According to the Davidson Institute, “the definition of gifted child burnout is chronic exhaustion that stems from a mismatch between the individual and their current educational environment.” In other words, this means that when a student becomes tired of dealing with pressures of perfectionism placed on them at a ...
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. Gifted kids may also experience burnout due to the unique sources of stress in their lives and the expectations that come with being gifted.”
Signs of Burnout in Gifted Students:
Student feels a sense of dread each day around going to school, clubs, or other activities. Student experiences more frequent anxiety or panic attacks. Student has change in sleeping and eating habits. Student feels overwhelmed or helpless by small setbacks.
IQ and other tests for giftedness are optimal around age 5.
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.
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.
"Gifted trauma" is the trauma that gifted people can experience if they feel ridiculed, ignored, rejected, misunderstood, out-of-place, left out or left behind, pressured to conform, or excessively groomed or exploited as a result of their unusual minds.
0.13% of the population is more than three standard deviations below the mean (IQ <55), and 0.13% of the population is more than three standard deviations above the mean (IQ 145-160). Thus, 13 out of 10,000 individuals score above 145 and are considered profoundly gifted.
Is Giftedness a Disability? Giftedness is not considered a disability, although some gifted students may also have learning disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, or autism disorder. These students are known as twice-exceptional students (also known as 2e children or students).
Intellectual giftedness doesn't go away. Instead, it influences development from infancy to old age.
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.
Former-gifted-child syndrome then develops; the child is so emotionally and physically exhausted that they don't wish to (and often don't) attempt to advance themselves as they once did.
Gifted children often wonder if they can keep up and what else will be expected of them. Those are the big four stress factors for gifted kids. Perfectionism, social problems, sensitivity, and outside pressures.
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.
A gifted child can lose interest because she is not challenged or motivated. Gifted children can be difficult to match with an appropriate class because, although they are cognitively ahead, they may be socially younger than their age peers, which can result in behavior problems.
Giftedness tends to run in families, so many of the traits that indicate giftedness are common among extended family members. Parents may see a sign of giftedness and consider it perfectly normal, average behavior if several family members have the same trait.
The highly gifted are rare in the population. Using IQ scores as a gross index to assess this rarity, those with IQ's of 150 and above occur about 5-7 times out of 10,000 persons.
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.
So when gifted children become gifted adults, they fear failure and are less likely to take risks. They may also maintain that sense of perfectionism, and as such, are never happy-- because who can be perfect, much less all the time?
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.
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.
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.