After reading this, I find many connections between what is described in the article and what gifted children may experience in the classroom, including no adult to help them. These kids may be made to feel guilty for being ahead of others, and/or be shamed for not being ahead of all students at all times in all areas. Additionally they may often be called on to be "the helpers" for other children in the classroom (although no one helps them).
Some may say that is possible for a child with no other rejection/abuse/trauma/attachment issues to develop issues just from the experience of being neglected in the classroom.
Totally agree, educational neglect (or worse, abuse) could cause same types of behaviors, stemming from the anxiety a poor environmental fit causes.
My DD10 would appear to disprove this notion, as she exhibits the negative behavior above, and there are most definitely no attachment issues.
I was wondering if this pattern can also be attributed to anxiety, or ADHD, EF issues and/or developmental delay.
In my DD10's case, anxiety would be the only one that applies. And boy, does it.
But then we're in a chicken-and-egg situation... is she engaging in this type of thinking because of anxiety, or is she experiencing anxiety because she's trapped in this type of thinking?
That is a hard thing to tease out, isn't it? I am (relatively--ha!) certain some people are just hard-wired for anxiety, it's co-morbid with so many other issues, and some babies even are much more sensitive, high-needs than others.
What I like about this idea/approach (viewing behavioral presentations as symptoms of poor self-regulation), is that it doesn't matter much whether it's a chicken-egg situation. It's kind of Dialectal Behavioral Therapy, blending mindfulness with CBT, helping the child (privately) identify emotional state.
I believe my son spends a lot of time in the "blue" zone. While that's probably preferable to the "red" one (in terms of consequences), it's also sad when a child checks out/avoids/disengages from learning.
If our children with dysregulation problems could learn more body/mind self-awareness, it might make the whole picture clearer (is this a poor fit, where is support needed, where is acceleration appropriate). It's so difficult to figure out what's going on with a child when they present with behavioral challenges.
