Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Introduction/Need Help????

Hi, My name is Christy, I live in St. Louis, MO, I have a 5 year old son named Blake. Blake is currently in Pre-Kindergarten, he will start in Kindergarten in August.

I don't even know where to begin. Blake has always seemed "different" then other kids his age. I mean, even as a baby, the child never required much sleep. When my nephew was sleeping 14 hours a night, Blake was sleeping 8. He was an extremely difficult baby. Up all the time, overly senstive, hated being swaddled. Very tempermental. I don't really think of him as hitting milestones really early, although, when he made up his mind to do something, he would do it. He did not talk early but once he started talking, it seemed like he had conversations immediately. He to this day had a very extensive language and utilizes words that surprises me.

At the age of 3, he was constantly in trouble at preschool, the teacher told me she thought he had ADHD. I never really thought that he had it, I did take him to a psychologist. After a couple sessions, the psychologist basically told me that he was an extremely smart boy and he needed to come back around Kindergarten time and get tested for giftedness.

My husband had a genius IQ, I do not. My husband's mom always told me that Chris (my husband) was a great kid until about the age of 5 and then things kind of went downhill. He had a lot of problems in school, teachers did not like, etc. Basically most of it being due to the fact that he was intelligently above his peers and bored.

Back to Blake. He has a lot of problems dealing with kids his age and he always results to hitting or calling them names. He seems to get frustrated with them very easily. He does play better with older kids. He has a ton of energy and it is not always directed to the best of places. He questions authority, well actually he questions anything.

He is still overly sensitive and a very intense child.

In the last week, he has been sent out of the gym that I work out in for calling another child a name (I am not even going to say what he called them), sent out of Sunday School for wreaking havoc and I received a phone call from his teacher yesterday regarding his behavior. His teacher handles him very well so I was surprised to get the phone call.

I do have an appt. with a counselor on Saturday and am hopine they can help me. Frankly though, I am at my wit's end. I honestly don't know if he is is gifted, he has not been tested but when I read the characteristics, it seems that he fits in.

I know I have spent most of this post stating he is difficult but honestly, I adore the child and I think he is pretty cool! And I really just want him to be happy. I hate seeing him in trouble a lot and I hate when he gets sad.

So I am not even sure why I am posting, I guess I am looking for some help and also need to vent.

Thanks. Christy

I can relate to much of your experience. Try to seek an pschologist with gifted experince. Go thru the Davidson web site and read as much as you can. I would read "Children are from heaven" this book helped me so much to be more understanding and have more patience. It sounds like you have a very sensitive child which is part of being gifted. The book relates to sensitivity but not so much gifted. There is lots of help here. Keep asking your questions. Hang in there. This is a challenge. HUG

Hi Christy! Welcome!!!

Extreamly smart or gifted or genius - you are welcome to vent here - clearly you have a frustrated little boy on your hands whom you don't quite know how to deal with.

Before we go on, I 'm going to make a suggestion - since this is a public board, and you never know who is going to be reading, I strongly reccomend you email to the moderator (Mark D) and ask for a different screen name and use fake names for your son - I understand that you live in a large city, but still, better safe than sorry.

I'll just assume for now that you did use a psuedonym.

First thing I would do is check with the preschool and see if they can move him to a room with older kids. It's worth a try. They probably won't want to, since they may already have 'decided' that he is a behavior problem. I see him as a child with a classroom fit problem who has disruptive behavior.

Is his behavior 'casued' by giftedness? My son tended to act out when he was unhappy, and he was unhappy quite a lot, because he was with agemates and he got very frustrted with them. Other kids who were just as unusually gifted as my son never would have acted out, or even hinted that they were miserable, or wouldn't even have been miserable.

So much of this is personality! Some kids are just naturals at seeing the glass half full and really truly enjoy school for what they can find there that works for them. Other kids have a 'longer fuse' and figure out a way to get what is important to them at school. But my son, and I'm guessing your too, really wanted to be admired and appreciated. He was naturally a bit more intense, sensitive and emotionally needy and none of those things are going to win brownie point in preschool. And he really wanted (needed?) those brownie points!!!

Things were 'basically ok' even in daycare until school hit, then we started getting the message that we were bad parents, and started up with the conventional parenting techniques, which did make things worse. My feeling is that our kids are unusual, and motivated by completely different things than most kids, and facing challenges that other kids don't face, so it's not so suprising that conventional parenting techniques don't work on them.

I hope the appointment with the counselor goes well. Is this someone suggested by the psychologist who 'gets' that your son 'unusually smart?' About a year ago I started us a new parenting approach that is designed for 'children who are intense, sensitive and/or emotionally needy' and I wish I had found is earlier. (My son is 13 now, and we were already hearing from daycare at age 2 that 'he has to learn that I have x other children in the room that I have to give each one equal attention!')

We didn't figure out the gifted piece until DS was 7, so good for you for figuring it out so early!

One more question -
You mention that your DH had an unusually high IQ ( I don't use the word Genius to describe potential, only demonstratd talent - so many kids with really high potential never develop that into societally recognized talents) and was miserable in school. I'm wondering if your DH eventually figured out a way to develop his gifts to contribute to society or is still frustrated and disconnected. Either way you will have a bit of a challenge to help your DH be useful to your DS, see what I mean here? Not just your DH, all of us came into this parenting with 'emotional baggage' about our own intelligence. There just isn't much societal support for us to unwrap the mental impressions we have all collected over the years about intelligence.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Wow, thank you! Like really, I am amazed at your kindness. And I am definitely going to look into those resources. I need all the help I can get. In his preschool setting, I would say the thing the three items that get Blake the most worked up are 1) when he is working on something, whether that be an art project, reading a book, etc. and the teacher tells him it is time to clean up and he is not done, he gets very frustrated and angry 2) when other kids tease him. He seems to take those things to heart. 3) when he is trying to tell someone something and he feels they are not listening.

Blake also tends to have some strange tendencies (which is where some of the teasing comes from). He hates loud noises, very scared of bugs and germs and is always fearful there are things in his food. He also worries a lot. Worries about death, being sick, poison (????) and I honestly, don't even know where he gets a lot of this from. He picks up on everything.

I agree that I don't really know if his acting out has to do with giftedness or just his personality. He does seem to have a short fuse mostly caused by frustration.

My husband now is a successful man. He is in a director position at a large pharmaceutical company. It took him a long time though to make the most of his abilities. He definitely developed some emotional baggage. I know throughout his childhood and his school years, he was always labeled, transferred from class to class, everyone was always trying to figure out how to deal with him. He almost did not graduate from high school. It's amazing how hard it can be for such an intelligent person to get through school. My husband says it was impossible for him to conform. He does tend to get worked up when Blake has behavioral problems or the teachers talk to us becuase he sees the same thing happening to Blake that happened to him.


The Counseling Minister at our church is a good friend of mine and he recommended this counselor to me. I was not very impressed with the psychologist we saw a couple years ago and did not want to go back to her. I think Saturday the counselor is just going to talk with Blake, play some games with him and then let us know his opinion on how we should proceed. I actually am pretty happy with this because he is doing it more on a friendly level. He can also recommend a pyschologist to me.

Love, Christy

SENG-Selecting A Mental Health Professional for Gifted

The above website may help you.

Thank you.

that 'short fuse' is where the 'Transforming the difficult child/Energy Parenting' book and website can be helpful, not matter what the cause.

Some kids are just born with a 'short fuse' and some actually have a normal fuse, with 'more appliances plugged in to it that usual - so that the amperage is easily exceeded even just doing kinds of things that seem normal from the outside' due to giftedness. Although not all gifted kids are more sensitive than normal, many are, and it is felt to be due to the gifteness itself: what you cal 'strange tendencies' are quite run of the mill here - do a search here for 'fears' and 'death' and 'OverExcitabilities' and you will see that you have lots of company. Another search term is 'Asnychronous Development.'

The idea here is that, like your husband, as your son gets older, he will develop more fuses, locate his large appliances on separate ones, and be able to handle more electricity moving through him than a normally developing(ND) adult and so handle all those extra appliances without much fuss.

I'm glad to hear that your husband is successful now. Get ready for lots of conversations about 'does he feel successful' now. 'How did he get there' and 'what was school like.' Also a great idea for you to journal quite a bit about what you observed as a child and young person about kids who were 'extra smart' and the messages you got about your own intelligence. Even if you are not as gifted as your DH, you may well have been in the top 10% or 5% of your school - which is still gifted by some definitions. Or you maybe strongly gifted in ways that aren't measured on the current test, or even valued by society.

Many females are born with 'a more developed set of circut breakers' than males - it's totally possible that you are just as gifted as your husband, but because you were born with stonger circut breakers, no one noticed. For me, I'm a terrible speller - so it was easy to feel quite stupid, even though I'm gifted enough to be quite bored and frustrated with an 'optimally gifted' crowd.

I'd love to hear how Saturday's session goes. I'd love to see you read 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options by Deborah Ruf and Ph.D. and let us know if your son fits there.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

You are absolutely wonderful, amazing. I am going to head to the bookstore this weekend and get some of these books. I will definitely check back in after the appointment. Thank you so much, you have no idea how much your kindness means to me.

Love, Christy

I picked up the book, Transforming the Difficult Child - Book, over the weekend, I have only read a bit so far.

We went to his appointment on Saturday. I think it went pretty well. Blake was very nervous about going, actually said so. The whole time we were there, Blake was very much preoccupying himself with other tasks besides paying attention to the counselor. The counselor said it was totally understandable. This time, the counselor never met with Blake by himself which I was grateful for, I am not even sure Blake would have done it. He met with my husband, Blake and me and then he met with my husband by himself. Of course, he has not had that much interaction with Blake yet to give a full evaluation but he picked up on a few things.

-Stated Blake was incredibly smart and incredibly stubborn. He said he was a very likable kid but can definitely see tendancies why Blake would be hard to deal with in a classroom setting.

-Saw the reasons why teachers have questioned that Blake has ADHD but would be surprised if he had it. He said it seem more like Blake only wants to deal with stuff he is interested in and if he is not interested, then he ignores it altogether.

-I did ask the counselor if he thought my husband and me were doing anything wrong or if we were causing any of the problems. He said that he did not see any "red flags" and that we seem like good parents. He will help us in figuring out the best way to parent Blake.

He thinks Blake might be gifted but really without testing, I guess you don't know for certain. Is that correct? Or did I misunderstand? He said that he will determine after spending more time with Blake if he thinks it needs to be done. He said that for certain, Blake is a strong-willed child! I already knew that.

I think the whole thing went well and am really glad we went. The counselor was really good with him and it was great that he talked to my husband for so long. I already feel a little bit better. We go back on Saturday.

Love, Christy