Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What does the "gifted" label mean to you?

Hi Islandofapples,

I am perhaps towards the other end of pondering the questions you are now. Your experience sounds very similar to mine (even down to the Mensa home test) and I have felt for some time that giftedness has presented itself quite differently in me than in others. Now... let me just say that these are just my musings on things and I have no idea if there is any truth to them or not. Overall, I guess my theory is that giftedness might look quite different if you have had a traumatic childhood. I would love someone to do a study on it - I haven't been able to find one.

I too had a very traumatic childhood and difficult school experience. Someone who went through a similar experience to mine described their schooling as never really being present, which resonated with me - because you're too involved in just surviving. I was talking to a woman who runs a large children's welfare service in my state and she was saying there is more and more evidence suggesting that children who experience prolonged periods of trauma in childhood end up with their brains wired differently.

I have a dad who tested EG+, as did my daughter. My husband is smart, I'd say MG-HG. He can run rings around me mathematically, but doesn't see the connections between things that are obvious to me. I talk about it as being a difference between looking for answers and looking for understanding. He looks for answers, I look for understanding. I feel that it's the looking for answers that is typically viewed as giftedness, and that when the two are combined (looking for answers and understanding) you get what is typically considered HG+ (sorry this is a very simplistic explanation of what I mean and possibly makes no sense). I think in my case the looking for answers (which is kind of what education is I guess, and which I never had the brain space to engage with on any level until late high school) never really got developed. The looking for understanding, which to my mind helps you navigate difficult life situations, got over developed.

For a number of years after dd was born I would read about giftedness and find that so much of it fitted me, but my experience of interacting with other people who identify (legitimately) as gifted was that I was very different. I don't talk the same way, I don't think the same way. Yet even then I often find myself in the same situation as I do with my husband - seeing connections that they don't see (and they are often appreciative when I point them out, so it's not just that I'm connecting random and unrelated things!).

I think 'knowing' if you are matters more if you haven't identified as a smart person before you have your own gifted child, because it suddenly explains so much. I don't know that I'd test well on a real IQ test (the Mensa home one here is multiple choice and I'm a good test taker). But ultimately I gave up trying to determine if I was gifted by standard definitions or not and just accepted that my early experience has meant that I'll probably never really know how my thinking compares to others. My genetics would suggest that I am and I think in the important ways (intensity, curiosity, need for new knowledge, depth of understanding etc), I probably am. But in a slightly odd way. Hence the username

Sorry for the life story - I just thought I'd mention my experience in case it resonated with you!

It definitely resonates with me!!! A lot of what you said is new to me, as I never thought of it quite that way. I didn't mention my home life, which was probably worse for me than school.

If ever I tell someone, "Oh yes, my mom was mentally and physically abusive, I was bullied terribly in school, then I got cancer as a teenager..."

(Oh, and someone mentioned here about group tests. I took one and didn't pay attention the whole time because I had appendicitis. My appendix burst a day or so after that. By the time I got out of the hospital, my mom made them retest me alone, and the gifted class had already been chosen and was full. That's why my mom seems to think they didn't really want to have to hire another teacher and open a second class for me. Maybe I was never meant to be in it.)

I like to think the universe or God or whatever gave me all this adversity for some reason. I just don't know why...

Well, anyway, I think my life story sounds ridiculous and that I sound like I'd be a basket case (or just lying) and I already did my very helpful year of counseling right after I got married (because I want to stop the "cycle of abuse" NOW and not put that on my family.)

But there was no safe haven for me to just be me, anywhere. Ever since I met and married DH, I feel like I am some other person - the real me- living some enchanted pretend happy life.

I've reflected on it before, and it feels like a switch flipped and I got thrown into an alternate reality where nothing that I remember happening to me really happened, and all that really exists is me in my new happy life with someone who loves me for who I am and actually allows me to be me.

My mom has also mellowed out as she has aged, and I have been cancer-free for 10 years and have a beautiful healthy baby girl (they said I might not have children), so it could be like my life before didn't really happen. I sometimes have a hard time accepting that my happiness could actually be a pretty permanent thing. It sounds very PTSD-like, actually.


"Overall, I guess my theory is that giftedness might look quite different if you have had a traumatic childhood. I would love someone to do a study on it - I haven't been able to find one."
and this^
I would really love to find out how a traumatic childhood affects things.

"I think in my case the looking for answers (which is kind of what education is I guess, and which I never had the brain space to engage with on any level until late high school)"

This is also a really interesting theory, because my parents describe me as such an insatiably curious young child, but I eventually zoned out completely in school (while getting A's, up until my parents divorced when I was 12.)

I was heavily into fiction books. They were my escape and they really got me through so much, I think. (That, and my dream to become a singer, which no one really supported until my dad did when I was 20.)

I definitely had no energy or support to do much else. I actually met DH right when I took an amazing community college class that awakened my love of learning again. For the past few years, I've been simply devouring information. I research everything and I write and create like I never did before.

I am a little sad that it took me so long, though, and a tiny part of me feels like I didn't fulfill my potential.
I was reading Outliers the other day, and he talked about a pg guy who came from a dysfunctional family, and he was showing how even a pg person could end up never becoming anything or fulfilling his potential if he didn't have the right sort of support system.

The guy he cited didn't have the skills to succeed in a college environment and was doing his own graduate level research that would likely never be taken seriously because he never got his degree. I'm obviously not pg, but that book (if at all accurate), really makes a case for how circumstances shape whether or not you succeed in some amazing way.

Hmm, I feel like I sound really pathetic in this thread, but I am pretty happy now, even if my posts talk about transient loneliness. I am just still trying to find my place in life and figure out how to make what I do with it meaningful.

Just found this paper on giftedness and attachment...

Well, I suppose you might say that's an example of the government holding schools to a higher standard of evaluation than it is willing to use for itself.

Hi Islandofapples, thanks for the great link I haven't got time to reply properly now, but will pm you in the next day or so.

(and no, you don't sound pathetic at all!)

I am really not sure what I think of that article. Perhaps I just have my back up as someone who was most strongly committed to attachment parenting with my 2E kid? I think Velcro baby describes her nicely. She was "disorganised" from birth, we would have ended up attachement parenting through necessity had we not already planned things that way. I really do not feel than that she developed her problems due to poor attachment. Though I can see that it would be entirely possible for poor attachment to cause issues I feel this would be the exception rather than the rule. I think the reality is that there are many gifted kids whose brains are "interesting" in other ways as well as their giftedness and that that is heavily genetically driven.

Well, I am reading another book right now - What Babies Say Before They Can Talk and he is also talking about the negative effects of babies that are not attached (well, their needs responded to.)

It is making me feel a little bad, because we are also practicing attachment parenting and DD was colicky in the early months and fussy and very serious once I fixed the colic (got rid of dairy and soy.)

We are doing the best we can, but it feels like our best isn't good enough. I feel like she gets frustrated a lot and there is not a whole lot I can do to fix her problems (help her to communicate, help her to move / crawl /walk.) She's gotten happier as she's gotten older and more capable, though...

Might it not be possible that some gifted kids could simply be worse off if they didn't have the proper attachment? I mean, I think any kid is worse off if they get neglected, abused, or don't have their feelings validated.


I think some people get really irritated about this stuff because it is like "blaming the mother" or whatever, but, well, parents do have a profound effect on their children. We just try to do our best...

I disagree with many of the ideas proposed in the article. DD8 is one of the most securely-attached children I have ever met, yet she has ADHD, may be dyslexic, and was a very late-talker.

Yeah, I really don't believe that the data on ADD/ADHD supports the idea that it is caused by environment. It is very heavily influenced by genetics from the research I've read. I, too, didn't care for the statement in the article that,


Both of my girls were very verbal very early but my youngest does have ADD. I co-slept with both of them and nursed for quite some time (2.5 years with dd10, the younger one). I, too, went in the AP direction out of necessity with my oldest b/c she had very high attachment needs and cried constantly. I carried her everywhere and was highly responsive. By the time dd10 came along, that was the way I parented so that's how she was parented as well although she was a significantly more mellow baby.

The article has significant weaknesses. The authors use signs and symptoms that are characteristic of learning disabilities and neurologically-based exceptionalities (such as Asperger's) as indicators that a child has attachment problems, and then turn around and assert that attachment problems, not learning disabilities, are the cause of underachievement. They define securely attached children as being trusting, confident, emotionally regulated, socially competent and empathetic, which seems designed to label anyone with significant LDs, ADD/ADHD or autism spectrum traits as having "insecure attachment".

They go on to talk about how well-adjusted children are securely attached (What is a well-adjusted child? Why, one who is trusting, confident, socially competent, emotionally regulated and empathetic, of course...), and how most gifted children seem well-adjusted (and thus securely attached), but some appear to have social adjustment problems - which are, apparently by definition, signs of insecure attachment, not signs of an inappropriate environmental match or disability.

It is one of the most poorly reasoned papers I have ever read.