Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Behavioral Quirks in Gifted Children

At a recent parent-teacher conference, my kid's teacher expressed some concern over her behavioral quirks. She sometimes focuses too intently on her work, especially when doing something creative or artistic, and loses awareness of her surroundings. She's often the last to realize her group was called or the bell rang and to get in line. She lacks time management skills, mostly because she gets absorbed in an assignment and loses track of time completely. She takes longer than other students to "switch gears" during transition periods. She once became obsessed with making an assignment "perfect" right down to the slant of the letters in her name.
This teacher had nothing but praise for my child, saying she participates well in discussions, is well behaved and social, and is doing "A" work, until I asked about giving her more challenging Math assignments. Then she brought up these "quirks" and told me challenging my daughter academically might stress her and make her worse. She used words like OCD and Autism.
Our daughter is very social, loves adventure and change in routine, and has no consistent ritualistic behaviors or tics to indicate OCD.
I believe what she has is a common symptom of gifted children -an overdelevoped ability to focus which can be exacerbated and misused when a child is bored or underchallenged. My mother and grandmother both claim these behaviors are common in the children of our family, showing up in more than half the kids to varying degrees. They call it "Absentminded Professor Syndrome".
Am I right? Are there any articles or studies that confirm my case? This teacher is using this to hold my daughter back academically, so any resources I could get to help inform her would be great.

Well, if the teacher is suggesting that suspected autism may be interfering with your child's emotional development to a great enough degree that her assignments need to be limited to prevent damage, I think that a full evaluation is in order.

Teachers aren't permitted to diagnose. If the teacher really thinks this is an issue, then a referral for a disability evaluation through the school should have been made immediately, and should be made now that it has been brought up to you as a reason to deny advanced work. Such evaluations typically include IQ and acheivement testing as well as other relevant diagnostic tests. These tests may well reveal that your daughter is exhibiting such perfectionism because she is seriously underchallenged.

Make sure whoever evaluates your child has read this book, or is at least familiar with the material in it.

That sounds like me. Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like OCD. The letter slant thingy sounds perfectionistic.

My wife periodically tries to amateur diagnose me with Asperger's syndrome. I point out that I am more likely to have inattentive-ADD than a form of autism. Mostly, I'm bored.

It doesn't sound like OCD to me either. It does sound rather like my own daughter, who does not have a dx (yet?)

chuckandchel,
you don't mention how old your daughter is but I suspect she is probably lower elementary years? Have you had your daughter tested privately in an effort to advocate for her giftedness? Do you live in a state that requires that they accommodate her for giftedness or at least test? Not that the school would readily accept it, but it’s a place to start.

Your family history info is very valid and sensible so keep it stuck in the front of your mind. There are lots of people who used to be kids just like the ones in school now who didn't go to school with NCLB and all the pharmaceutical possibilities there are these days, it's an entirely different world.

You can find lots of articles about gifted kids and the specific behaviors that they tend to have, and what they "look" like to people who aren't seeing the child in the gifted framework. This site has a database of them, and Hoagiesgifted does too, you could just search on different description/word combos. One of my favorites you could find by searching on something like “Characteristics of gifted children that can sometimes be seen as ‘problems’”

I agree with aculady that the teachers aren't permitted to diagnose and it's unprofessional (maybe even unethical?) for them to throw those words out to you in a conference. That would make me very uncomfortable even if they were otherwise praising her.

If the teacher is sincere, giving her the benefit of the doubt and the school wants to explore the possibility of these things, they need to something very formal and specific with gathering information. I’d even be cautious about that because if she is evaluated, their part is just to fill out checklists based on observation. It’s very subjective and they can say or check whatever they like. So if it’s as you suspect and it’s the worst case scenario, that they’re going this route to block gifted accommodations, they can align their feedback for the checklists to the one or more “diagnosis” they are thinking of.

The biggest thing to remember about diagnosis like autism, OCD, ODD, AD/HD and whatever they might come up with, with an otherwise healthy and adjusted child (perhaps not in school, but that’s environmental), is that there is no blood test or other medical/scientific method of determining whether a child or adult has that or not. And the child might show some indications of these issues in some environments or not. If you have diabetes or some medical issue that can be determined in a purely scientific way (blood tests, etc.), you don’t have it at work or school and then it suddenly disappears when you get home. But for the more behavioral type issues, you might be more defiant or “quirky” (nervous?) in some environments than others because you’re reacting to boredom, lack of fairness (gifted kids are big fairness radars), being misunderstood, etc. Also it’s the framework that the adult sees the child in that’s crucial.

If your daughter is actually doing something that they are genuinely concerned about or disrupts the class, they should be very specific, and you would need patterns observed over a period of time, like maybe six weeks or so? to really brainstorm or pinpoint a “real” problem. If you’ve never experienced your daughter doing the things they say it's something to do with school. If she does start carrying some behaviors over to home, she's likely getting more stressed out and I would keep a close eye on her. If that disappears over a long weekend, vacation, summer, again...environmental.

If it’s something with the math, find out what it was, very specifically. Try whatever the math was at home with your daughter. Maybe it’s just a new reaction to being challenged, like a perfectionism thing, if she learns quickly and isn’t used to it. Maybe she does have an LD issue that needs to be explored (not autism or OCD but something about transposing numbers, or not understanding it the exact way it was taught (needing a different approach) or a processing speed issue.

I think you brought up good points about how she is at home and adventurous, etc. When we got that “she has trouble with transitions” or otherwise inflexible line with our daughter, we’d always remember what a good traveler she is. Especially air travel, you know how unpredictable that can be and we’ve had some real whoppers of trips with delays. She never showed any signs of frustration, and thought the whole thing was fun and very exciting. The transition thing at school with alot of gifted kids is because they want to explore deeper or take more time, but the way they school day goes the kids have to move to the next thing as a group (a herd) and if most of the other kids are average they’ll just be okay with that, since the timing is designated for the typical student. So the gifted child will look unusual compard to the "norm" of the average group.

I’d caution you on a couple of items before finishing this long reply.

-If you really suspect that the school is going to go down this path to fight gifted accommodations, do your homework. Hopefully it won’t come to any battles...maybe the teacher in the next grade will jump on board with accommodating your daughter...but it doesn’t hurt to have all the information you can.

-Learn about your state, about whether they have to accommodate her giftedness or test her for this and any other rights you should know that you have.

-Find out ahead of time (if you can, the schools don’t like to let you know this) who in your area the school district uses for their psychological type testing. Is it just the school psychologist or do they also contract with a neuropsych/psychiatric person or practice in the area for more “serious” things? If you think it might come to that, that they might formally ask you or order you to have her tested for these more serious things they’ll set it up with their person who they have a contract with. Regarding this...assume that if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to...but find out for sure (they might come back and say they will take you to a hearing but you can just keep dragging it out).

If you haven’t done so already, and you can afford it, you might want to have your daughter tested privately. If you do, try very hard to find someone with special knowledge of gifted kids, maybe even 2E kids, just to be on the safe side. Get a really good profile on her now, and you’ll probably guess that I’m going to say...don’t use the person/center who is contracted with the school district, if there is one! But they'll also give the checklist forms to the school, so just keep this all in mind.
Good luck.

I would sue her for practicing as a psychologist without the training.

Mine has similar issues, it was actually the school that suggested these may be traits of a gifted child. They did ask us to take her in for a psych eval to rule out ADHD, who did eventually assess her as being gifted. He actually recommended that we take her to see a local gifted specialist to help her with this and some other issues that she has resulting from her giftedness. Shame we can't afford it now that our insurance company won't cover it.

Absent-minded Professor Syndrome: I call this phenomenon "hyperfocus," and yes, it's very common in gifted people (at least by my own observation). And it turns out to be an incredibly useful skill, because how many times do we find ourselves needing to think clearly in a world full of distractions?

It also turns out to be useful to embarrass people. I'm an average pool player at best, but one day some practical joker I'd never met decided to grab my cue stick as I was lining up a shot. That maneuver put me in hyperfocus mode, and I proceeded to run the table.

So yeah, don't let the teacher convince you that a strength is a weakness.

As for time management skills... what early elementary-aged kid has that?

I'd also suggest that both the slanty-letters thing AND the difficulty-switching-gears thing are related to perfectionism, because maybe the reason she's having trouble switching assignments is because she wasn't happy with the previous one yet?

I agree.

Keep in mind that excusing quirks as simply being "related to giftedness" can mask real, treatable disorders. My DS was diagnosed late with Asperger's because everyone attributed his quirks to his giftedness, when there was a genuine problem staring them in the face. I'd love to have those years back as a re-do, because he'd have gotten therapy he could really have used, and his life and mine would have been easier.

Only a professional can tease this out for you. But if a teacher red-flags a child as different from peers in not a good way, I'd pursue it rather than fighting her on it.

DeeDee

This is interesting. I have a kid who often has trouble with transitions as well, but who is also a wonderful traveler. I would take her anywhere in a heartbeat.

We have often joked that our kids attention spans' are too long and that's our main problem with them.