This can cause kids to feel “different” from their peers, leading to low social self-esteem. Low social self-esteem is not just a problem for gifted children, but it can manifest differently and more intensely in them.
The world doesn't always understand that a gifted person can suffer from the same difficulties as others. Low self-esteem, depression, difficulty making or keeping friends are all issues that can transfer from childhood to adulthood.
Strong sense of curiosity. Enthusiastic about unique interests and topics. Quirky or mature sense of humor. Creative problem solving and imaginative expression.
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.
Gifted, talented and creative adults face unique challenges, problems and difficulties while living their lives because of their high intelligence, overexcitabilities and multiple abilities. Gifted, Talented & Creative Adults need: multiple sources of stimulation for their curiosity, talents and abilities.
Gifted trauma stems from childhood issues with feeling like you don't belong anywhere because of your gift. Bullying, starving for mental stimulation, school mismatch, and other issues specific to the life experience of the gifted child may also contribute both to the main mental health issue and gift-specific trauma.
Your children may feel empathetic with others but others may reject them. The first trait can cause frustration and self-doubt; the second can cause sadness or confusion. Other aspects of giftedness can cause big emotional reactions that are hard to handle.
Those who are considered “gifted” are especially likely to experience depression, particularly existential depression, a type of depression that centers around thoughts about life, death, and meaninglessness as the name might suggest.
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.
The most commonly mentioned personality type found among the gifted was INFP.
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 can have trouble adapting socially.
Being gifted means having different psychosocial needs. Social development and social skills can occur differently in gifted students. Their social interaction with same-age peers may not align well during childhood and adolescence.
Giftedness has an emotional as well as intellectual component. 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.
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.
Gifted children can often lack age appropriate social skills; sometimes their interests are different from those of their peers; they may either feel themselves to be different or be made to feel different.
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.
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.
It is extremely difficult to find someone who truly gets you in this world when you are gifted or twice exceptional. Rarely finding someone with whom you can relate or who makes you feel understood, inevitably leads to loneliness. If you are identified as gifted you have a cohort of roughly 2% of the population.
Not every child displays intensity in all five, but it is understandable that gifted children who tend to have vivid imaginations, overanalyze, or over-empathize may be more likely to experience anxiety. In particular, OEs that lend themselves to catastrophic thinking may increase a child's risk of anxiety disorder.
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.
Although gifted children generally do well, they may show behaviors that mimic ADHD. For example, they may appear hyperactive because they ask many questions and are so excited about learning. Or, they may fail to participate in age-expected activities because of their over-focus on an area of interest.
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.