the more emotionally intense a gift will be. Emotional intensity is expressed by the gifted through a wide range of feelings, attachments. Compassion, heightened s responsibility and scrupulous self-examination.
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.
Early and rapid learning - One of the most common characteristics of gifted students is their ability to learn things early and rapidly.
When the conditions listed above do not exist, gifted adults will also suffer greatly. They will most likely experience high levels of stress, anxiety, agitation, depression and depletion. Major bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts and feelings are also not uncommon.
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.
They may also have behavior problems because of frustration or boredom. Very bright children can be unusually strong willed, negotiate like lawyers, or use sarcasm to make a point. Sometimes, gifted children are disruptive in classrooms because they don't want to do what they consider busywork.
This is no surprise, due to the asynchronous development many gifted children experience, which causes them to develop at a different level socially than they do intellectually. This can cause kids to feel “different” from their peers, leading to low social self-esteem.
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 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.