They realize that they have a legitimate right to their own feelings as well as to their gifts. On that basis they develop empathy with the feelings of oth- ers. Their energies are free to develop their abilities for they recognize their positive as well as negative feelings as both normal and human.
“Take time to listen to children's ideas, opinions and feelings. Be non-judgmental: don't interrupt, moralize, distract or give advice. Appreciate their sensitivities, intensities and passions. Don't try to minimize their emotions because you feel uncomfortable with their pain.
Sensitivities and Overexcitabilities
Research has shown that gifted students experience heightened sensitivities and advanced emotional processing.
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.
Without understanding and support, gifted kids face an increased risk of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, along with social and academic problems. Currently, experts estimate that up to 1 in 50 gifted kids drop out of school, while many more fail to live up to their full academic potential.
These aspects may include heightened awareness, anxiety, perfectionism, stress, issues with peer relationships, and concerns with identity and fit.
Gifted adolescents have the cognitive capacity to understand the concepts of life, death and other issues, but that does not guarantee competent emotional and social awareness of the matters. They often feel different from their peers as their emotional maturity lags behind their cognitive abilities.
Highly gifted children often struggle to express this intensity and may either direct this energy inwardly, presenting as moodiness or anxiety, or direct this energy outwardly as tantrums or yelling and outbursts. Asynchrony is also closely linked to the gifted child's emotional development.
Gifted people are usually also highly sensitive and intense. They are more aware of subtleties; their brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. At their best, they can be exceptionally perceptive, intuitive, and keenly observant of the subtleties of the environment.
Gifted children are as sensitive as they are smart. Their feelings are intense. Social-emotional development will mirror intellectual development. So a gifted child with an IQ in the 98-plus percentile will be very sensitive to other people.
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.
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 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.
They tend to be especially perceptive in picking up on environmental cues, so they may be more sensitive to issues in the world and judgments from others. They also often feel overloaded and overwhelmed by information. Gifted students can be very hard on themselves as they strive for high standards.
The parents reported that gifted children have higher energy levels than their peers (29). The unique characteristics of giftedness may prone them to anxiety.
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.
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.
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.
Empathy in gifted children
Gifted children, characterized often by heightened emotional sensitivity, are often highly empathetic, as well. In fact, their empathy may seem overly present in their experience of the world, as any parent whose child has burst into tears about a dead bug on the sidewalk can tell you.
7. What effect does a highly gifted child have on the rest of the family? Highly gifted children are often more intense, more demanding, and more expensive to raise than other children! They may need more challenging academic courses at an earlier age.
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.
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.
Gifted adults have normal feelings of anxiety, inadequacies and personal needs. They struggle to have these needs met and taken care of just like all human beings do. Gifted adults are often confronted with the problem of having too many abilities in too many areas in which they would like to work, discover and excel.