Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Anxiety/OCD tendencies

Our son is 8 1/2 years old and in third grade. He has recently been identified as being "gifted" and we are in the process of putting together an Advanced Learning Plan (ALP) at school. He has always been a very intense and spirited child. He does well at home but has frequent meltdowns at school and in competive situations (e.g,. sports). He can get extremely perfectionistic about his school work and several teachers have noted that he seems "obsessive" about getting perfect scores. He also has a very tender/sensitive side to him and is easily frightened or upset. He often has difficulty falling asleep and even went through a period of night terrors/panic attacks when he was 6 years old. He has seen a private counselor for the past 2 years for an (undiagnosed) anxiety disorder. We are considering having a full psychological assessment done to get a formal diagnosis.
Part of me wonders how much of his quirky personality comes from his giftedness. I have read in books that many of his personality characteristics are common in gifted children (e.g., intense, perfectionistic, sensitive, anxious). Just looking for advice and wondering if others have children with similar issues. At what point do you consider these personality characteristics an emotional "disorder" or mental health issue?

Laura,
I just had to comment on this one. My dd had night terrors from age 2-5. When she got to 3rd grade, she had some meltdowns. We took her to a counseler, who said while she had "some" symptoms of OCD, she did not have enough symptoms to be diagnosed. She is a perfectionist. I believe this was related to being gifted. I think most of her problems were because she had a horrible teacher and was not being challenged. The counselor coached her in coping techniques, the school gave her more challenging work and the problem went away.
One thing to ask yourself, do the behavoirs he is experiencing, happen at school AND at home? Or other places too? There is numerous research (google it) about gifted kids being misdiagnosed.
Trust your instinct. You know your child best.

My DD9, who always had trouble sleeping and has some anxiety issues, was exhibiting some more extreme OCD behaviors last year. I talked to her about it, and she explained that when she does something like touching the ground with one hand (to pick something up for example), she feels the need to touch the ground with the other hand. She described it as a symmetry thing. So if I touched her right cheek, she would reach up and touch her left cheek. I tried not to make a big deal about it (I remember having some quirks like that as a kid, so I told her that), but asked her if she was able to keep herself from doing the follow-up action, and she started trying to do so. I noticed the behavior coming and going since then. We did talk with a counselor to see if she needed to see someone, but she said to just keep an eye on it for a while. She knew that we were working on fixing her school issues, so I wonder if she knew that it may be related.

Now that DD9 is in a new school for HG+ and does not have behavior issues, I have not noticed it in months. It's funny because I had actually forgotten about it until I read your post. So I agree that OCD behaviors can be directly tied to issues that go along with their giftedness. It makes me so sad to think about all the kids who don't get help for the root cause of their issues because giftedness is not considered a special need.

Hi all! Thank you for your input. He has a wonderful classroom teacher this year and his meltdowns tend to occur during certain specials (art, spanish, PE). So, it does seem that some teachers know how to handle him better than others. We have started looking into relaxation techniques and just purchased some of Lori Lite's books (stressfreekids.com). His classroom teacher is also using some techniques from Tamar Chansky's book "Freeing Your Child From Anxiety". The school counselor is not involved at this point. We were beginning to look into psychological evaluation/therapy when we learned that he is gifted. Just trying to sort through and consider everything before we go that route. Thanks!

Forgot to mention that several teachers have suggested that he might benefit from anxiety medication. I would consider this a last resort.