Certain common misconceptions about the gifted population have persevered over time and can result in miscommunication and outright discrimination against the gifted. Realizing that a particular child may or may not exhibit a certain set of traits and behaviors is important to an appreciation of the wide range and variety of attributes in this group of people. Intellectual precociousness and high intellectual prowess are the traits of true demarcation but other similarities are notably common and consistent.
Mistaken Assumptions About Gifted Children
Some believe that all gifted kids will sail through school with very little effort since concepts come so easily to them. They do indeed understand concepts well, but many will meticulously study every element of a given topic, read ahead of the class and devour other books on the subject of interest, driven by the need to know more.
Still other gifted kids will attempt to deny their giftedness and will scorn academics, not really believing in their ability to learn better, faster and more than their peers. Eventually, many kids who deny their ability will eventually accept themselves as gifted and will pursue knowledge aggressively.
In some instances, where a child comes from a disadvantaged background, his family may be the doubters and may discourage him from pursuing intellectual activities or academic achievements. This can create serious psychological issues for the child who is essentially outcast by his family for his unacknowledged giftedness.
Truths Common to Many Gifted Kids
A vast majority of gifted children tend to have perfectionistic characteristics. They are more likely to equate their own self-esteem with their intellectual prowess. A grade of anything less than 100 percent is seen by the child as flawed and he will experience anxiety over grades that other children would be thrilled to receive. The gifted child has very high, sometimes unreasonably high expectations for himself.
Gifted kids fall into two general learning types. The type signifies the strongest propensity for learning style. These are the "leapers" and "mappers". Leapers are the kids who have spatial learning as their primary process and have many epiphany moments. The mappers are very absorbed in the steps leading to the learning occurrence, whereas the leapers get to the same place without much conscious processing. They just seem to know the answer, not necessarily how they got to it.
A big truth that is not often recognized is that every gifted child has advanced intellectual development but they may or may not be advanced emotionally or socially. The more intellectually gifted the child is, the more likely there is a significant lag in the emotional development equation.
For example, a child of ten years, who is processing information at the same level as a fifteen-year-old and the child who is ten but functioning cognitively at the level of a nineteen-year-old, will have different challenges from an emotional perspective. The kind of information processed by the child with an older brain, is much more difficult to divulge emotionally and socially than in the first child, with a five-year chronological gap.
Gifted kids can think in complex and abstract terms. For this reason, they sometimes have difficulty with certain types of test questions and will argue answers could be right in more than one way. They may need special attention to keep them challenged in a classroom setting. If they become bored, some gifted kids will turn to attention-getting activities for their own entertainment.
In summary, some misconceptions about the gifted have become pervasive. Understanding that each child is unique is critical to understanding them. Some common elements of intellectual giftedness are manifest in the majority of gifted children, but not all of them.
They tend to be perfectionistic and driven to seek knowledge. They often define themselves by their gifts, but some deny the evidence of giftedness. They conceptualize predominantly by mapping – which is process driven or by leaping, which is intuitive learning. The gifted vary in terms of their emotional and social development.
Reference:
Council for Exceptional Children. Myths and Truths About Gifted Kids. Family Education Network, Pearson Education, 2000, Published at Infoplease.
Therese Haberman - With a MS degree and 25 years in HR mgmt, in 2005, Ms.Therese began a writing career specializing in children and HR.
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