Another reason that friendships may be frustratingly difficult to form, however, is an amorphous but often pervasive characteristic of the gifted: intensity. As we know, gifted children often pursue intellectual interests with zeal, devouring information about even very obscure topics.
Gifted and talented children might behave in challenging ways because they question rules, feel frustrated or lack learning opportunities. You can tailor strategies to support children's behaviour, social and emotional needs.
High ability and/or gifted young people can find social situations very difficult. Intellectually they may be high-flyers, but socially and emotionally they often struggle to have positive and fulfilling relationships with their peers.
Gifted kids often have advanced intellectual skills that allow them to perform at high levels and solve complex problems. But this intelligence is not always accompanied by high social and emotional skills. Socially and emotionally, gifted kids often develop at the same rate or even slower than their peers.
Common social and emotional experiences for gifted children can reflect: differences in their abilities compared to same-age peers. tendencies toward introversion and perceived issues with social acceptance. conflicts or anxieties associated with their inner experiences of giftedness.
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.
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.
Negative Characteristics of a Gifted Child
Pretentious, shows off, or evokes their classmates: They may humiliate the people around them and show off because they can grasp things very quickly.
Smart people are more likely to be loners.
Smart people aren't strongly motivated by social acceptance and conformity like non-smart people are. Because of their interests and views on bigger ideas than the average person cares to think about, they don't seek out social validation because frankly, they don't need it.
In the absence of a formal diagnosis, individuals affected by Asperger syndrome may be perceived as simply absentminded, socially and physically awkward, or highly intelligent.
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.
Social skills don't come naturally to all kids, especially those with ADHD. Impulsive and hyperactive children often act in ways that make it hard to have friends. They can have trouble taking turns and controlling their anger when they don't get their way. Inattentive kids may act flighty or not know how to join in.
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.
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.
The term “gifted kid syndrome” is essentially this. It is every child who was raised with constant praise and higher-achieving than others when they were young. It is every child who grew up, found themselves amongst other high-achieving students, and failed to adapt.
Gifted children may be more likely to experience existential depression, as their minds tend to be more attuned to contemplating the big life and death issues facing the world.
High-IQ people often experience social isolation, which can lead to depression or make them act more introverted than is their nature.
Via The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One: Intelligent people, however, have a tendency to overapply their analytical and logical reasoning abilities derived from their general intelligence incorrectly to such evolutionarily familiar domains and, as a result, get things wrong.
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.
You've probably heard it before and brushed it off if you're a second, third or fourth+ child - but it's true: the eldest sibling is the smartest, according to research.
Many gifted children will start arguments using “why” questions. This argument usually begins with, “Why do I have to…?” It's important to define these types of arguments for your child at an earlier time for use later. The best time to have a discussion with your gifted child is before you are in a heated moment.
However, empirical research has not demonstrated that anxiety is a greater problem for gifted children than it is for children who are not gifted. In fact, there is empirical evidence that intellectually or academically gifted children experience lower levels of anxiety than their nongifted peers.
The most common mis-diagnoses are: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (OD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Mood Disorders such as Cyclothymic Disorder, Dysthymic Disorder, Depression, and Bi-Polar Disorder.
Anxiety among gifted students is controversial. Some studies showed that gifted children had lower anxiety scores than their non-gifted peers (15,16). For example, Guignard et al., (9) reported that gifted children display higher anxiety only when they did not have more perfectionism than their peers.