Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Questions for you all about Giftedness

Greetings,
I am a PG 23 year old living in Georgia.

I have some questions for you all about giftedness in general:

Do any of you feel that you and/or your children are sometimes/often misunderstood by administrators, teachers, professors, psychologists, or even therapists because of giftedness? For instance, if you or your child indicates that a class is not sufficiently challenging, this might be taken as arrogance though this was never the intention? If you and/or your child has or still encounters this, how do you deal with these irritating incidences? Is this feeling of being misunderstood something we must become accustomed to?

Another question is this:

Do any of you and/or your children suffer from hypersensitivity--i.e. extreme sensitivity due to noises in the background, lights flickering, clocks ticking, or even an intensity in terms of experiencing physical pain and emotions? These first three are overwhelming for me at times and I am wondering if any of you encounter these traits/incidences.

Often people will feign ignorance because it is convenient to do so. And sometimes the ignorance is real. One tricky thing is figuring out which situation you are dealing with. No. No-one in our family has ever had anything like this (except maybe with emotions). Are you suggesting such symptoms are somehow related to giftedness?

Yes to both. Ds8's now being homeschooled based on the issues you brought up with your questions and what we faced with the gifted schools and prior with special needs programs/schools. They had no clue with a 2e/pg child. Between the schools and various professionals, I can say that no one has ever seen a child like him before so he's often misunderstood and not accepted.

Ds8 was born with severe sensory processing. He had extreme sensitivity to everything (visual, auditory, tactile, taste, smell, vestibular, and on and on). It's improved over the years due to loads of therapies and interventions but at least less severe than it was. It still flares up when he's under stress, going through big developments, growth spurts, etc. I try very hard to minimize the stimulation with him and to keep ds on an even keel. Carol Kranowitz's book, The Out-of-Sync Child, is a classic on sensory processing
- http://out-of-sync-child.com/

Those with PTSD (with or without extreme anxiety/perfectionism, etc.) can display these traits too. You can be hypervigilant with PTSD and this can heightened your sensitivities and awareness. Cognitive behavioral therapy and neurofeedback can help.

As to your question about coping with a 2e/pg child, that's a been journey to say the least. Andrew Solomon recently wrote a book, Far From the Tree, which included classical musical prodigies and children with a range of disorders/conditions (deaf, dwarfism, Down Syndrome, autism, transgender, born out of rape, etc.). Solomon also posed this question on how parents cope when their children are born so far from the norm and no where near what they expected/anticipated.

Solomon's book can help put things in perspective. Readers can perhaps discern how prodigies and 2e/pgness falls within the range of human experience. When I read the chapter on dwarfs and considered how so many of them face stiff stigma and have medical conditions that require extensive and very expensive surgeries, it helped me put our situation into perspective.

Yes, we definitely have lower than normal pain threshold for one of our children, and really don't know how else to explain it..?Something he will grow out of maybe.
DH is extremely noise sensitive; might have a bit of a control thing thrown in there as well, lol.

Yes being misunderstood is part of giftedness, doubled: in both what you are saying (content of your message) and how you are experiencing things (what it is like to be gifted). Folks think it is 'ok' and not **painful** to be forced to sit through boring class after boring class (as an example).
To some degree all folks are going to run into boring classes, and those folks were ok. No idea it can actually make someone feel physically ill (headaches, stomach aches) , feel like they are a bad person ( something is wrong with me, I don't understand why everyone else can't see the answers or understand my perspective on it, see the facts, etc. , well maybe I am wrong after all, maybe in fact there is something permanently, majorly wrong with me). And so on.

here is another good link:
https://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/pg.htm

90% were described by their parents as "sensitive."

Actually seems like these questions are embodied in half the forum threads here.

As to being misunderstood, I find it is generally easier to blow people's minds than to change them.

Absolutely. As far as school we have already had our share of what you are expressing and DS is only 6. Things have improved tremendously this year thanks to a teacher that "gets it".

As far as sensitivities. YES! Overexcitabilities. Read up on it. You will be amazed. My kids, DS6 (PG) and DS4 have different sensitivities. The older was extremely sensitive to sound but seem to have grown out of it some. Or maybe just learned what he needs to do to deal. The younger has had such emotional sensitivities that has been very difficult to deal with. Seems it is getting better as well as he is getting older and understands the feelings. Still, highly intense, emotional, pretty much exhausting kids..

Yes to both your questions!

Overexcitabilities - do a quick search for Dabrowski's theory and it will give you a concise summary. You may be surprised to find that your siblings and parents most likely have some of these too - each gifted person has a different number and combination of these and many adults with them have just learnt to ignore or forget them or work around them so casually that we often forget all about them until we think about it.

All three of my boys have some, esp the noise one, and two of the oldest is very sensitive in terms of emotional sensitivities.

Misunderstood is a given in giftie's life - esp in traditional schooling systems and around extended family and other family friends too.

Yes, I think ds7 was a bit misunderstood by his previous school. He told the teacher he was "bored" and she mistook this for lack of comprehension.

DS was/is emotionally sensitive- he just feels things intensely and gets easily excited, disappointed, frustrated, etc. He's better now than he used to be, but still needs to work on managing his frustrations. He's somewhat sensitive to textures, smells, etc, and shows some mild anxiety symptoms.

Is this feeling of being misunderstood something we must become accustomed to?

Yes. I am MG, maybe HG (huge underachiever and never really gave any of this any thought until I realized that my DS is PG). I have been misunderstood my entire life. My DH is PG and very few people understand him. BUT - he did learn in his 20s how to relate to anyone. He can talk to anyone and is completely and genuinely interested in whomever he is speaking with. But if DH goes off into PGland - no one knows what the heck he is talking about. I don't only mean when he starts speaking about very complex things. He just goes off and starts relating things that seem unrelated and gets really excited (overexcitability).

My DH is a STEM Ph.D. Fortunately, he can find many others in his work world like him.

My DS7 has massive overexcitabilities. We have to have a mattress on the floor in front of our TV. Should DS7 stumble upon a Nova special that is particularly "exciting" (ex. string theory), he needs his space to jump on the mattress for the ENTIRE length of the video. It's that exciting. Very few people understand that.