Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Behavioral Quirks

I am just being curious today.

What are some of your giftie’s behavioral quirks?

Stays up quite late. Whenever I say something he doesn't like, engages in theatrics ("Oh my GAWWWWWWD, Dad!"). Takes such long showers that he sometimes falls asleep on the floor of the shower, if we don't watch him. Extremely absent-minded about where he's put things, including his two-year-old brother. Zeros in on words he finds silly for one reason or another, and uses/abuses them terribly for quite some time (yesterday's was "mustachio", prompting him to declaim in the voice of a foreign ringmaster, "I have grown a mustachio on my midsection", etc., as he applied tape to various sections of his body and his brother's). Likes puns and goofy jokes. Zeros in on activities for extended periods, to the point he will forget that he's hungry. Very sensitive to noise. Likes doing things for himself, but also clever at pretending that he either doesn't hear or can't fulfill requests from parents, applying logic as necessary.

It is very difficult to get my 8yo boy's attention, especially when he is reading. I don't know if our voices are just not registering with him or if he is being deliberately aloof. He is a good boy overall and is interesting to talk to when he does acknowledge your existence.

My daughter is very sensitive to noise. I have the HARDEST time taking her to the dentist!!!! after about 4 years of looking I finally found a dentist that could work on her and she (the dentist) moved....!!

Ever since my DS5 was 2, he LOVES to be "quizzed" on trivia, math, spelling, logic questions, etc....this is our routine whenever we're in the car. My DD2 was feeling left out, so she insists on questions also. I run out of questions for her though...so I resort to body part identification.

DS5 needs to synthesize knew knowledge verbally, and wants to discuss new things he's learned often past my own mastery. Mort conversations end with an Internet search. Thank goodness for smart phones.

Both my kids are also very sensitive to loud noises.

DD has a really intense need for information about everything. If you take her to the dentist (previous post made me think of this) she is not afraid, per se, but the appointment takes a long time because she asks 5 million questions about every instrument and procedure.

She used to talk to herself nonstop. If I ever lost her in the house when she was a toddler, I could just follow the sound of her voice.

DS used to regale total strangers with random ocean facts, but has stopped doing that as much. They both recited entire books and many long poems from memory in their 2s and 3s. You know! I don't think DS is doing this anymore now that he can read. DD stopped doing it too around that time, although she still has an amazing ability to memorize. She learns everybody's lines when she is in plays.

Hanni wakes up in the middle of the night out of a dead sleep (we co-sleep), and in a perfectly awake voice informs me of something or asks a question, and instantly falls back asleep. Last night it was "What does 'definitely' mean?"

DS8 - strong sense of everything needing to be fair

DS5 - the need for everyone to see him rebelling publicly before capitulating to the request asked of him

DD13 hates to not be aware of the complete context and background of any and all conversation around her.

Mostly, her snarkiness and the things that she finds absurd, I guess, which is pretty much anything and everything.

Deep impatience at being treated like a performing circus animal. Once she masters something, she may well refuse to 'demonstrate' for anyone, and it can easily (ohhhhh so easily) devolve into a total power struggle, which she DELIGHTS in.

Stubbornness... oh-my-goodness. (No idea where she gets that from...)

Sense of self and innate 'reading' of others which is downright freaky. She'll overreact in typical teen fashion to some look/remark from one of us in one moment, and then shrug off a blatant snub or slight from a friend as "yeah, but ________, so {friend} needed to feel in control over something. Reacting to it would only have escalated things, and it wasn't worth it." She started doing things like that around 3-5yo. She has no "need to win" in social settings like that, which is a downright bizarre trait among human beings.

Her interest in and compassion for human beings in a "big-picture," and "social justice" kind of way. That's not necessarily a 'giftie' quirk, but a "DD" one. This, in combination with the stubbornness and perceptiveness/self-control noted above led her to be nicknamed "Little Ghandi" by a daycare provider when she was fourteen months old. It's hardwired.

She needs print materials. The way most people need air. She has never voluntarily left the house without a book since she was about three.

Insomnia; she's had problems with it, off and on, since she was about 3? She also never slept as much as age-mates, and still doesn't. At 13, she will sleep about nine hours if we let her, but most nights only 7-8 hours is plenty.

Oh lord yes! DD is just like this. I also have to explain all the New Yorker cartoons that she doesn't get. (Some of them really don't translate well for the 8yo brain.)

A quirk I've mentioned before is her ability to see letters and numbers and then county and state shapes in sticks, leaves, toast, shadows, etc. We were playing Pictionary the other day and I literally drew the beginning of the top of the state of Idaho and she shrieked "Idaho!" When she was 2 she had most of the countries and flags of the world memorized from a poster she had on her wall. I was such a clueless first-time parent that I had no idea how unusual this was. I really should have taken a video.

DD8
* As above, demands context/clarification for every conversation she overhears. Seems to be able to hear everything except when being told to do something.
* Goes into a trance while reading books to the point she can't hear anything. Even her friends tease her about it.
* Innate ability to read people and sometimes quite humorously calls them out. I wrote one of these down last year when she was seven. Her grandpa had been rambling on during dinner about a special parking area he knew about in crowded downtown Laguna Beach, when she suddenly declared in a loud voice: "Poppa, I can't believe you can't remember when you got your dog or when it died, but you remember all about your secret parking spot."

Auuuughhh. Yes-- the 'reading four books at once' thing is just bizarre beyond words to me.

DS3 - people watcher

I am interested in the fact that this is so common. I must admit that I actually find this rather annoying. Where do we think it comes from? Just a need for information? I have perhaps incorrectly attributed it to DD's anxiety.

A newish acquaintance ran into this from DD recently (I was not present) and told me about it with great amusement. She actually found it charming, maybe because DD's questions were interesting? I don't know. I'm glad other people can see it that way! I'm always self-conscious when she does it with other adults; it seems pushy from my POV. I sometimes forget that other people (often extroverts with big personalities) can relate more to some of her larger-than-life traits than I can at times.

I always assumed it was to manage anxiety, too. Third-party conversations can move fast and cover a lot of ground. Maybe they just aren't able to turn off their need to gather and process what they overhear, so they demand it makes proper sense? The irony is this ability has given our DD more anxiety because she's constantly overhearing adults at school and gym, etc, discuss issues and topics that were not meant for a child's ears, but she cannot ask them for clarification.

My dad, DS3, and me are all like that.

My dad drives my mom crazy. I drive DH crazy. DS drives me crazy!

Yes. I think that fundamentally, it is probably a need for information, and that need to process things in a 'big picture' way. Things that my dd can't make sense of irk her the way that some kids will pick at a scab, I think. LOL.

Hmm. My DD is very quirky. I would not be surprised if she grows into an ASD diagnosis. But, for right now all her quirks seem to be sub-clinical. She is a really happy little kid that is doing great in all aspects of life. When I look at the DSM IV or V she is just not there at all, yet she has many aspy traits.

She hums while she eats.
She has a voiceless grunt that comes and goes.
She looks away when she is talking to you to think.
She is a picky eater.
She is hyper sensitive to smell.
She has a great aural memory.

In a good way, but really abnormally so--

She is one of the most imaginative kids I have ever heard of.
She can play all day by herself with a handful of simple toys and imagination.
She never tantrummed.
She does not cry like a typical 3yo. She cries like a much older child, silently.
She was always easy to reason with.
She has an amazing ability to defer gratification.

And some advanced quirks--

She has an affinity for poetry, recites lines when appropriate, speaks in rhythm and rhyme.
She can read words spelled out to her aurally.
She reads very fast in her head. I think she takes in whole sentences before actually reading them aloud. She is a strong whole language reader. But, this seems to mean she will sometimes paraphrase the text, replacing "a" with "the" and even saying things like "runned" for "ran."

We have not pushed her academically yet, so I am not sure how she will respond to say direct instruction or workbooks. I have a feeling she is very intrinsically motivated. Which is probably why I have not bothered trying too hard to extrinsically motivate her. If she does not want to learn it, I don't think she can be taught it! I feel like I just need to convince her she is able to do things, or she should want to learn something. Because, once she is convinced, she learns without being taught.

HelloBbya, since you are like this, maybe you can explain why you, at least, feel this need? Is it borne from mild anxiety or more curiosity/need to know?


Things that don't make sense to DD drive her nuts, so this is probably part of it. She needs to continue asking questions till the issue is settled to her satisfaction. I guess this part is certainly a clear giftie trait. (And it is why I have "The Question and Answer Book of Astronomy," which is NOT a childrens' book, on my shelf...)

Some of DS6's 'quirks' have changed over the years, some haven't.

-He has always been afraid of loud noises, certain frequency noises, and particularly the sound of flushing toilets.

-He went through a six month or so phase when he was around 3 to 4 where he narrated almost his entire life (i.e. "And then I will get my blankie and then I will get in the van and buckle my seat belt and you will drive to daycare but when we get to daycare I will put my blankie on my head so no one can see me and I will be shy.").

-He fidgets- A LOT!

-He loves to listen to the news on the radio and asks questions about EVERYTHING.

-He has huge anxiety about all kinds of day to day stuff but will sit and watch documentaries about 9/11 without any issues at all.

-He is very particular about temperatures of things like food and baths but will then put on a long sleeve turtleneck shirt with shorts on a 90 degree day.

-He is also a huge perfectionist that gets frustrated easily if something doesn't just 'come to him'.

Basically, he wears me out ;-)

Oh yes, I can relate to the need to know about every conversation happening around her. Knowing isn't enough - she needs to be involved in them. We are working on it...

Also the loud noises although probably not as bad as some others are experiencing.

Other "quirks":

- a need to spin. Whether she is dancing, swimming, on a tire swing - she spins and spins and spins. I get dizzy just watching her.

- a need to "dress for the occasion". Whether we are going to school art night, a theater performance, lunch for mother's day - whatever it is. She gets all decked out in a "southern belle" type of hat, feather boa, frilly/lacey anything, gloves, high heels, make up and jewelry. Did I mention she is 7? Until last year she usually added a crown to the ensemble but now the big hat usually suffices.

- totally throwing herself into her dramatic or imaginative play. The imaginary friends are gone but a recent one involved deciding she was going to open a restaurant and asking every day if we could PLEASE go shopping for the furniture, decorations, cookware, etc. She found an empty restaurant and was ready to sign a lease and start serving customers. Again, did I mention that she is 7?

- she has to have several books going at once but since she is significantly LD it means audio books in the car and DH and I reading at night. We are in the middle of the 4th Harry Potter book in the car. At one point something happened and a character jumped up, pulled their wand and said a spell. DD said it along with her. "Have you listened to this before?" "No, don't you remember in the first book they were taught that spell in one of their first classes. " "Have they used it since then?" "No. I just remember it."

- a need to perform - sing, dance, act - at every opportunity. It doesn't matter if she has an audience or not.

- she gets TOTALLY absorbed in every performance she watches. Cheering in the political rally for Teddy Roosevelt while watching "Teddy and Alice", leaving the theater crying if a favorite character is killed, jumping to her feet and yelling "Bravo" when a particular performance really thrills her, etc.

- a fascination with historical times and figures. We already went through the Pilgrims and American Revolution. Now we are reading biography after biography of Teddy Roosevelt and Sakagawea. She recently explained to a waitress at a restaurant, who turned out to be a moonlighting 4th grade teacher, that President Hoover wasn't a bad guy - people blamed him for the Great Depression but it really wasn't his fault.

- a total fear of disappointing a teacher or getting into any sort of trouble at school. She is totally freaked out by color charts and other public shaming systems even though she doesn't get in trouble.

- a true, deep appreciation for aesthetics. A beautiful flower, painting or piece of music totally captivates her.

At least for me, I hear everything, including conversations I do not want/need to hear.

Once I hear them, I have a burning desire to know every details about them.

I just _need_ to know!

My son (8) spins! It's not as frequent as it was because he's gotten himself in trouble (crashing into other kids in line ups when he was younger). He still adores our tire swing though. Spin spin spin.

My daughter (9) skips in one place when she talks - it's like she can't contain her energy.

They (we) have so many others. I don't know where to start, lol.

This was my daughter at 6. She's better now (9). She learns at the speed of light, but at 6 if it was something just a little above her level, then she would be instantly angry. She had intense perfectionism - her grade 2 teacher commented several times that you could see it physically manifesting itself in the way she gripped her pencil and hunched over her desk... she'd take 15 minutes to do something that the other kids would scrawl out in 5, and it was because she kept erasing it and doing it again....

Both my kids have an extreme intolerance to repetition. Once they've mastered something, they can only do it 2 or 3 times before they become stressed with boredom.

Here's a boredom story: my daughter, then 8, had just started grade 4 and had homework. It was to print the good copy of a one page story she'd written at school. All she had to do was copy a neater version of her draft. It was JUST COPYING. It took about 3 hours, complete with crying, shouting (all her, lol) and much chair and table kicking. I was desperate to figure out why she was so upset: "do your hands hurt? are you ok?" "here, put a ruler under each line so that it's easy to follow." etc etc. I finally got it out of her: "mommy it's SO BORING!! I just can't do it!!" (OMG). I finally had to walk her through it word by word: "this word! GO! print it! Excellent! Next word! Just do it! Awesome! Next word!" etc etc etc.

It's interesting because if I look back over the year (she just finished grade 4), she's no longer plagued by perfectionism but her work is much sloppier. She's very "all or nothing." It's either perfect with angst or sloppy and substandard with a smile. It's like there's an on/off switch. So in reality, she hasn't really learned to cope with perfectionism - she's simply stopped caring. Ah, the underachiever...

LOL! I had an extremely similar situation last year, when my DD was 8 and in 4th grade. I think for us, it was a "write one sentence using each spelling word" task. I was amazed that yelling, "Your word is [word]. Write!" actually worked as a motivating technique.

Oh yeah. We have this too. It's weird. DD has absolutely gorgeous, perfect handwriting. She recently decided to make it horrible. Like, semi-legible. I rarely get really mad at her about stuff like this, but it was driving me NUTS, especially her "whatever" attitude about it. We actually did put our foot down and made her start rewriting things. All we could get out of her was that she wanted to write faster and that a girl in her class who she admired wrote "like that." I man, a minor drop in quality would have been fine, but this was A+ handwriting to C-. Weird.

Ugh... sounds a bit like "Mom's Carnival Funhouse of Math."


I had her go and get things from her room to 'buy' as prizes for correct answers.

Initially, this "game" began somewhat coercively because Little Ghandi simply refused to bother writing out double digit subtraction problems as a 6yo... because, see, she didn't care. A 42% on a 4th grade unit exam made ME care, though. LOL!!

But DD was unfazed. So, with the understanding that I needed to know whether or not the problem was one of a lack of mastery... or of, umm... motivation... I assured her that any toys "unpurchased" at the end of her problem set would be donated to a local children's charity. (Cruel? Maybe. Still-- I strongly suspected that the problem was motivational in nature, and I certainly wasn't going to actually follow through if it wasn't. The problems were challenging-- more so than what had been on her exam... because I had to make them hard enough to motivate her to write out her work, and I needed to SEE where she was making errors, if that is what the problem was... ) I gave her 42 problems, and she needed to get 30 of them correct within 40 minutes in order to 'buy back' everything in the living room.

After the first round, her percentage of correct answers for the entire problem set topped 98% and she went to her room to collect more "prizes" so that we could keep playing...


(Aughhhhhhh....)

Boy, did her teacher laugh when I explained this one. I was mostly just relieved that there wasn't an underlying problem with her understanding, but WOW... I'm pretty sure that most kids don't respond like that to pressure. :sigh: Perfectionism + ennui = baaaaad output in schoolwork. Truly.

My son was required to arrange the spelling words in alphabetical order and copy them three times. Usually he knew all or almost all the words when they were first assigned. Why not pre-test students so they are only practicing words they don't know? When my son is required to do a pointless assignment, I wonder how much I should push him.

Exactly, Bostonian. DD had spelling as part of her language arts curriculum each year until 7th grade as a virtual school student, but it was ungraded.

We never did any of the 'spelling' other than as a reward.

That probably requires some explanation.

I'd pretest her. Using a "word-sentence-word" format. She liked my sentences.

"Sluggish. While a three-toed sloth may appear to be sluggish, it was not a good idea to assume that a sloth's impressive claws cannot be used with terrifying rapidity when it chooses to do so. Sluggish."

"Obfuscate. It was unwise for Johnny to obfuscate so obviously while under oath, because the judge threw him into jail for perjury. Obfuscate."

She found this so vastly entertaining that we'd sometimes do three or four units this way. As a reward for completing an assignment (often writing) that she didn't wish to do, I'd keep going until she missed a word or until we'd done four units.

(I think that she missed five spelling words in that four years, so...)

My 14 year old son has to read the latest news before he can get out of bed--even on vacation. He always has interesting things to talk about. We stay with his sister in Dallas for a week every year and she says she always gets an education when we visit.

He sees humor or irony and visual puns everywhere and is quick to point them out. He is such a good comedian that when we are arguing about something and he is really mad at us he uses humor to diffuse the situation and we all end up laughing so hard that tears come to our eyes.

He gets anxiety when he takes tests and we were told when he was nine that it looked like he had a problem with visual memory but this was at the same time he was able to learn the spelling of thousands of words while practicing for a spelling bee. He could remember them, even the hardest words, without ever seeing them again. If he was going to make a mistake it would be on an easy word, but that was rare too. He could spell as well as read when he was two. Now he is learning to read Japanese and seems to be learning that quickly. He remembers logos and he always does well on tests of visual memory on the computer--but then he doesn't do the online tests when he has a migraine. This is one reason I don't always believe test results. I have to look at test results in combination with everything else I see.

He is very picky about what he will watch on television. He can't sit through most movies without his mind wandering but he enjoyed watching The Artist and he can watch anime for hours. He reads on his iPhone while watching television. He loves video games but he gets bored with those too and would never spend hours and hours just playing video games. He has to take breaks to find out if anything new is going on in the news and to talk to us about whatever is happening. He has always loved to talk--mostly to adults because he didn't fit in with kids his age or his friends who were usually three or four years older. Now that he is 14 and his friends have jobs and cars and girlfriends, etc. he doesn't get to talk to them so he socializes online. Most of his online friends are college age and assume he is too.

He can't see why anyone would choose to live in a small town. He can't see the beauty in wide open spaces and lots of cows and horses and wheat fields. To him, beauty is cities with tall buildings and lots of lights and restaurants and lots of people doing interesting things, talking about interesting things instead of gossiping and judging others and then shunning people that don't think exactly the way they think. My daughter was the same way.

Is not being able to tolerate mediocrity a quirk? My kids don't get people who tell them "make do with what you've got." My daughter is telling her brother that he should never settle for less and to keep working for what he wants even if it means working more than one job for a while when he is older. She left home as soon as she could and worked so that she could drive a better car and wear nicer clothes than I do.

DS needs to be "coached" a lot. Loud, energetic, blo-by-blow instructions, like what people were saying about the boring copying. "Get the soap, you can do it, reach for the water, both hands, both hands, both hands, ok, LATHER"

I kinda hate it, especially since we often get looks. But I'd rather look like a pushy fool than suffer the tantrums if I don't help him get throught this stuff. Interesting people are commenting on perfectionism connected to similar stuff. That might not be what I wanted to hear. Alas.

Is it a quirk that he mostly tantrums over stuff like which order to wash his hands in? hmmmmm. He won't put the soap on first, but he won't put his hands in the water unless I tell him too specifically, so if I start with soap, he tantrums, but then it's the other way round next time (so it's not inflexibility, it's just my failure at clairvoyance)

Since I'm on washing hands, he also insists on reading, interpreting, critiquing and following to the line any and all pictographic material. Woe to all if the Pictographs showing "proper toilet routine" fail to include the "pee" step. And don't get me started on the bathroom we often visit which has two *conflicting* pictos, nether of which include that step.

I love him, but man. I guess I didn't post before 'cause I didn't actually know where to start

I will say that our "handwriting freakout" (I'm not really proud of it) does seem to have worked. I have not seen the Horrible Handwriting since. What the hell WAS that? These kids! ("I'm truly excellent at this task. Let's try becoming intentionally bad at it, for kicks!")

My DD got mostly words she didn't know this past year. In fact, she mostly got words she had never come across, and was unfamiliar with the meaning of, or had never heard spoken aloud. Unfortunately, there were so many spelling lists among all the kids that there was no in-class instruction. And the spelling tests were administered by another kid, who sometimes mangled the pronunciation so badly that DD thought maybe she'd been pronouncing it wrong, and changed her spelling to match the other pronunciation.

We are on vacation so I am noticing a few more interesting quirks. He just seems to know so much about electronics and if he doesn't know something he figures it out really fast by using what he says is common sense and I think he gets a little irritated with me that I can't immediately remember all the steps to get to Netflix with his PS3 controller and his sister's television remote that is different from ours. He showed me how to do all of this last night and I did finally get it but I feel so old and slow next to him.

He can quickly tell me the position of all the letters on a qwerty keyboard and says he never tried to remember it. I have been able to type for many years and I have to imagine myself typing each letter to do it. He is very observant and remembers so much.

He is so much faster than I am at typing text messages on his iPhone even though he has fine motor issues and is supposed to have dyspraxia. I have listened to him type recently and I would not be surprised to find out that he is typing 80 wpm.