Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Depression? Anxiety? Or just sensitivity?

DS9 has always been really sensitive. But lately it seems like he is just angry all the time. I wonder if it's a self-esteem thing, since it really seems to set him off if anyone suggests he is less than perfect. If his karate instructor corrects his form. If his teacher tells him to pay attention. If I remind him of something he forgot. Today his teacher wrote a note in his agenda that he had an attitude with her. Apparently (at least as he tells it) there was a misunderstanding about what he was doing, and she didn't listen to his side of the story. Even so, it was just a note, and I listened to his side and simply told him to be careful, because IF I find that he's causing problems in school, he will be in trouble. He was in tears for a long time, because he saw it as being unfair.
I know gifted children tend to be oversensitive and perfectionists. But is this beyond what is normal? I'm worried he will not have any friends if he continues this way, which will make it ten times worse for him.
He is currently in his room writing in his journal - I thought that may help him calm down a bit. If anyone has other ideas (we've done the "rate it from one to ten" thing - it only helps for a few minutes and he's all upset again) I would really appreciate hearing them!

Honestly, I don't know how close to puberty he is. That did cross my mind, since I recently had to start buying him deodorant. But he has classmates that have been doing that since they were 7, so I doubt that is a good indicator.

He's not much of a talker, but he does say that he hates school and wants to skip to fourth grade so he can actually learn something. I'm starting to think there is a definite downside to raising him from birth to believe that it is good to challenge yourself. This year actually started out much better than most, but I think the novelty has worn off. I have a conference with his teacher next week, and plan to discuss this with her. She has been pretty accomodating so far, so I'm hopeful we can figure something out.

But do you think a lack of challenge at school could be responsible for him being like this ALL THE TIME? I have always worked with him on extra math and history after school, and lately he seems to have lost interest in that. I would think if it was just a lack of a challenge, he would continue to enjoy doing that, right?

This sounds a lot like my DD. She has depression and anxiety diagnoses, although we find that we have periods where things are much worse and then when they mysteriously get better. We have wondered about hormones, but she is a small and slim 8 and has absolutely no sign of puberty.

FWIW, my DD is like this with adults but not with friends. For whatever reason, she isn't as touchy with her peers--UNLESS it is someone she perceives as frequently hostile to her, in which case there can be issues.

He doesn't seem to hate everything - but is EXTREMELY sensitive to criticism, which sometimes makes him seem like he hates everything. For example, he adores taekwondo, and is very good at it. (He was within a few points of being state champ for his age division last year). BUT....if he feels like he is being criticized too much in class (his instructor tries to be positive, but it's her job to make sure he is doing it as close to perfectly as possible) he gets really defensive and grouchy. For a while, I thought he hated going to class, so I asked him if he wanted to quit. He was horrified at the idea, and then freaked out because he was afraid I was going to make him quit.
He does seem to react differently among his peers - to an extent. He has a small group of friends, but tends to keep everyone else at arm's length. Which means making new friends is not something he is even interested in. That worries me a bit as well, since his father is military and we never know when we are going to move and he will have to go to a new school where he doesn't know anyone.

This is SO much like something DD would do. I wish I knew what it was about! I would say perfectionism, except she isn't really that much of a perfectionist. It's more a hypersensitivity issue. She tends to blow criticism way out of proportion and to be very reactive. She's also a black and white thinker, although this is slowly improving. If someone gently criticizes her, then they think everything about her is bad. If we are mad at her, we don't love her. Etc.

ETA: I will say also that she is just an emotional person all around and tends to say things she doesn't mean. After she feels better, she is fine and feels a bit sheepish and bewildered that other people are still affected by all the negativity she has discharged. She also will easily say that she knows we love her, etc, once she's calmed down. But in the moment, it's like she sees red and her emotional temperature just goes way up. Unfortunately, there is a lot of collateral damage from this in the family--it really upsets her little brother when she gets like this.

Well, it does make me feel slightly better that there are other kids who act this way and neither the child nor the parents have been institutionalized yet. I think we all need a reminder once in a while that our children are not as completely "out there" as we think they are.

"...yet."

(kidding)

Oh, I'm sorry, Master of None - I didn't answer your question. No, I don't know how gifted he is. I've discussed achievement testing with the school, and thought about having it done independently, but my husband and I are still deciding IF we are going to do it, and if so, how. Toward spring, the school will do it for kids who have been identified as AIG - but they're really vague about the type of testing and the requirements, so I don't even know what to think about that. As of right now, all I know is that he is reading around a 6th grade level, and in the process of learning pre-algebra. (At home. At school, he is still working on rounding to so-and-so place).

Lots of pieces here... If school isn't challenging, at some point they can develop the perspective that school is wasting and or stealing their time. If they are sincerely interested in learning, then the hypocrisy of a school claiming to be a place of learning can be nerve-wracking. I'd suggest looking for some of the articles about underachieving, because that may be the trajectory.

I hated most criticism as a kid; my DS6 likes help but criticism or anything repeated to him gets on his nerves. I had my own strange (and usually effective) ways to get from point A to point D, and critique involving telling me to do B then C before D would drive me insane. It's a peculiar art to offer a critique that doesn't tromp on a personal process. If they have the same sort of perspective, then the biggest sin to be aware of is trying to tell them what they think.

Ah, yes--this rings a bell. DD is a natural auto-didact and likes to figure things out herself when possible. Teaching her to ride a bike was a complete nightmare until I just gave up and stopped talking. I try to stay as hands-off as I can when she is learning a new skill, but sometimes you do need instruction. Helping her with homework is quite a difficult balance. She also loves to fish, but this can be very frustrating for everyone, as the knots, etc are hard for her and adult guidance can be very useful if you want to actually catch something, whch she very much does. At the same time, she really wants to figure it out herself. (She will explicitly tell me this now--"No, don't tell me anything--I want to figure it out.")

(I'm depressing myself a little talking about this. Poor stubborn little thing--it's hard for her. You really see her old soul showing in this area.)

Whenever my DD7 is being especially touchy and sensitive with the little issues, I've found that it's a canary in the coalmine for some big issue (at least to her) that she's been reluctant to talk about, for one reason or another. The last time I watched her blow up all weekend, I finally coaxed her into a conversation, in which she revealed a boy had been harassing her constantly on the school bus. She hadn't bothered talking to us about it, because she thought we couldn't solve the problem. She went back to being a car rider (she only started riding the bus on her own request), problem solved.

If the "big issue" in this case is an ongoing pattern of problems with the teacher, threatening to punish him at home would have done more harm than good.

My dd6 is exactly this way, too. In piano, she explicitly told me: "Do NOT tell me something's good. Do NOT tell me how to do it." When asked what I should do when I notice her fingering needs correcting, she says, "Tell me later." !! We've had a few go-rounds on this. She's never liked praise-- I think it feels like pressure to her. And criticism while she's practicing seems unfair because she hasn't gotten it right yet.

She reacts appropriately to her piano teacher, though. When he corrects her, she does what he asks without saying anything. But when he praises her, she just nods her head. Sometimes he says, "you're so smart," and she looks over at me, like, "oh, brother."

OP-- You've probably tried this, but I would do a carrot and stick approach. In a calm time, I would tell your son you're concerned about how he over-reacts when people try to coach him. Explain that part of learning is getting pointers, and that he doesn't have to agree with what's said, but he must react appropriately. Then, I would give him examples of appropriate reactions, maybe even trying to be funny about it. I would also outline a consequence. In the case of taekwando, I would tell him that if he can't handle the critiques, he's going to have to quit. Period. Criticism is part of the sport and if he wants to do the sport, he needs to deal with it appropriately. I would make sure to praise him for any progress. But I would follow through on pulling him out.

Good luck with critiquing response to critique as a way to moderate response to critique. Not dismissing appeal to empathy, but wanted to write that sentence.

Given, I'm projecting from what I know of myself and my son and thus YMMV... For feedback, it's about providing top level information, standards to judge by, and resources. You can be Socratic and directional (i.e. sneaky) sometimes.

For the fishing example... I'd get a book with diagrams on how to put on a hook, etc. Provide examples, etc.

Possibly dialog about how to identify critique and extract their own meaningful information from that critique without a feeling an obligation to the specifics. If I write a story about a zombie fast food employee and someone responds that they think the zombie should be a ghoul, I could feel put out, upset, dismiss it, or more positively I think that I haven't fleshed out my zombie character enough.

Don't be too hard on yourself - I think this is the 'natural' kids are built to be. Or was that sarcasm? ((wink))
I do think that 6 hours a day of forcing oneself to be 'well enough' behaved while there is absolutely nothing to learn at school could easily create a cranky child who is cranky all the time - even could cause the lack of interest in afterschooling.

One thing to try is to jump up a grade level with the afterschooling - very gifted kids sometimes 'leap ahead.'

I would encourage you to get IQ and achievement testing and to sign up this week. There may be more going on, but you have to at least work on getting the basics right. Talking with the teacher is a great idea. Passing along the information that your son ASKED for a gradeskip is important. (Even if you decide you won't allow one for other reasons, it gets the ball rolling.) It is entirely possible to do a gradeskip at this point, or any point of the year. I would consider requesting that he get subject accelerations - in addition to a full skip - so that he can learn math at the level he is demonstrating at home. Other people sometimes win agreements to homeschool math and let the kid go to the library during gradelevel math.

There really are kids who NEED to be in challenging academic environments to be happy. It could be your kid.

I think that perfectionist behavior such as being unable to accept criticism or try new endeavors that they aren't a garenteed immediate success in can be caused by many reasons, but a common reason is spending hours and hours at schools where the material is severely below the child's readiness to learn level. In a healthy situation, there will be a range of acceptable challenge, from 'too easy but I can deal with it' to 'easy in a fun way' to 'hard in a good way' to 'too hard, but I can deal with it' but if a child has been too underchallenged for too long, they start to act as though that acceptable challenge range collapses into a skinny line - everything is boringly easy or impossible.

At 9 my son went through a sort of 'mental puberty' with some moodiness and some 'us v them' feeling toward adults. He didn't admit to being factually wrong about anything until age 11. If you are worried - get help, but check the 'normal' gifted problems as well, unfortunately you can't automatically rely on the local helpers to be well versed in what is normal for gifted kids.

Love and more love,
Grinity

I wonder what the dividing factor between stubborn-minded auto-didactic and perfectionism is; if there is one. There are so many ways negative response to critique can be rooted. I had some negative responses from having a father who could give no positive without an equal measure of negative. I had some from not being able to "explain your work." Some came from being forced to follow processes and having my more functional methods broken; such as I could divide pretty much any two numbers very quickly with no work to show, being forced to do "long" division and quickly lost that ability (almost 40 years later and still bitter about that.) Some from losing faith in "authority." Some from having exceptions I had no idea how to address (e.g. lack of depth perception, poor handwriting.)

I use past tense, but it is still a work in process.

sigh

Interesting and relevant for me to read this today. DD was complaining earlier in the year that math (she is accelerated a full grade this year) is too hard, impossible, etc. (She is getting As, but also is getting things wrong sometimes, which is new.) They've recently been doing some material she finds easier and now she's complaining that it's boring, too easy, etc. DD!! Two weeks ago you were sobbing about how you were no good at math!! WTH?

My Goodness, so much to respond to here! DS likes to "do it himself" as well. Basically he wants one quick explanation, but then he wants to do it with no help whatsoever. Often, that's enough for him. But when it's not, he struggles to deal with people who are trying to help him out. I've mentioned before that he frequently assumes that his teachers think he is stupid because they try to teach him things that he already knows.
Grinity - do you think upping the level will help? It seems insane for a nine year old to start learning algebra, which would be the next step. Then again, assumptions that he is too young for certain things may be the root of this problem in the first place.

No concrete suggestions, but we've been there. I agree that the problem is likely to be something unseen that is taking up his capacity to just deal with the world, rather than the incidents he's exploding over.

For whatever reason, I've noticed that around 9 (fourth when I was a kid, 3rd grade now) gifted kids seem to explode. Of the kids in my family, all but one had a really rough time that year, and the last was 2E enough that he always had a rough time. My mother and grandmother both report really terrible turning-9 years, where various problems required a dramatic change of scene - moving, changing schools, etc. In our private school, the younger kids are there as a preventative measure, but many 8 and 9's come because they had major problems.

My personal, completely unscientific explanation is that the social scene changes enough around that age that being intellectually different from your classmates seems like a less ignorable, temporary, and excusable condition. For me and my daughter, finding GT peers helped a lot. Just knowing that they exist and that we're part of a group helps even when they aren't around all the time. I think we also both felt ignored by the teachers before, and encountering a class where we weren't neglected in favor of the people who aren't able to keep up helped. For me, at least, it was less about the level than about being seen for who I was. My favorite teacher in the primary grades was one who privately acknowledged to me that she knew where I was but couldn't teach me more than the class. She reassured me with looks and the occasional comment that I wasn't completely off her radar.

So- with my family history, I would be looking for a chance to mingle socially with some other gifted kids. Along with dealing with the explosion of the moment, of course.

Exactly - try and find out. I promise that there exist nine year olds who are starting to learn Calculus - they just are rare.
Good luck!
Grinity