FUCK YEAH GIFTED!!!

Baby Jay From The Bay: Emotional Sensitivity, Giftedness, & Intelligence pt. 1

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Emotional Sensitivities

One of the key psychological characteristics of giftedness is a phenomenon known as “asynchronous development”, in other words a child’s emotional maturity is way out of kilter with his or her intellectual ability, leading to heightened emotional and sensory sensitivities. For example, a gifted 7 year old may have the intellectual ability of a 17 year old, yet have the emotional sensitivity of a four year old. And, the higher the child’s IQ, the greater the asynchrony. The greater the asynchrony, the greater the potential for behavioural and social/emotional problems. This asynchrony can have devastating effects for a child who is struggling to fit in at school with both his teachers and peers and be a terrible source of concern for parents who are unfamiliar with this important aspect of giftedness.

As a result exceptionally able and twice exceptional children often experience extreme levels of sensitivity. This is made all the more difficult in that few teachers have had formal training in gifted education as part of their primary degree, so that supporting these children in the classroom can be problematic. Often these children remain unidentified as exceptionally able and can be labelled disruptive. Instead of excelling, they can end up significantly underachieving or even dropping out of the school system altogether.

Parents, in particular, struggling to help what may appear as an “overly sensitive” child, are worried sick - does he have Aspergers? Has she Adhd? With few professionals in this country with a background in gifted assessment there is a real danger of misdiagnosis. The sensitivity issues which are characteristic of the exceptionally able can sometimes mimic autistic spectrum disorders and it’s important that those professionals involved in assessment have the knowledge and experience to be able to distinguish between the two. According to this article on SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted):

“Many gifted and talented children (and adults) are being mis-diagnosed by psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other health care professionals. 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. These common mis-diagnoses stem from an ignorance among professionals about specific social and emotional characteristics of gifted children which are then mistakenly assumed by these professionals to be signs of pathology.

In some situations where gifted children have received a correct diagnosis, giftedness is still a factor that must be considered in treatment, and should really generate a dual diagnosis. For example, existential depression or learning disability, when present in gifted children or adults, requires a different approach because new dimensions are added by the giftedness component. Yet the giftedness component typically is overlooked due to the lack of training and understanding by health care professionals (Webb & Kleine, 1993). “

Source: “Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, bipolar, OCD, Asperger’s, depression, and other disorders” (2004) Scottsdale: Great Potential Press
Author: James T. Webb, Edward R. Amend, Nadia E. Webb, Jean Goerss, Paul Beljan, F. Richard Olenchak

For more discussion and information on this topic, particularly around possible misdiagnosis of Aspergers please consult Counseling, Multiple Exceptionality, and Psychological Issues by Edward R. Amend, Psy.D.

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What Are The Social-Emotional Needs Of Gifted Children? By James T. Webb

To a large degree, the needs of gifted children are the same as those of other children. The same developmental stages occur, though often at a younger age (Webb & Kleine, 1993). Gifted children may face the same potentially limiting problems, such as family poverty, substance abuse, or alcoholism. Some needs and problems, however, appear more often among gifted children.

Types Of Problems

It is helpful to conceptualize needs of gifted children in terms of those that arise because of the interaction with the environmental setting (e.g., family, school, or cultural milieu) and those that arise internally because of the very characteristics of the gifted child.

Several intellectual and personality attributes characterize gifted children and should be noted at the outset. These characteristics may be strengths, but potential problems also may be associated with them (Clark, 1992; Seagoe, 1974).

Some particularly common characteristics are shown in the table.

Possible Problems That May Be Associated With Characteristic Strengths Of Gifted Children

STRENGTHS

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS

Acquires/retains information quickly.

Impatient with others; dislikes basic routine.

Inquisitive; searches for significance.

Asks embarrassing questions; excessive in interests.

Intrinsic motivation.

Strong-willed; resists direction.

Enjoys problem-solving; able to conceptualize, questions teaching procedures.

abstract, synthesize.

Resists routine practice; Seeks cause-effect relations.

Dislikes unclear/illogical areas (e.g., traditions or feelings).

Emphasizes truth, equity,and fair play.

Worries about humanitarian concerns.

Seeks to organize things and people.

Constructs complicated rules; often seen as bossy.

Large facile vocabulary; advanced, broad information.

May use words to manipulate; bored with school and age-peers.

High expectations of self and others.

Intolerant, perfectionistic; may become depressed.

Creative/inventive; likes new ways of doing things.

May be seen as disruptive and out of step.

Intense concentration;long attention span and persistence in areas of interest.

Neglects duties or people during periods of focus; resists interruption; stubbornness.

Sensitivity, empathy; desire to be accepted by others.

Sensitivity to criticism or peer rejection.

High energy, alertness,eagerness.

Frustration with inactivity; may be seen as hyperactive.

Independent; prefers individualized work; reliant input; nonconformity.

May reject parent or peer on self.

Diverse interests and abilities; versatility

May appear disorganized or scattered; frustrated over lack of time.

Strong sense of humor.

Peers may misunderstand humor; may become “class clown”for attention.

Adapted from Clark (1992) and Seagoe (1974).

Sword, L.
Gifted and Creative Services, Australia

This article by Leslie Sword examines the emotional intensity of gifted children in terms of the overexcitabilities that are a component of Dabrowski’s theory of emotional development. Descriptions of emotional intensity are given together with examples of behaviour associated with emotional intensity that are often mistakenly perceived as emotional immaturity. It concludes that emotional intensity in the gifted is essential to the learning process and that gifted children need understanding and support to accept their rich inner experiences and value emotional intensity as a strength.

Abstract
This paper examines the emotional intensity of gifted children in terms of the Overexcitabilities that are a component of Dabrowski’s theory of emotional development. Descriptions of emotional intensity are given together with examples of behaviour associated with emotional intensity that are often mistakenly perceived as emotional immaturity. It concludes that emotional intensity in the gifted is essential to the learning process and that gifted children need adult understanding and support to accept their rich inner experiences and value emotional intensity as a strength.

Introduction

I am a very misunderstood person…People think that my life is easy because I am talented but I have a lot of problems of my own just because of these talents. I often get cut down for something good that I do. This is very hard to cope with. I am a very sensitive and emotional person. I get angered or saddened very easily. I can also get happy easily. I think I like this part of me. All these emotions make me feel good about myself…I am not a very confident person, though people think I am. (Male age 16; Piechowski 1998)

In the field of gifted education it is often not well known that giftedness has an emotional as well as a cognitive substructure: cognitive complexity gives rise to emotional depth. Gifted children not only think differently from their peers, they also feel differently. Michael Piechowski explains this difference in feeling as intensity; an expanded field of subjective experience. “Intensity, in particular, must be understood as a qualitatively distinct characteristic. It is not a matter of degree but of a different quality of experiencing: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding-a way of being quiveringly alive”. (cited in Silverman, 1993. p. 3)

The Overexcitabilities
Emotional intensity can be understood as a positive characteristic for gifted children in the context of Dabrowski’s theory of Emotional Development. Emotional development proceeds as a function of the interaction between the individual’s developmental potential and environment. Developmental potential is constituted of a person’s talents, intelligence, five forms of psychic overexcitability and the capacity for inner transformation. (Dabrowski 1972; Piechowski 1979)

Overexcitability (expanded awareness and a heightened capacity to respond to stimuli of various types) is a translation from a Polish term which means the capacity to be superstimulated. The term overexcitability was chosen to convey the idea that the stimulation is well beyond the common and average in intensity and duration. The difference in intensity and sensitivity is not only greater than normal, it is also a difference in the very quality of experiencing. Overexcitabilities can be thought of as an abundance of physical, sensual, creative, intellectual and emotional energy that can result in creative endeavours as well as advanced emotional and ethical development in adulthood. As such, they are a positive force for the gifted, as they feed, enrich, empower and amplify talent. (Piechowski 1999)

Overexcitabilities are assumed to be innate and appear in five forms:

Psychomotor - surplus of energy, restless, curious
Sensual - sensory and aesthetic pleasure
Intellectual - strong signs of analysis and synthesis, theoretical thinking, probing questions, learning, problem solving
Imaginational - vivid fantasy life, spontaneous imagery, sensitive to imaginary realities
Emotional - intensity of feeling:, complex emotions and feelings, extremes of emotion, sensitivity, identification with the feelings of others, difficulty adjusting to change. (Dabrowski 1972; Piechowski, cited in Silverman, 1993)

Emotional Overexcitability
High levels of Emotional Overexcitability are exhibited by gifted children, adolescents and adults as the capacity for emotional depth. The depth and intensity of emotional life are expressed by the gifted through a wide range of feelings, attachments. compassion, heightened sense of responsibility and scrupulous self-examination. While these are normal for the gifted and appear very early in gifted children, they are often misunderstood as signs of emotional immaturity rather than as evidence of a rich inner life. (Piechowski & Colangelo 1984)

Table 1: Forms And Expression Of Emotional Intensity.

Intensity of feeling: positive feelings, negative feelings, extremes of emotion, complex emotions, identification with others’ feelings, laughing and crying together

Somatic (bodily) expression: tense stomach, sinking heart, blushing, flushing

Inhibition: timidity, shyness

Strong affective memory

Fears and anxieties, feelings of guilt

Concerns with death, depressive and suicidal moods

Relationship feelings: emotional ties and attachments, concern for others (empathy), sensitivity in relationships, attachment to animals, difficulty in adjusting to new environments, loneliness, conflicts with others over depth of relationship

Feelings toward self: self-evaluation and self-judgment, feelings of inadequacy and inferiority

(Piechowski 1979)

Emotional Intensity

Descriptions of emotional intensity experienced by gifted people include the following:

flooded by unexpected waves of joy

a feeling of being incredibly alive

so happy that I want to laugh and cry or be silent and shout all at the same time

beautiful music or the beauty of nature can move me to tears

        even the greatest pain has been ecstatic and full of life.

These same people describe their inner experiences of emotional intensity as:

moments of disequilibrium and estrangement

the familiar suddenly feels alien

feelings of unreality

intense feelings of difference

rapid shifts in perspective

dissatisfaction with self

inner turmoil

feeling of being overwhelmed

despair. (Piechowski 1998)

I am often overwhelmed by emotion. At these times I feel the need to cry and not control it, to sit in it and make sense of it. This emotional intensity is a strength that supports my personal growth. (female adult)

Sometimes my feelings are so strong that my heart races, my chest feels tight and I can’t catch my breath. (male adolescent)

Whenever I am called on in class a tide of red rises up and ungulfs my face. It burns so much that I am sure everyone can see it.(female age 10)

When I kill a fly or an ant or any other insect, I suddenly get a feeling like “should I have done that? That’s really like going and killing a human being. I bet the animals have their own life, feelings. They must because they are really intelligent”. The next time a fly gets in the way, I’ll just let it go because I feel guilty. (female age 13, from Michael Piechowski’s collection)

Sometimes the beauty of trees flowering or birds singing fills me with awe and I just stand there not able to move. (female age 12)

Two boys were fighting in the school ground and I burst into tears. I couldn’t stand to feel their pain and cruelty. The other children called me a baby and a wimp. The teacher told me to act my age. (male age 9)

I pick up other people’s feelings. I don’t know how I do this. It’s like being hit by a bag of sand on a rope. It’s like walking into someone else’s life. I am overwhelmed by these feelings. (male age 14)

Sometimes I am completely in touch with a person. It’s weird and compelling at the same time. I just want to reach out to them. I don’t even have to have spoken to them. (female age 18)

I was in class and a wasp flew in the window. The others were frightened and the teacher chased it and killed it. It took a long time to die. I could feel its pain inside me and I cried and shouted at them all at the same time. Nobody understood…to them it was just a wasp. (female age 14)

I am a person who has feelings…I have friends. I love life… NOTE: I HAVE FEELINGS. (female age 12)

Emotional Immaturity or Emotional Intensity?
Michael was 4 years old when his mother took him to see the movie “Charlotte’s Web”. He left the theatre sobbing uncontrollably because the spider had died, leaving her children alone in the world. He cried for hours that day and continued speaking about death and sadness for months afterwards. His parents were concerned as he withdrew into himself. His teacher said that he wouldn’t mix with other children and didn’t want to play with his friends.

Thomas, 7, is described by his teachers as a shy and sensitive boy who is very aware of the needs of other children. In class, he is quiet and hesitant to do activities until he has had time to watch and evaluate them. He is, at times, uncomfortable with the noise and activity level in the room and displays extreme emotions during these times, often crying.

Rebecca 8 was working happily on her drawing in class when suddenly she threw it to the ground, stamped on it and burst into tears, yelling “it’s not right, I can’t do it right”.

Annabel 6 taught herself to read and write before she started school. She loved books, particularly The Hobbit, which was her favourite. In her first at school she was made to read at the level of other children her age and she became withdrawn. The teacher said that she had poor social skills. In her second year she was frustrated and angry and began to misbehave and disrupt the class. The suggestion was made that she should attend counseling to correct her oppositional and anti-social behaviour.

Heightened sensitivity to things that happen in the world is a normal response for gifted children. However they may see their own intense inner experiences as evidence that something is wrong with them. Other children may ridicule a gifted child for reacting strongly to an apparently trivial incident, thereby increasing the child’s feeling of being odd. Also, sensitivity to society’s injustice and hypocrisy can lead many emotionally intense gifted children to feel despair and cynicism at very young ages.

The Colombus’ Group’s definition of giftedness includes both the cognitive and emotional components and encompasses the concept of asynchrony. (Silverman 1993) Asynchrony in the gifted means a lack of synchronicity in the rates of their cognitive, emotional and physical development.

This lack of synchronicity creates great inner tension, as when a five-year old child perceives a horse through eight-year-old eyes but cannot replicate the horse in clay with her five-year-old fingers and so screams in frustration. (Morelock 1992)

Roedell (1984) discusses the unique vulnerabilities of gifted children that are associated with asynchrony: areas of vulnerability include uneven development, perfectionism, adult expectations, intense sensitivity, self-definition, alienation, inappropriate environments and role conflicts.

The gap between a child’s advanced intellectual capability and more age-appropriate social and physical skills leads to unrealistic expectations for performance.

Young children become frustrated when their limited physical capabilities prevent the construction of the complex projects created in their extremely capable imaginations. Adults expecting social maturity to match high level intellectual development may label a highly articulate, logical child as a behaviour problem when he or she exhibits an age-appropriate tantrum. This situation worsens when pressures to excel from teachers or parents intensify the child’s frustrations. (Roedell 1984)

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. If adults in their lives respond by moralizing, being dismissive or judgmental, emotionally intense gifted children may feel abnormal and decide that “There must be something wrong with me…maybe I’m crazy…nobody else seems to feel like this”.

Smutny (1998) explains how gifted children feel deeply for others. “They sense the joys, pains, sorrows and hopes of family members, friends, classmates and sometimes become distressed when they cannot alleviate the problems of others…Gifted children will often weep at the cruel treatment of an animal. They will frequently ask questions and express concern about world problems - poverty, war, environmental devastation”. (p10) This empathy for the suffering of others makes gifted children particularly vulnerable to the many forms of insensitivity they see on television, at school or in the world around them. Often these children feel powerless to act and this sense of helplessness can lead them to despair and being critical of themselves as they feel a responsibility for these situations.

Gifted children feel a “yearn to learn”. They feel driven to ask questions (about everything in life) and find answers. Many emotionally sensitive gifted children, who are simply doing what comes naturally for them, sense that their classmates do not like them, do not understand why and feel a deep sense of pain when others sneer at them for having the answers. According to Roedell (1984), if they are labelled as different and strange by their age mates, they may internalise this designation and become eccentric social isolates.

Again because of their intellectual complexity, gifted children are idealists; they are able to consider the possibilities of how things might be. At the same time they can see how far short the world is falling of the ideal and they feel keen disappointment and sometimes despair. When they try to share their concerns with others, they are often met with reactions such as denial, minimizing, puzzlement or hostility. (Webb 1998)

Often adults in gifted children’s lives unknowingly reinforce perfectionism by placing expectations of high performance all the time in everything on them. Teachers, parents and other adults often have inappropriately high expectations for gifted children; whether directly stated or implied. (Lind 1998) Because gifted children are often emotionally sensitive to the expectations of others, they feel obliged to meet them. Unfortunately, they often meet them at the cost of denial and suppression of their own passion, their own self. (Grant & Piechowski 1999)

Also damaging is when adults ignore high level ability and focus instead on perceived emotional immaturity, behaviour problems or social immaturity. Underestimation of ability can result in a rapid decline in self-esteem and consequently self-confidence.

Emotionally intense children may then withdraw from social interaction because they feel they have no one who can understand or accept them. This withdrawal may be diagnosed as emotional disturbance.

Gifted children’s intellectual complexity coupled with emotional intensity means that they are more likely than others to experience a type of depression referred to as existential depression. (Webb 1998) They can become aware at a very early age that their life in finite and brief, that they are alone and are only one very small organism in a quite large world and that there is a frightening freedom to how one chooses to live one’s life. They see that making choices among life’s possibilities is arbitrary and that there is ultimately no right choice. Their reactions to this can be bewilderment, frustration, anger and then outbursts of emotion and inappropriate behaviour. At this point they question life’s meaning and ask the question “Is this all there is to life? I am a small, insignificant organism who is alone in a an absurd, capricious world where my life can have little impact, and then I die.” (p25)

When I ask myself “who am I?”, the answer is “An insignificant speck in the vast universe trying to make something of itself but probably won’t succeed. A biological imperfect human being destined for certain death in the end and being forgotten, even though it attempted to make something of itself”. But sometimes I get an irrational response” “You are a perfect intelligence. You are destined to become a powerful person.” This response sometimes scares me. (male aged 15, from Michael Piechowski’s collection)

Conclusion
Delisle (1995) feels strongly that the field of gifted child education has become so enmeshed in curricula, instruction and educational reform that it has lost its soul.

Neglect of the emotional lives of children impacts on their intellectual lives and achievements as emotions are critical to the learning process and to the full development of the individual and to society. Gifted children have powerful resources to support themselves emotionally but they need help to apply their critical thinking, reasoning ability, inventiveness, imagination and willingness to explore to their own emotional intensity and sensitivity. They have not yet lived long enough to develop the objectivity that this would require. Parents and teachers are in the best position to help gifted children to alleviate their fears, frustrations, sadness and self - doubt by teaching them to use their prodigious intellectual abilities to support their emotional richness. (Silverman 1988)

It is vitally important to their intellectual achievement and to their emotional development that gifted children understand that their intense feelings are normal for them and that they feel accepted, understood and supported. After all, it is emotional intensity that provides the driving energy, commitment and persistence that supports intellectual conceptualization and leads to great achievement in the world. Gifted emotionally intense children need the help of significant adults in their lives to accept their rich inner world of experience and value it as a strength. This means that these adults have to accept and value their own emotional experience and feelings so that they can be positive role models for gifted children. However, speaking about and valuing emotions can be very difficult to do in a society that values logical thinking and sees emotions as the opposite of rationality.

If emotional intensity is seen and presented positively to gifted children as a strength, they can be helped to understand and value the gift of emotion. In this way gifted children will be empowered to express their unique selves in the world and use their gifts and talents with confidence and joy.

My intense emotions can, at times, be a burden; I feel intense pain as well as joy. The pain is more bearable, is easier to see as positive if I am understood and supported in it. I don’t want other people to touch my pain, to interfere, to take it away. I want to be accorded the right, the dignity, the integrity as a fellow human being to have and deal with my pain in my own way. I want and need to feel supported in this. (Female gifted adult)

References

Dabrowski. K. (1972) Psychoneuroses Is Not An Illness. London:Gryf.

Delisle. J. (1995 ) The Lost Soul of Gifted Education. Gifted Child Today V10 July/August

Grant. B.A. & Piechowski. M. M. (1999) Theories and the Good: Toward Child-Centered Gifted Education. Gifted Child Quarterly V43/1

Lind. S. (1998) A Parents Guide to Perfectionism. Communicator, CAG. V29/3

Morelock. M (1992) Giftedness: The View From Within. Understanding Our Gifted V4/3, 1.

Piechowski. M. M. (1999) Overexcitabilities in Encyclopedia of Creativity, M.A. Runco & S.R. Pritzker (Eds.) Academic Press

Piechowski. M. M. (1998) Emotional Development and Emotional Giftedness. Course Handout. Institute for Advanced Development, Gifted Development Center. Denver, Colorado

Piechowski. M.M. (1979) Developmental Potential in New Voices in Counseling the Gifted, N. Colangelo & T. Zaffrann Eds., Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.

Piechowski. M. M & Colangelo. N. (1984) Developmental Potential of the Gifted. Gifted Child Quarterly V28

Roedell., W.C. (1984) Vulnerabilities of Highly Gifted Children Roeper Review Volume 6/3

Silverman. L.K. (1988) Affective Curriculum for the Gifted in Van Tassel - Baska Ed. Comprehensive Curriculum for Gifted Learners Allyn & Bacon Inc Massachusetts USA

Webb J.T. Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals in Communicator, CAG. V29, No. 3 1998

Permission Statement

This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.

Any Jukebox Suggestions?

As you can see, we jazzed up our Tumblr a little bit with the addition of a Grooveshark Jukebox.

So far, we’ve added 5 songs to the playlist, off the top of my head, that name drop (well, just the word) Gifted (without any context) somewhere in the song:

NASA ft Kanye West, Santigold & Lykke Li - Gifted; Audio Two - Top Billin’, Baby Bash ft Frankie J - Sugar Sugar, Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California; Kanye West - Power

Any other good tunes that feature the word Gifted? So whenever I hear the word in the song I mentally focus in on it?

When Giftedness Is Unrecognized:

The Frustrated Case of The Gifted Adult

By Marylou Kelly Streznewski

You can’t actually click that crisp cover picture we took from Amazon to look inside the book, but you can read the following excerpt from it!

“What then needs to be done that is crucial to the future success of this educational field? One of the biggest problems is that we have been mainly ‘preaching to the choir’ rather than presenting our case for gifted education to average Americans who pay most of the taxes for operating public schools. This is a major challenge which must be addressed if gifted students and their education programs are to survive and thrive.”

This statement by Maurice Fisher in the Winter 1999 issue of GEPQ struck a responsive chord in me, especially the phrase “preaching to the choir”. It is the same phrase I used when as an educator, I diligently attended state and national conferences on gifted education in order to improve my skills.

I was excited by the information I gleaned from presentations by the experts and from the books they wrote. However, there came a time when a disheartening insight emerged.

This (in some cases, literally) life-saving knowledge was circulating in a closed loop of dedicated professionals and a few savvy parents. If even 3% of the population is gifted, we are talking about information which needs to reach millions of people.

Obviously, this wider audience could not attend the NAGC’s annual conference, and would have little occasion to read the many well-written academic books in the field of gifted studies.

But they might read a trade book aimed at an intelligent lay audience; one which explained the nature of giftedness to the public, and shared the lives of gifted adults, in their own voices.

As a professional writer, I assigned myself the task of creating such a book.

Gifted Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential (John Wiley & Sons, 1999) is an anecdotal study of one hundred gifted adults from 18 to 90, and diversified by gender, family background, occupation, economic status, education, geographic location, ethnic origin, social class and race.

I conducted almost three hundred hours of interviews in writing it: in living rooms, in offices, in restaurants, under trees. As I realized the depth and variety of what these non-eminent people have to offer, listened to their accounts of misunderstanding, rejection and frustration, shared their stories of success and communication, my own view of giftedness was enlarged dramatically.

It became evident that studying the lives of eminent adults is not enough. We need to investigate, in much more depth than has been done up to now, the lives of gifted people of all ages, in all areas of society.

In the months since the publication of the book, new insights have emerged from giving talks at conferences, to parent groups, and in bookstores.

In some cases, old fears have been realized; in others, hopes renewed. The old stereotype, “You know, the kids with glasses we all remember from school,” was resurrected for me by a radio interviewer.

When I pointed out that the Terman studies long ago showed gifted people to be taller, stronger, healthier, and even better–looking, she worried out loud about some kind of “Master race theory.”

Saddest of all have been the encounters with women (the latest only hours ago) who, over and over say, “Oh yes, the kids are gifted but they get it from my husband, not me.”

My hopes were raised by the women in mid-life who have come to respect and honor their own intelligence, and are building exciting lives; and by senior citizens who have never given up enlarging their special gifts.

Overall, I have concluded that there are large numbers of frustrated gifted adults, who can be located by anyone who knows what to look for, who do not find outlets for their potential.

We are not paying enough attention to trying to teach gifted people how to cope with their lives in the adult world. Far too many of them find their drive and creativity thwarted by persons or establishments who regard them as either silly or threatening.

I am well aware of the school of thinking which designates adults as gifted only if they have achieved something called eminence. I find many difficulties in accepting such thinking.

One: There is an inherent difficulty in changing the terms of the definition of giftedness in the middle of the definition.

A recent article in Gifted Child Quarterly (Noble, Subotnik and Arnold, 1999) presented giftedness in adults and children as distinct from one another, stating, “Giftedness in children is linked to potential, in adults to achievement.”

In attempting to employ such a method, do we not move from describing qualities within the nature of the person to effects of the actions the older person may or may not have the opportunity to take – and all within the same definition?

If we change from characteristics to accomplishments, the characteristics with which we started do not simply go away.

The racing brain, the questing mind can be observed at any and every age, and for the sake of the health of the individual person, he or she deserves to know enough about the gift to respect and honor it.

Second: If we accept the practice of trying to define giftedness in two different ways at the same time, some very strange questions and concerns begin to arise.

A question I encountered recently holds many pitfalls for the unwary thinker. “If, after several years spent raising children, a formerly gifted girl is elected to congress or organizes a nature preserve, does she become gifted again?” (The insulting implication that if you are raising children you are no longer gifted hangs in this question.)

Where the transition to the non-gifted state takes place remains a mystery. Can criteria be developed for locating the point at which, not having achieved eminence, one is simply expected to settle for being an average person and somehow cast aside the curiosity, the racing mind, the sophisticated questions, the deep sensitivity?

If we follow the practice of one standard for children and another for adults, what do we say to the maturing person? “If you haven’t made it by a certain point/age, then you are no longer gifted”? How does this play, as a mental health question, over against all the effort we have put into the self-image of that student?

My favorite question for those who espouse a belief in defining gifted two ways at once concerns the poet Emily Dickinson. Her story is well known: the seven poems published in a minor magazine as a favor by a friend; the fifteen-hundred brilliant compositions tied in ribboned packets, filling the drawers in her house at her death. No eminence there.

But surely Dickinson was, in her nature, a gifted person unrecognized in her lifetime. Now that Dickinson and Whitman are acknowledged to be the two major innovators in the creation of American poetry, her eminence is undeniable.

Does this mean that Dickinson became gifted after she was dead?

The argument will no doubt be made that if we nurture all children properly, many more will achieve that elusive state of eminence.

Even so, only a certain portion of the children we so carefully nurture through gifted programs will attain the highest ranks our society offers. The rest? It is for “the rest” that I wrote Gifted Grownups.

I approached the study of these one hundred gifted adults armed with a set of informal criteria which had developed over twenty years of spotting misplaced gifted students in high school English classes. What did I look for? Speed, intense curiosity, sophistication of thought processes, sensitivity, concentration, energy, and humor.

Working on the assumption that giftedness is a function of one’s nature and not necessarily one’s achievements, from among the many definitions available, I came to define a gifted person as one who has a finely tuned and biologically advanced perception system and a mind that works considerably faster than 95% of the population.

Each two to three hour interview I conducted was based on a series of index cards containing question, statements, quotes about being smarter than other people. The interviewees were asked to respond to only those cards which interested them, thus avoiding threatening questions.

They commented, argued, and validated my initial theory that a smart kid remains a “smart kid” for life; only the costumes change, and the arenas in which they must work out their lives.

After completing my study, I came to agree with Webb, Meckstroth &Tolan in Guiding the Gifted Child (1982) that giftedness is not a tacked on extra which can be set aside by gifted children on the journey to adulthood, “…the brain that drives them is so fundamental to everything about them that it cannot be separated from their personhood.”

The implications of what these grown up smart kids told me about their lives are threefold.

First, it was obvious that there are a great many gifted people who lack even basic knowledge about their own nature.

Counterproductive actions in personal relations and employment can limit the personal happiness they may attain and blunt their possible contributions to the progress of society.

Realizing that the discontinuities they experienced were not evidence of a problem, but an indication of competence opened the eyes of many of those I interviewed to their own true nature. Internet reviews from readers continue to affirm this.

Second, a gifted person must be studied in the various contexts in which people live: as a member of a family, a student in school, a participator in human relationships, a member of the workforce, and as a citizen in society.

Here, both new and ongoing research can make a significant contribution, by looking at how persons with this particular nature (giftedness) function in these contexts. The study of these dynamic interactions provide much insight into how gifted adults can improve the way they run their lives.

The need for change is the third implication of what these individuals were able to tell me. As was stated above, we simply cannot afford, on either practical or moral grounds, to waste our precious human resources.

While improving our schools’ ability to nurture feisty minds, we need to move beyond the school setting to understand that multitalented young people may require many years to discover what they really want to do, and that for all their lives, they will seek stimulation and change.

Recognition that giftedness exists throughout one’s life can improve the situation of workers, of bright women and of senior citizens.

If the use of the informal criteria listed above successfully yielded persons who could be defined as gifted, (and they did) then it would seem that his method could have wide applications for use by others such as parents, teachers, employers, spouses, counselors and law enforcement personnel, as they interact with gifted persons of all ages. The mechanisms of these interactions need to be studied.

While depicting the lives of a cross-section of gifted adults, Gifted Grownups offers insight into families, schooling, friendships, marriages, aging and crime – all areas which impact the lives of children.

I have come to the firm conclusion the one of the major ways we can help to ensure a better chance in life for our gifted children is to seriously begin the work of recognizing gifted grownups by using our professional expertise to assist them in recognizing themselves.

We also need to include ourselves in these considerations. By acknowledging and working to resolves our own issues as gifted adults, think how much time and energy we could free to devote to our children, either as parents or professionals.

And to the degree that we help children and adults understand each other, we help society. Accepting this, I see a series of tasks before us in studying the gifted in families, as parents, as teachers, as young adults, in the workplace, with regard to mental health, relationships, women’s issues and senior citizens.

For example, we need much more research on parental attitudes toward their own giftedness.

At the Spring conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education this year, I presented my book in the exhibit area.

I lost count of the number of parents who said to me, “Oh no, not me. I’m not a gifted grownup. My husband/wife is the one the kids take after.”

Their tension and conflict around this question was painfully evident in their faces, their voices and their body language.

In talking to parent groups, I have encountered this same kind of denial. It has also been confirmed by teachers in gifted programs.

It seems imperative to me that if men and women are to be the best parents for their gifted children, they must be able to recognize and deal with their own issues as gifted adults.

How much better for a family to be able to see that they are a dynamically interacting collection of high-powered individuals and can share both the pleasures and the problems of dealing with a world that does not always accept them.

Readers of this journal are well aware of the many daunting tasks which face us in gifted education, and I will not belabor them here. However, there is one area which I believe has received little attention, and that is the mental and emotional well being of teachers who are gifted grownups.

If such persons are fortunate enough to be working in gifted programs, they may feel sufficiently challenged and stimulated even while enduring the stress of keeping such programs alive in today’s cost-cutting climate.

Others are not so lucky. They teach in schools with lockstep curricula where innovation and challenge, two essentials for a gifted mind, are regarded as “troublemaking”.

We are aware that educators must engage in the ongoing process of awakening the general public to the needs of the gifted. In some schools that general public includes principals and administrators.

In most districts, it includes the school board. But reaching out to colleagues who may be enduring health-damaging frustration is an important task of which we should be ever mindful.

As our young people move beyond conventional schooling into the adult world of college and /or work, they continue to need special understanding. Faculties beyond the average take the gifted person higher, wider and deeper, for longer.

Multiple talents require time to be explored, and it can take at least until age thirty to sort it all out. The late John Gowan, (1971)educator and psychologist, said, “Their own longer deeper search for meaningfulness is the extra mile the gifted have to travel.”

Families can be helped by developing greater awareness of the extra mile a son or daughter may be traveling. Parents may have to patient with a student who is caught in a non-stimulating college environment or who wishes to explore other learning options than conventional classrooms.

Young people themselves need to recognize the work of this period as a necessary and productive phase of their lives and accept their special needs.

It helps if high school students can be made aware of this in advance. (An interesting question: In how many programs across the country are gifted students taught, in specific detail, about the nature of their own giftedness?)

One interviewee who handled this period with grace, advises “staying in the moment and doing your best,” as each new talent or job presents itself.

Parents whose patience is being sorely tried by a child who seems unable to “settle down” need to remember their own twenties, and possibly thirties, honestly.

What happens when the gifted children we have nurtured so carefully as parents and teachers encounter the world of corporate America and attempt to negotiate its hazards from thirty to sixty-something?

In the interviews, I found that where employment is concerned, gifted adults exhibit an intensity, an insistence on the integrity to do the work at its best, as well as chronic impatience with shoddy work and slow thinkers.

Gifted adults work too quickly, get bored, and show it. They raise the standards for everyone else, and that is always resented. They have odd approaches to things, which irritates their coworkers. They ask for more work and make enemies.

The idealism of the young person is still there, and can cause problems with authority figures or with fellow executives. In addition, the bright mind has difficulty in accepting the illogical and may be very stubborn in expressing doubts about a project or in criticizing others.

And yet, because of heightened sensitivity, this same person may be unusually vulnerable to peer group rejection. College degree or not, gifted adults carry around in their feisty minds questions the boos cannot answer .

And sometimes they threaten the boss, because that odd approach turns out to be better than the boss’s idea.

Which is why, when the downsizing begins; and this is not a new phenomenon, the smartest employees are often the first to go.

Industrial psychologist David Willings told us in 1981, “Job performance is not a significant factor in promotability. Social acceptability, the ability to fit in, to think as the rest of management thinks; these are the factors which make a person promotable.

The gifted employee is not readily promotable. This idea that the gifted will get ahead anyway, and if they do not, they were not really gifted, has no basis in fact.”

In the search for maximum profit and efficiency, corporate America needs to be able to take advantage of how the most clever people really operate.

It is worth remembering that what we needed in order to run the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century was the eminent few at the top,- and bodies- to stand in front of machines and behind plows and tractors.

For the twenty-first century, bodies won’t do. We will need every fast-paced, flexible, curious, inventive systems thinker on the planet to manage the high-tech civilization which is imploding in our midst.

David Willings (1981) warns us that, “The gifted are a significant factor, if not THE significant factor in the national economy of any country and…most of the countries with which I am acquainted are recklessly squandering that resource.”

Too often, employers regard gifted workers as unstable or troublesome and they fail to utilize their innovative approaches to improve company profits.

Here is an area where researchers and authorities in the field of gifted studies could enhance the work of industrial psychologists for the benefit of all.

The gifted adult threading a way through the maze of the contemporary employment scene may take comfort from one of the interviewees. “I play the game in industry more than I care to, but I have accepted the responsibility for playing the game for now…the challenge is to play to win!”

Nowhere in contemporary life is the challenge greater than for gifted women. A powerful statement by Linda Kreger Silverman (1993) could serve as a summary. “Most women are unaware of their giftedness; they are only aware of their pain – the pain of being different from the way women are supposed to be.”

Even if she moves confidently beyond denial or lack of awareness of her gifts, a modern wife and mother is constantly challenged by personal and career responsibilities. Researchers as well as the interviews call for change.

In “Why Doesn’t Jane Run?” Jacquelynn Eccles of the University of Michigan (1985) warned we must not simply settle for advocating more career opportunities, we must become advocates for honoring motherhood as a profession worthy of the time and talent of smart women.

To do this, we will have to change the way the modern workplace is organized, as radical as that may sound. In my own opinion, those who best understand giftedness have a special responsibility to help this to happen.

Eccles says: ”Educational and occupational training systems are now designed to mesh well with the life-patterns of men. They also tend to operate on the implicit assumption that (1) late entry into such professions as medicine, law or sciences and (2) less than complete devotion to one’s profession are bad ideas [Are they not, in reality, simply different ideas?”]

Both of these assumptions need to be evaluated… In addition, educational and occupational support programs that are specifically designed for gifted women, who have different life patterns from those of gifted men, need to be developed… Many women are influenced by their desire to spend significant amounts of their time raising their children… The assumption that late entry signifies lack of commitment should not be made.”

Mother Nature has decreed that the healthiest children are born to mothers in their twenties. The male patterns of corporate society push women into their thirties and even forties to have children, a long-term disadvantage in women’s and children’s health, and not insignificantly, in health care costs.

The workplace must change to provide for a variety of acceptable career paths so that bright women can nurture their bright children as well as their own need for meaningful work.

The two accomplished authors of Answers to the Mommy Track (1993) put it quite bluntly. “If we want educated and well trained women to have children in this society, then we must supports the needs of these women and their husbands to take care of training, developing and educating these children.”

Nowhere more than here is it obvious that we can help the children by meeting the needs of the adults.

As our population ages, perhaps the second-greatest challenge in the study of gifted adults is our senior citizens. The high-powered brain/mind that drives a gifted person’s life does not switch to low gear simply because the body ages or some chronological milestone has been reached.

The persistence of curiosity, the need for stimulation and the drive to DO things does not fade. It cannot be satisfied by a steady diet of bridge, bingo and bus trips, which many well-meaning programs seek to provide.

Whether high school dropouts or professionals with advanced degrees, the bright senior citizens I interviewed continue to have both the capacity and the need to learn and grow.

Families can help. Providing stimulating conversation, transportation to cultural activities, recognition of valuable skills, and encouragement to try new activities will not only enhance the dignity of the elderly gifted, but can prevent these valuable citizens from becoming isolated .

At this age, finding peers who are still active can be especially difficult, so that younger people can be essential for intellectual companionship.

However, it is the educational institutions where older adults can provide a vital element in hard-pressed gifted programs. Grandparenting programs, if keyed to the special abilities of individuals, could provide the crucial recognition and acceptance which a tiny smart kid may require.

Mentoring for special projects with older students by retired professionals is another way in which gifted seniors could serve children while serving their own needs. But how the aging process takes place in an unusually intelligent person is an area where significant research should be undertaken.

Before I began the research for this book, I expected certain things would be true about gifted people. What I did not expect was that no matter where I looked –education, gifted studies, general psychology, industrial relations, business, social criticism – all the voices would say the same things about the needs of gifted people and the needs of the twenty-first century.

For example, a management consultant warns that a whole new civilization – superindustrialism – will implode in our midst in the next forty years and that its chief characteristic will be speed.

At the same time, an educational researcher tells us that gifted people are complex systems thinkers who can move rapidly in the face of change.

No one was putting voices like these together and letting them speak to a wider audience, and this has been one of the major reasons for writing this book.

Gifted Grownups is intended to be an aid to gifted adults in discovering themselves, and in gaining wider recognition for them in society, and by those who share their lives.

In addition, it hopes to be a conscious-raising statement that encourages discussion and dialogue in those areas of society where solutions need to be worked out over many years. Not only families and schools, but government, industry, universities and the helping professions must be part of this process.

Those whose expertise is specifically in gifted studies can make a vital contribution to the future welfare of gifted children and adults by spreading their knowledge beyond the choirs of academe and into the larger society.

~ ~ ~

Article originally published in Gifted Education Press Quarterly, Vol.14 No1 Winter 2000.

Article published here with kind permission of the author.

Marylou Kelly Streznewski received her M. Ed. from the College of New Jersey in Trenton. Certified as a program specialist in gifted education, she taught gifted teenagers for twenty-four years at Central Bucks East High School in Bucks County Pennsylvania.

The author’s perspective on gifted adults has been informed by a lifetime as a member of a three-generation extended family of smart kids and gifted grownups. A long-standing marriage to a gifted gentlemen and the raising of her own four gifted children has provided experience in the realities of life in a gifted family. As an educator, she has counseled gifted students and their families in a variety of settings.

In addition to her work as an educator, Ms Streznewski’s career has included theater, journalism, fiction and poetry; she has taught writing at high school and college levels. In addition to Gifted Grownups, her fiction and poetry have appeared nationally. Currently, she is associated with The Writers Room, a non-profit writer’s center in Bucks County, where she serves as a poetry curator, and the poetry editor of the Bucks County Writer, a literary quarterly. She is at work on a poetry manuscript and her second novel.

She is author of the book Gifted Grownups: the Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential

(Source: talentdevelop.com)

mymanylives:

How many gifted kids does it to take to fold a piece of plastic wrap?

4, because they’re OCD.

Shit, I guessed (1 + X), where X is the number of Gifted kids in the room asking what’s the point

Gifted is a part of who we are — WHAT DO YOU HUNGER FOR:

heather-hunger:

i cant just sit around like a bum all day. fuck that shit. i need to be creative. it’s a part of who i am. my plan for the day:

• tie dye some shit
• draw some shit
• sew some shit
• do some crunches and shit
• go to work