The Scientist

Behind my back I've heard them whisper, "What does she have to worry about? Her kid is gifted!"

I've had this said too many times, to my face and behind by back. What most people don't understand is that being gifted isn't all it's cut out to be and being parents of a gifted kid is no walk in the park. Perceptions of gifted kids range from every kid is gifted to there is no such thing as gifted and they are only like that because they have parents that push them. There are lots of parents who push their kids, just look around, they're over scheduled, afraid of making mistakes, they play a different sport each season, sometimes more than one, play a musical instrument, or two, they don't have a minute to themselves. They are involved in tons of after school activities, they eat dinner in the car more often than not. By the end of middle school they are burned out and miserable. It doesn't matter whether or not they are gifted.

I read a list one time that gave a bunch of questions and in the end you had a pretty good idea if your kid was gifted or just really smart. I haven't found it again but it hit the nail right on the head. Only one of the questions had to do with traditional learning. Everything else involved how the child reacted to different circumstances.

Gifted is more than about how "smart" someone is or what their IQ is. If it was just about that it would be easy to be gifted and to be the parent of a gifted kid. They would just suck up information around them and then go on to cure cancer or solve global issues. But being gifted involves sensitivities to things, a greater understanding of things that they are not really emotionally mature enough to process, they take everything to heart and get extremely upset from things that most kids would just let roll off their shoulders. They have well developed sense of right and wrong and can become very upset by issues of global problems, famine, pollution, war and starving children. They see a problem and can't understand why it has to be that way. They feel these things and become weighted down by them. Intense sensitivity can cause gifted children to take criticism, or even general anger, very personally. Many times the weight of this causes many highly gifted children to suffer a form of depression called existential depression.

They often are misdiagnosed as ADHD, LD or Asperger's (a mild form of Autism). They often appear distracted but are just more aware of what's around them and their brain can process faster so they already have it and have moved on but you think they aren't paying attention. When The Scientist was in public school they felt she had Aspergers because she couldn't relate with other students. The school counselor related a story of her studying a patch of ice in the school yard during recess and becoming "overly" upset when other students broke the ice. The school authorities felt she should spend her time trying to interact with the other kids instead of looking at ice. She said there were interesting things in the ice and she was trying to figure out what they were. She also had a hard time talking to other kids because they didn't understand a lot of the words she used and thought her jokes were weird. This caused her a lot of distress and to withdraw from kids. To this day she prefers the company of adults to her peers.

Asynchronous Development: In gifted children their emotion, intellectual and physical development is out of sync. Imagine you have a 4 year old that reads like an 8 year old is physically like a 5 year old but emotionally is about 3 years old. This causes challenges in every aspect of their life, and as a parent you often feel like your slipping back and forth in time. One minute you're being drained of every piece of information you may possibly know about the rotation of the earth and with their intense questioning starting to wonder when it will possibly end. Then a moment later you're dealing with a temper tantrum of epic proportions over them not getting chocolate sprinkles on their ice cream because you only had rainbow available.

Raising a gifted child or children is an adventure. It's juggling between not pushing them into what you think they should be doing and worrying about the ever present problem of underachievement that is so prevelent with highly gifted kids.

Pulling The Scientist out of school and homeschooling her was suggested by a very caring psychologist who felt she would never be able to find her way if she stayed in school. I spent the next couple of months trying to prove him wrong. It didn't work. Homeschooling hasn't solved everything but it's so much better. Right now we are struggling with some of the issues I mentioned above, but even though sometimes we feel very alone I know we are not, I just have to remember to reach out.