Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Slightly skeptic of the concept of Giftedness

Hello I'm new here and sorry for the use of a provocative headline, but hear me out.

The reason why I'm here is that during the last year or so i have found that i'm having a an increasingly difficult time managing emotions especially some hither to unexplored arrears of jealousy and love(cliche I know). It got to a point where normal coping techniques where insufficient, and reasoning it out did not provide any usable answers.

This was the time I, once again, ventured out into the world of self diagnosis, where i concluded that i properly wasn't bipolar or schizophrenic, but I kept running into articles about higher levels of emotions in the so called 'Gifted'.

So now to the point: when i read about giftedness i find that a identify with around 75% of the markers, as well as IQ levels. But my gripe with the definition is that it to my eyes seem to good, and somewhat lacking in it's relation to common psychological framework. Furthermore i fear that much of the information is written by concerned parents to other concerned parents, a demographic which is notorious for grasping after straws(e.g. anti vaccination).

But i would love to hear your input on this, i will be happy to be proven wrong, what a load of my shoulders that would be.

P.S. I am dyslexic so please don't come down too hard on my gamma.

The concept of giftedness only has relevance to a school aged child because it affects the pace of learning, which is why you're finding articles aimed at parents. Once you're not in a limited age-based educational setting you're just another person with a unique set of memories, experiences and brain chemistry. Your IQ becomes more benefit than problem.

You have trouble with love and jealousy, have you seen a therapist of any kind to help you figure out ways to cope? If you've been self-diagnosing, did you consider borderline personality disorder?

What evidence do you have of your intelligence?

When I read your post, I find it quite difficult to figure out what you are talking about.

Have you checked out SENG? Or the Dyslexic Advantage community?

sengifted.org

Dyslexicadvantage.com

I also recommend you read The Dyslexic Advantage by Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide. It is a good book for any dyslexic who might be wondering about themselves.

I disagree (strongly). Being cognitively gifted means that your intellectual abilities are fundamentally different from almost everyone else's. Many gifted adults --- and especially those in the highly-gifted-or-greater group --- see the world in a fundamentally different way than those who aren't as intelligent. Some see nuance where others don't or can't. Some see problems where others don't. Some may even see simplicity where others see hopeless complexity. And those sensitivities that people discuss here? They don't disappear when childhood ends. And so on. This reality can make it difficult to fit in with others and it can be very isolating.

Agreed-- and one aspect of being very far from the normative, neurotypical experience of childhood makes a person fundamentally apart from most others.

How many adults can relate to the experience of a literate childhood at ages 3-6yo? How many can relate to an awareness of international events at age 7 to 10?

Only other people who lived that themselves-- and that isn't many.

I'm about five years YOUNGER than I 'seem' online. The reason is simple. I remember things like Watergate and the fall of Saigon very clearly. I was well under four years old then.

My daughter also seems "old" for her chronological age in terms of her framing experiences. She recalls 9/11. And really-- she shouldn't, since she was two.

In addition to meshing with those who have experiences that most of our contemporaries are too young to recall, we also have unique and life-shaping epiphanies at ages that are just flatly a little weird.

For example, I'm VERY sure that most 5yo children do not spend a contemplative hour staring up at the sky and truth-testing solopsism as a pragmatic philosophy, before rejecting it as basically untestable. Yet I recall it clearly.

There are things that set me apart from most others for a lifetime. My developmental arc is just radically different from that of most people. Childhood and adolescence spent waiting for others to catch up was excruciating, but adulthood has been a disappointment, too, because I never considered the fact that while I was "waiting" for them, I was not standing still either.

Gifted is just a label to a certain degree which is degraded in concept by bureaucratic school standards, normative scores, competitive wishful thinking, and ham-handed political correctness.

Setting aside the label... you have brain, psychological, and enviornmental factors that inherently have normal distributions. No particular characteristic is perhaps innately sufficient or necessary (beyond some minimum thresholds) for extreme intellectual capabilities, but when multiples occur together you tend to get intellectual performance which is labeled gifted.

Because of these factors working together, the more common ones are then rolled into gifted characteristics checklists along with secondary chacteristics which result naturally from those bumping up against life.

Some of the factors: cortical minicolumn density and distribution, dopamine responsiveness, sensory developmental disruptions. The normal distribution of minicolumns maps inversely into intellectual giftedness such that the two tail distributions are both seen commonly in giftedness. These two extremes also correlate with autism on one end and dyslexia on the other. Dopamine responsiveness is one possible causal area for overexctiabilities, where the world, senses, and emotions are experiencd more intensely.

I'll second reading The Dylexic Advantage.

HK, this may be one of the reasons that parenthood as a general experience initially was such a social relief. There is enough commonality, but also enough natural variation, in the newborn parenting experience, that one can always find something to share with another parent of an infant. It's only when one's children begin to diverge from others' (and for some that happens quite early) that this again becomes a social tender spot.

It's also something I think was shielded from somewhat more than some others here were by having multiple EG/PG siblings. When others were playing with dolls, we were, too, but ours formed a parliamentary system of government we described as a constitutional patriarchy, with a figurehead religious head of state, elected executive, and elected legislature, and periodic open elections. (Unfortunately, despite universal suffrage inclusive of all species, effective democracy was subverted by the large voting bloc of dog stuffies controlled and recruited by our PG oldest sibling!)

Living with immediate family members spanning a 4+ SD range of IQ, and growing up in a close community that included a chronological peer whose assessed mental age in adolescence was about 3, helped me, I think, to learn that it is possible to find points of intersection with anyone. Knowing multiple EG/PG individuals intimately (not only my siblings, but also cousins and friends) also gave me a perspective on temperament and intensity that is able to separate personality from giftedness.

I realize that I have, on the whole, had an unusual background among other unusual backgrounds, but I mention this because I want to highlight the possibilities for gifted adulthood.

OP, we are intended to live in diverse communities, with different kinds of interdependence with each other, regardless of IQ. No one human being can be all in all to another, and when we treat others as such, we risk crushing them and ourselves with unrealistic expectations for them to meet all of our social and emotional needs. I encourage you strongly to find a professional to explore the emotional intensities that you find difficult to bear, but I also would suggest that you begin looking at your relationship with each person around you from the starting point of one small positive intersection--which may lead to more, but, even if it doesn't, is sufficient in itself.

Exactly, aeh-- being an outlier (as being non-NT makes one, by definition)-- can, if we allow it, provide us with a deep respect and compassion for OTHER outliers who intersect our lives.

Forget the snobby stereotype of MENSAN's who would never speak to anyone who isn't one of them-- what I've actually experienced is that while that kind of snobbery might be somewhat common in those who are intellectually somewhat insecure-- or monochromatic in their self-image-- it's not that common among people who are truly +3 or more standard deviations from the mean.

THOSE individuals tend to regard the world with curiosity and interest, not ennui, and this often includes the other people in it. My daughter (PG) and my father (also PG) were both such individuals-- they serve as magnets for other outliers, and are genuinely enchanted by them on their own terms.

Some of this is an innate personality quirk in that both of them are people-oriented and basically optimistic, so they tend to look for ways that others are interesting, worthwhile, decent, etc. It's an incredible gift, that outlook. But having seen it, I firmly believe that it is one worth cultivating, too.

And there's a flip side: in a certain sense, NT people mature too quickly for a PG kid. Biologically speaking, brain maturation means ending the period of massive learning, creativity, and exploration and becoming a "finished product" i.e. an adult. Some species have longer periods of juvenile flexibility than others, and humans are at one extreme, retaining features of mental juvenility throughout the lifetime.

But PG people are at an extreme of that extreme. In addition to what HK describes of being ahead of my peers, I also experienced other kids being too quick to leave the interesting parts of childhood behind. When we hit junior high, play, invention, and mental exploration seemed to shut off like a spigot, and one was supposed to just "hang around." Complaining about being bored was a popular pastime. So was sunbathing (this was the '70's), which made me want to chew my own hind leg off.

The concept of "mental age" as a way to understand gifted development is a myth. It's not "ahead" or "behind." It's qualitatively different.