Problems for 'gifted IQ' or challenging children

Many of the introductions to 'giftedness' I have seen tread very carefully around the difficulties which so often coincide with 'giftedness' or a challenging child.

But there are so often real problems facing gifted children. Centres studying giftedness and assisting gifted children I have experience take almost polar opposite approaches to these problems. Very parent support focused groups often spend most of their time on these issues while some more academic approaches almost sweep these problems as far under the carpet as possible.

Problems.
1. Asynchronous learning. While some gifted children clearly display their intelligence by hitting all milestones, especially including reading, at an early age, others do not. Some may actually be late in these same milestones. Some early reader develop other skills relatively late. In general, when one skill is very strong, overuse of that skill can delay the need to learn other skills that most children are forced to learn.

2. Simply being different. There is a bell curve to intelligence. At both ends of this bell curve the shape trails off with a smaller and smaller number a greater and greater difference from the 'normal'. People at the 5 or even 10 percentile can vary so much from the 'normal'. Children who are different face challengers with peers. Teacher think they understand children- but in truth they don't always because they just cannot. In a class of 20 there is statistically only child at the 5th percentile. So they see one per year- but those children also vary so even after 20 years teaching a teacher may have never seen a similar child.

3. Over excitabilities
You can read about over excitabilities in a variety of places. In summary they are traits, mostly associated with gifted IQ or challenging children that through no fault of the child may lead to the child being seen as misbehaving.

The combination.
Picture this, there are areas where you seem to be weak at school. You feel you are different. You are overly sensitive and emotional. And because you are very intelligent and perceptive- you are aware of all this. Think about this, most children with any deficiency are unaware they have a deficiency. The Challenging Child is acutely aware of every minor deficiency.



I will go into more details about each of these over time.