THE GIFTED CHILD

by Fleur Nelson


Pacifica Graduate Institute
PhD Clinical Psychology Program
Developmental Psychology.

March 9th, 2007

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GIFTED CHILD


For Gagne (1995), giftedness describes, exceptional natural abilities which appear more or less spontaneously during early years of children’s development and give rise to significant individual differences without any clear evidence of any systematic learning, training or practice (p.105).

Gagne discovered that there are four main domains of natural abilities: Intellectual abilities, physical abilities (which include sensory and motor abilities), creativity, and socio-affective abilities (which includes leadership). He talks about a fifth possible domain of natural ability, that of personal abilities, which include the ability to delay gratification, to focus one’s attention on the task at hand, to perceive one’s needs, and so on. Gifted individuals possess a natural ability in at least one of the four ability domains to a degree that places them in the top 10% of their age group.

There is clearly a distinction between giftedness and talent. According to Gagne, talents are:

Systematically developed abilities which define the characteristic performance of an individual in a field of human activity: these are the abilities shown by competent pianists, teachers, carpenters, swimmers, journalists, pilots, and so forth (p. 105).

A child can be gifted and not necessarily talented. For example, a child could be intellectually gifted by virtue of high IQ but may not be academically talented; his grades at school may show poor performance.

Gardner (1983) talked about the multiple intelligence perspective on talent and giftedness. He postulates the existence of eight autonomous human intelligences. These are linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal (knowledge of others) and intrapersonal (knowledge of the self), and naturalistic (scientific knowledge). Each intelligence manifests in distinct abilities. For example, a child with linguistic intelligence may use creative expression through poetry and writing; kinesthetic intelligence may be expressed in dancing or gymnastics; and spatial or psychometric intelligence may be expressed through painting or playing chess.

It is easier to recognize the gifted child who stands out because of his high psychometric intelligence or his skill in a recognized area of talent, such as painting or music. However, there are children who are gifted in other domains. For example, there are children who have the ability to understand the others and have a good notion of the self. Certain children may be very sensitive, and therefore, it might be natural to them to see things that other people cannot. Other kids may have an enormous ability to be inventive with their genius and therefore, express their creativity in a very unique way. The list goes on. And what that really means is that the giftedness of a child is expressed in many different ways, often not recognized by the social standards.

Often the earliest identification of gifted children takes place by simple observation of the child's behavior by an educational professional, a parent or friend. The educational psychologist Leta Hollingworth (1942) examined students who were different for the others. She selected one in a hundred thousand rather than one in a thousand. She discovered that children with IQ higher than 180 were not a happy group, simply because their abilities were heightened, out of the norm, and they could not fit in. The study showed that these children could not find things in common with other age mates (contemporaries); they were prone to anxieties, and severe social and emotional problems.

When placed in a setting with youngsters who are their intellectual equals, regardless of their age group, gifted children seem to feel more comfortable and less anxious. In the new group of youngsters, the gifted children don’t have to hide their academic skills, or alienate the other children by revealing their knowledge, thoughts, and ideas; they can be at their pace processing and assimilating information rapidly.

In Gifted children (1966), Ellen Winner has highlighted few features of the “exceptionally bright”: they exhibit an enormous energy and curiosity on domains that interest them. If they are engaged in their area of passion, it is difficult for them to pay attention to anything else. They are self-propelled and have a “rage” to learn. Here are some basic characteristics of gifted children:
A. High sensitivity
B. Excessive amounts of energy.
C. Bores easily and may appear to have a short attention span.
D. Requires emotionally stable and secure adults around him/her.
E. Will resist authority if it not democratically oriented.
F. Have preferred ways of learning; particularly in reading and mathematics.
G. May become easily frustrated because of his/her big ideas and not having the resources or people to assist him/her in carrying these tasks to fruition.
H. Learns from an exploratory level and resists rote memory and just being a listener.
I. Cannot sit still unless absorbed in something of his own interest.
J. Very compassionate and has many fears such as death and loss of loved ones.
K. If they experience failure early, may give up and develop permanent learning blocks.

In his book, Extraordinary Minds. Portraits of Four Exceptional Individuals and an Examination of our Own Extraordinariness (1997), Howard Gardner reminds us that there are varieties of giftedness and therefore, the expression of ultimate achievement or a talent may not manifest necessarily during childhood, but later on in life. Depending of what’s going on in the child’s emotional and social life, the gifted child may be in alignment with his giftedness or be out of synch with his true nature. For example, a blissfully happy childhood may not provide sufficient stimulation and challenges for growth. On the other hand, a series of tragedies and invasive encounters may cripple the emotional world of the child and hinder the emergence of his gift that is here to share with others.

Gardner took a step further, by noting that the children who have innate remarkable abilities and who are here to affect people’s lives. Later on in their lives these children become extraordinary adults. As a psychologist and social scientist Gardner examines four gifted individuals, Mozart, Freud, and Gandhi as representatives of the diverse ways in which individuals can excel and affect the collective. Of the four subjects only Mozart’s particular gifts were evident and actively engaged in the world of others during childhood.

Mozart began to play the piano at the age of three. By four he was already learning pieces readily. At the same time, he observed others playing the violin and was able to teach himself the rudiments without formal tutelage. By the age of five he had begun to compose, and by seven he was composing regularly. Pieces preserved from his earliest years are charming, and pieces from his adolescent years are already ambitious in scope and achievement (1997, p. 55).

As for Freud, he developed his creative talent of working with human minds through many years of practice. His giftedness guided him through the years to explore domains of his interest. He was also fortunate to have people in his life that believed in him and helped him develop his ideas and express them in highly technical and scientific form. His curiosity, passion, self- motivation, eccentricities and sensitivity to people’s pain were few of the aspects of his giftedness that were the basic seeds during his childhood blossoming in an ultimate achievement aligned with his talented nature.

Gardner’s study throws light to the fact that many gifted individuals go through a lot of pain, rejection, and loneliness when they stand out and persevere on their vision. Gifted individuals are somehow faced with the interrogation of being gifted, both a blessing and a curse. Gifted children may also withdraw when they feel threatened or alienated and may sacrifice their creativity in order to "belong". Many children that have been tested exhibit a high IQ, but they often exhibit "frozen" creativity as well. Often there is an ability to express their feelings initially. Here it is the role of the Child Psychologist to assist the child to become open, flexible and to be able to accept failure by developing higher frustration levels. Cultivating an embracive positive attitude can transform the fear of rejection to self-confidence and authentic self-expression.

ASPECTS OF THE GIFTED SELF

There is no one definition of the self. However, most schools of thought agree that the self comprises the very core of the personality. The self includes identity, self-esteem, and what one brings in the world. Winnicott (1989) said,

For me the self, which is not the ego, is the person who is me, who is only me, who has a totality based on the operation of the maturation process. At the same time the self has parts, and in fact is constituted of these parts” (p. 271).

Winnicott further explains that the self develops as a result of the interactions with the human environment. What that means is that the self becomes the product of what the individual takes in and internalizes from people and events in the immediate environment. For example, the self of a baby first sees itself in the eyes of the primary caregiver, which serve as a mirror for the self to come to know itself. That point is particularly important for the development of gifted children since they tend to be more sensitive.

And so, the development of the self in early stages is very much dependant on how the others respond to the child’s giftedness. If the child’s giftedness is ignored, denied, or rejected, most likely the child will experience a loss of self-esteem and true self. Therefore, if the “world of others” is recognizing and supporting the giftedness of the child, it will most likely facilitate the formation of the true self for the child. This principle of recognition and affirmation sheds light on why it is the response to the gifted child that is pivotal for the development of a healthy personality.

In her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller (1981) described how children lose their true selves. She wrote of the implications a gifted child will have to face by adopting a false self in order to please others. In her study, Miller makes the observation that gifted children seem to fight harder to preserve the true self, especially if they live in homes or attend schools where their giftedness is not fully embraced and affirmed.

DIFFERENCES

To understand highly gifted children it is essential to realize that, although they are children with the same basic needs as other children, they are very different. A microscope analogy could be a useful way of understanding this expression of unique intelligence. If we say that all people look at the world through a lens, with some lenses cloudy or distorted, some clear, and some magnified, we might say that gifted individuals view the world through a microscope lens and the highly gifted view it through an electron microscope. Therefore, gifted children see ordinary things in very different ways and in some cases see what others simply cannot see.

Although there are advantages to this heightened perception, there are disadvantages as well. When a child is identified as a being gifted, sometimes this is not welcomed by adults or even by the child. The concept of giftedness implies being exceptional and different, and that, could be interpreted as being more difficult to handle. Studies have shown that many gifted children will go out of their way in order to camouflage their giftedness either because they want to be accepted by the adults or because they want to “fit in” with their peers. For example, one young gifted child who learned to read at an early age tried to hide his newfound skill from his mother.

His mother overheard him confiding to his younger brother, saying, “It’s not my fault that I can read, the words just keep jumping out at me!” This same child tried to conceal his reading abilities from his mother because he was afraid that she would stop reading aloud to him. He was, emotionally speaking, a young child who really enjoyed the closeness of the time that he spent each day sitting in his mother’s lap as they shared books together (Rotigel, 2003, p. 211).

Another area that gifted children seem to struggle with is unevenness between their physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development. Researchers have called this differential “internal de-synchrony”. They use this term in order to describe areas of development that are not in synch with other areas within a particular child (Callahan, 1997). For example, a gifted child may have to hide his intellectual ability from a social group and his/her emotional development from the intellectual group. In that case, a gifted child would hide his sharp understanding on a subject in a classroom, so that, he can be accepted by the other kids. Under different circumstances, a young child may express interest on what adults discuss satisfying intellectual needs but he may not have the emotional development that would allow him to participate in viewing the CNN reports on the same subject.

Adults, such as teachers, or parents may feel intimidated by the gifted concept, be fearful of the demands that may be made of them in terms of providing appropriate relatedness and education for the gifted child. There have been cases where some parents become upset by the news that their child is gifted. Such parents feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising a child who seems to be so different from other people that they know. For example, on receiving the news of her 3-year-old child’s high score on a screening test, a mother burst into tears because she believed that her child would grow up to be a “weird” or “like Einstein” (Rotigel, J., V., 2003, p. 210).

Adults that are uniformed about the qualities and the social and emotional needs of the gifted child often misinterpret a child’s behavior. On the other hand, some parents of exceptionally gifted children were themselves gifted or exceptionally gifted children. If they did not learn to accept and understand their own giftedness, they may find it difficult to accept their child's unusual capacities.

Adults cannot ignore or gloss over the child’s differences without doing serious damage to these children, for the differences will not go away or be outgrown. They affect almost every aspect of these children's intellectual and emotional lives. Raising a highly gifted child may help parents come to terms with many difficult aspects of their own lives, but it helps if they focus first on the needs of the child and come to an agreement about how to meet them.

WHAT THE GIFTED NEED

Exceptionally gifted children have two primary needs. First, they need to feel comfortable with themselves and with the differences that simultaneously open possibilities and create difficulty. Second, they need to develop their potential. There is a strong internal drive to develop and express their unique abilities. Thwarting that drive may lead to crippling emotional damage. Throughout the parenting years, it is wise to keep in mind that the healthiest long term goal is not necessarily a child who gains fame, or a Nobel Prize, but one who becomes a comfortable adult and uses his or her gifts productively (Boyer, A., 1989).

Gifted children endure emotional pain. It is hard for them to find kindred spirits; hard for them to feel they fit into the only world they know. Gifted children may have trouble establishing fulfilling friendships with people of their own age when there are few or no other highly gifted children with whom to interact. Gifted children can be that part of themselves that is like their classmates, and they get along fine. But, there may be no one they can share the rest of themselves with, no one who understands what means the most to them. For most highly gifted children, social relationships with age peers necessitate a constant monitoring of thoughts, words, and behavior. Emotional sensitivity leads them to heightened perceptiveness to small changes in their social environment. This perceptiveness actually can affect their self-esteem because they focus on how they are different from their peers (Fornia, G., L., 2001).

Another internal characteristic of their needs is perfectionism. Ironically, gifted children are aware of what is possible (perfection) and may feel defeated before they attempt a task (2001, p. 385). If the child has a low self-esteem and experiences an emotional intensity trying to be an achiever, most probably this child will rebel against those who require that the tasks be done. Their power struggle in school will also affect their relationship with members of their family. And so, their sensitivity, intensity and sense of alienation set them up for feeling stressed, withdrawn, and poorly adjusted. Their “improper behavior” often evokes strong emotions from others who react against them, either by putting them down, or misunderstanding their emotional behavior.

Raising a highly gifted child may be ecstasy, agony and everything between. Our world does not accommodate differences easily, and it matters little whether the difference is perceived to be a deficit or an overabundance. Adults must perform almost impossible feats of balance - supporting a child's gifts without pushing, valuing without over investing, championing without taking over. For many adults, it seems to be costly, physically and emotionally draining, and intellectually demanding.

As parents of a gifted child, we have felt so alone in trying to find the solution to the best way of nurturing our child to his fullest potential. I can remember saying to my husband a few years ago, God sent us gifted one, but He forgot to enclose a book of instructions (Goertzel, G., 1962, p. 290).

A gifted child is not yet capable to recognize mechanism of self-deception. He would feel threatened by the intensity of his feelings if he does not have a supportive and empathic environment. In many cases, a gifted child in order to avoid losing the “love” of his parents, would be compelled to gratify his unconscious needs at the cost of his emotional development. The child doesn’t know that by suppressing his authentic gifted nature he is creating a trauma that through his later life will awaken rudimentary feelings and a deep sense of dissatisfaction.

It is precisely because a child’s feelings are so strong that they cannot be repressed without serious consequences. The stronger the prisoner is, the thicker the prison walls have to be, and unfortunately these walls also impede or completely prevent later emotional growth (Miller, 1997, p.58).

We can conclude, that the most important help adults can give the gifted children can be expressed in giving them a safe environment, a refuge where they feel love and genuine acceptance, even of their differences. That way the gifted children can put together lives of productivity and fulfillment.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boyer, A. (1989). Surviving the blessing: Parenting the highly gifted child. Understanding our Gifted, 1 (3), pp. 5, 17, 20-21.

Callahan, C. M. (1997). Giftedness. In G, Bear, K. Minke, & A. Thomas (Eds.), Children’s needs II (pp. 431-448).Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.

Fornia, G., L. &Frame M., W. (2001). The social and emotional needs of gifted children: implications for family counseling. The Family Journal. 9, 384-390.

Gagne, F. (1995). From giftedness to talent: A developmental model and its impact on the language of the field. The Roeper Review, 18(2),103-111.

Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. New York : Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1997). Extraordinary minds. Portraits of exceptional individuals and an examination of our extraordinariness. New York: Basic Books, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers.

Goertzel,V. & Goerzel, M. G. (1962). Cradles of eminence. Toronto: Little, Brown & Company.

Hollingworth, L. (1942). Children above IQ 180. Yonkers, New York: World Book.

Miller, A. (1979). The Drama of the gifted child. The search for the true self. Translated by Ruth Ward. New York: Basic Books, A member of the Perseus Books Group.

Rotigel, J., V. (2003). Understanding the young gifted child: Guidelines for parents, families, and educators. Early Education Joournal. 30(4), 209-214.

Winner, E. (1996). Gifted children: Myths and realities. New York, Basic Books.

Winnicott, C., Shepherd, R., and Davis, M. (Eds.) (1989). Psychoanalytic
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