Greetings,
I am a PG 23 year old living in Georgia.

I have some questions for you all about giftedness in general:

Do any of you feel that you and/or your children are sometimes/often misunderstood by administrators, teachers, professors, psychologists, or even therapists because of giftedness? For instance, if you or your child indicates that a class is not sufficiently challenging, this might be taken as arrogance though this was never the intention? If you and/or your child has or still encounters this, how do you deal with these irritating incidences? Is this feeling of being misunderstood something we must become accustomed to?

Another question is this:

Do any of you and/or your children suffer from hypersensitivity--i.e. extreme sensitivity due to noises in the background, lights flickering, clocks ticking, or even an intensity in terms of experiencing physical pain and emotions? These first three are overwhelming for me at times and I am wondering if any of you encounter these traits/incidences.

Often people will feign ignorance because it is convenient to do so. And sometimes the ignorance is real. One tricky thing is figuring out which situation you are dealing with. No. No-one in our family has ever had anything like this (except maybe with emotions). Are you suggesting such symptoms are somehow related to giftedness?

Yes to both. Ds8's now being homeschooled based on the issues you brought up with your questions and what we faced with the gifted schools and prior with special needs programs/schools. They had no clue with a 2e/pg child. Between the schools and various professionals, I can say that no one has ever seen a child like him before so he's often misunderstood and not accepted.

Ds8 was born with severe sensory processing. He had extreme sensitivity to everything (visual, auditory, tactile, taste, smell, vestibular, and on and on). It's improved over the years due to loads of therapies and interventions but at least less severe than it was. It still flares up when he's under stress, going through big developments, growth spurts, etc. I try very hard to minimize the stimulation with him and to keep ds on an even keel. Carol Kranowitz's book, The Out-of-Sync Child, is a classic on sensory processing
- http://out-of-sync-child.com/

Those with PTSD (with or without extreme anxiety/perfectionism, etc.) can display these traits too. You can be hypervigilant with PTSD and this can heightened your sensitivities and awareness. Cognitive behavioral therapy and neurofeedback can help.

As to your question about coping with a 2e/pg child, that's a been journey to say the least. Andrew Solomon recently wrote a book, Far From the Tree, which included classical musical prodigies and children with a range of disorders/conditions (deaf, dwarfism, Down Syndrome, autism, transgender, born out of rape, etc.). Solomon also posed this question on how parents cope when their children are born so far from the norm and no where near what they expected/anticipated.

Solomon's book can help put things in perspective. Readers can perhaps discern how prodigies and 2e/pgness falls within the range of human experience. When I read the chapter on dwarfs and considered how so many of them face stiff stigma and have medical conditions that require extensive and very expensive surgeries, it helped me put our situation into perspective.

Yes, we definitely have lower than normal pain threshold for one of our children, and really don't know how else to explain it..?Something he will grow out of maybe.
DH is extremely noise sensitive; might have a bit of a control thing thrown in there as well, lol.

Yes being misunderstood is part of giftedness, doubled: in both what you are saying (content of your message) and how you are experiencing things (what it is like to be gifted). Folks think it is 'ok' and not **painful** to be forced to sit through boring class after boring class (as an example).
To some degree all folks are going to run into boring classes, and those folks were ok. No idea it can actually make someone feel physically ill (headaches, stomach aches) , feel like they are a bad person ( something is wrong with me, I don't understand why everyone else can't see the answers or understand my perspective on it, see the facts, etc. , well maybe I am wrong after all, maybe in fact there is something permanently, majorly wrong with me). And so on.

here is another good link:
https://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/pg.htm

90% were described by their parents as "sensitive."

Actually seems like these questions are embodied in half the forum threads here.

As to being misunderstood, I find it is generally easier to blow people's minds than to change them.

Absolutely. As far as school we have already had our share of what you are expressing and DS is only 6. Things have improved tremendously this year thanks to a teacher that "gets it".

As far as sensitivities. YES! Overexcitabilities. Read up on it. You will be amazed. My kids, DS6 (PG) and DS4 have different sensitivities. The older was extremely sensitive to sound but seem to have grown out of it some. Or maybe just learned what he needs to do to deal. The younger has had such emotional sensitivities that has been very difficult to deal with. Seems it is getting better as well as he is getting older and understands the feelings. Still, highly intense, emotional, pretty much exhausting kids..

Yes to both your questions!

Overexcitabilities - do a quick search for Dabrowski's theory and it will give you a concise summary. You may be surprised to find that your siblings and parents most likely have some of these too - each gifted person has a different number and combination of these and many adults with them have just learnt to ignore or forget them or work around them so casually that we often forget all about them until we think about it.

All three of my boys have some, esp the noise one, and two of the oldest is very sensitive in terms of emotional sensitivities.

Misunderstood is a given in giftie's life - esp in traditional schooling systems and around extended family and other family friends too.

Yes, I think ds7 was a bit misunderstood by his previous school. He told the teacher he was "bored" and she mistook this for lack of comprehension.

DS was/is emotionally sensitive- he just feels things intensely and gets easily excited, disappointed, frustrated, etc. He's better now than he used to be, but still needs to work on managing his frustrations. He's somewhat sensitive to textures, smells, etc, and shows some mild anxiety symptoms.

Is this feeling of being misunderstood something we must become accustomed to?

Yes. I am MG, maybe HG (huge underachiever and never really gave any of this any thought until I realized that my DS is PG). I have been misunderstood my entire life. My DH is PG and very few people understand him. BUT - he did learn in his 20s how to relate to anyone. He can talk to anyone and is completely and genuinely interested in whomever he is speaking with. But if DH goes off into PGland - no one knows what the heck he is talking about. I don't only mean when he starts speaking about very complex things. He just goes off and starts relating things that seem unrelated and gets really excited (overexcitability).

My DH is a STEM Ph.D. Fortunately, he can find many others in his work world like him.

My DS7 has massive overexcitabilities. We have to have a mattress on the floor in front of our TV. Should DS7 stumble upon a Nova special that is particularly "exciting" (ex. string theory), he needs his space to jump on the mattress for the ENTIRE length of the video. It's that exciting. Very few people understand that.

My entire family is like somewhereonearth's DH.

DD and I can find common ground with anyone. We're naturally good "listeners" I think.

DH has a terrible time faking interest, and narrow range of tolerance for conversation with most people. People annoy him, to be blunt.

He is HG and DD and I are both higher LOG than that.

I mention that to note that while ye-e-e-e-eesss, it's true that you're kind of in your own world, and it's also true that the higher your LOG the worse the problem becomes, it's really only an issue in two ways-- if you have a less flexible social style, and if you are seeking a soulmate.

It's bad, bad, BAD news to (IMO) have as a spouse or best friend someone who cannot go most of where your brain goes visiting and exploring. They'll label you a freak, and you'll wind up resenting the fact that they resent YOU. That part of things can be lonely.

Mostly, though, people are still people, and shallower interactions can work fine if you turn genuine interest toward others and let go of how intellectually stimulating/beneath you such conversations are. Just enjoy people for WHO they are, not what they are, and much of the time all will be well. Know, though, that much of the heavy lifting in any communication is going to be required of a PG/HG+ person by definition. Because YOU are the one that can meet the other person where they are.

Sensory: I have a noticeably lower ear-pain threshold than most. Not coincidentally, I have a talent for music. DW has significantly lower tolerance to bad odors than normal. Not coincidentally, she's a talented chef. DD8 displays the sensory sensitivities of both of us.

I also had a coworker who was clearly a "true peer," and he had significant sensitivities to office lighting. He had to insist on a special dispensation to wear a ball cap, or he suffered headaches.

Emotional: DD8 and I have often been described, depending on the situation, as "sensitive" or "explosive." It was DD's emotional intensity that eventually directed DW into learning about giftedness, because she was initially worried about what else was going on. DW also assures me I scare the crap out of her family when I'm angry... and sometimes that "angry" is better categorized by me as "irritated." I don't have behavior issues when I'm angry, so it's not like I shout in people's faces or overturn chairs. It's just normal voice and body-language cues I'm sending out, but apparently mine are a lot louder than normal.

Being understood: I'm pretty flexible, and try to meet people on their own level, as HK described. But at the same time, I refuse to masquerade as someone I'm not, so while I typically use vocabulary and grammatical constructs that anyone with a high school diploma could follow, there is still a significant difference between that and common usage. I also tend to get excited to share knowledge about some subjects (and hope that the person I'm talking to can add to it), which can lead me to sounding like a college lecturer at times.

I would not expect anyone to see anything strange in this, and nobody talks to me about it, but DW reports she's often pulled aside and asked, "Does he always talk like this?" Sometimes people misread it as trying too hard to impress, or just being a demeaning jerk. But DW assures them that, with an eyeroll and a sympathetic smirk, yes, that's how I always talk.

so much of what you wrote is familiar; esp this last bit. Describes my ds13 to a tee.

Yes administrators & teachers sometimes misunderstand. My child attends a school that does see a lot of gifted kids, and I think they are better than many yet there are still difficulties. An example was with my son's science class last year. It was his only class that was not an honors/gifted class. (Because they didn't offer it.) And while my kid aced (99.5%) the tests, but he had difficulty with the class & teacher because he wouldn't fill out all the boring & repetitive homework/seatwork.

As to the second question, my son is much more sensitive to touch. He doesn't like sand on his feet, or playing in mud. And clothes can not be itchy, down to the point that in 6th grade he would ONLY wear one outfit. Never seen a problem with sound or lights.

I suspect that most people don't understand giftedness because they have no experience with it. Which means that yes, we have to get used to it. It's not Jane's fault that she can't understand being gifted because she isn't gifted, any more than it's my fault that I can't understand what it's like to grow up in Angola or Greenland because I didn't grow up in those places.

The only time I don't excuse failure to have a basic idea about giftedness is in teachers. IMO, people in the business of helping children learn have a responsibility to understand how different groups of kids learn. Schools talk about the importance of understanding the needs of many different groups of kids (ethnic, racial, low IQ, learning disabled, etc), yet often ignore the gifties completely.

I can attest to the auditory over-excitability, particularly. Ambient sounds and music can cause me tactile pleasure or pain outside of hearing, to the extent that I suspect auditory-tactile synaesthesia might be present. We seem to have a population of synaesthetes above the expected population rate frequenting this board, which begs the question of the link between synaesthesia, overexcitabilities, and giftedness.

I agree with this statement Val made:


As in any social interaction, there will be friction between the expectations of the more able party and the ability of the less able one. We're all human and, although our differences sometimes seem vast, we're much more similar than dissimilar to a person drawn at random from the population.

As to being misunderstood, I suppose that comes down to what and how you're communicating, and to whom. I think there are too many variables at play there for a hard and fast rule to be pinned down.

Sure, you might feel incapable of expressing the full range of your thoughts and feelings to the average person, which can be extremely frustrating, but there do exist people who can appreciate your thoughts and commiserate with you.

I would not expect anyone to see anything strange in this, and nobody talks to me about it, but DW reports she's often pulled aside and asked, "Does he always talk like this?" Sometimes people misread it as trying too hard to impress, or just being a demeaning jerk. But DW assures them that, with an eyeroll and a sympathetic smirk, yes, that's how I always talk.

Ha! I get the same thing with regard to my DH. And he is the same - that is always how he speaks...even to his babies.

I also wanted to add regarding sensitivity...truly, I have been extremely emotionally sensitive as far back as I can remember. This is probably where my greatest "gifts" are. My husband says that I can sense where anyone is at emotionally within minutes, sometimes even seconds, and that I can give a pretty accurate prediction of how and when a particular person has been hurt. This has been superb for me professionally. But this "gift" has also literally almost been the death of me when I was younger as I could not handle the horrors of the world. Now that I'm a little older and have more of my sh_t together, this is less of a problem for me. But I still cannot read certain topics in a newspaper for fear that it will cause me too much emotional pain. So, for gifties, I think it is critical that the emotional sensitivity piece be dealt with in effective ways.

When I was 23 I felt completely misunderstood. I had dropped out of college (too much beer, too many boring classes), and thought I was an idiot, yet I couldn't find anyone who I could relate to. I was totally lost.

It wasn't until I was in my 40's in therapy, (having gone back, completed my degree, had a successful career in banking, got married and become a SAHM)that I mentioned to my counselor that my son had tested HG. He gave me a laundry list of things to look out for with him, explaining to me that he would see the world differently and in a much more complex way, and would have trouble relating to others and that others would have trouble understanding him and that he would need my support with this and etc, that it occurred to me to mention, by the way, my IQ is the same as his...Well, it was one of those "aha" moments and I haven't been back to therapy since. My counselor was more than a little annoyed that I hadn't mentioned it before, but it just hadn't occurred to me that being smart could actually hinder interpersonal relationships. It seems counter-intuitive.

I should probably add that I still feel a little bit idiotic for not realizing earlier why I didn't relate to people all the time, but I think it's party because I'm a little bit of a social chameleon. I can relate to most people on their level, but then feel lonely because they can't relate to me. I felt like I always had to curb myself in company.

Now I've realized I'm lucky to have my DH and a very few close friends who I can REALLY communicate with and I deal with the rest of the outside world on it's terms and we are all much happier.

I don't have supersensitive sensory issues but I am emotionally hypersensitive. My sister and my sons all have issues with noise and scratchy tags in clothes.

Yes! Yes!

QT3.1414 - I know both my daughters are misunderstood. They are still young (8 and 9) but I can tell certain teachers don't get it and probably don't believe they are gifted. These teachers have it written all over their faces, and I doubt they realize how obvious it really is. Any time we hit a gap in knowledge these teachers start to question things. If DD9 doesn't ace a worksheet that happens to be the 10th worksheet of the week over the same repeated concept, then that is the one worksheet the teacher writes all over and sends home. The other 9 worksheets have a checkmark at the top to indicate it was graded.

I agree with what Val said above - shouldn't the people that are responsible for teaching our youth know more about gifted students because they certainly seem to know about the importance of differentiating for the lower end of the curve.

I also know if I go to these teachers to try to "educate" them, it will come back on my daughters and make things even worse. It takes a lot of tact and patience to advocate.

As for the sensitivities - I see some of this in both daughters. They display what I would call - over-emotion. They get upset over little things and are always concerned about things not being fair. This over-emotion comes fast and furious and becomes consuming. They also have some sensitivity to clothing, tags, waistbands, etc. but not to the extreme.

This is my DD, to a tee. She is a friend to many people. But gradually over the past few years, she has chosen to uninvest in many of those relationships because SHE isn't getting anything at all out of them. It's just time that makes her feel more lonely. She likes BEING liked, all right.

But it's not the same as having a two-way friendship.

We're still working to get her to understand that there ARE individuals in the world who can relate to her authentically, and that those relationships are rare and worth cultivating.

Oh. My. God.

I'm going to have to process this for a while. I believe this may explain a great deal about why I don't have friends.

Coincidently I came across this poking around for something and scarily the first paragraph of the book desc describes me almost to a tee and ditto for DD.

living with intensity

HK, your daughter is very lucky to have you. Not only as relates to this subject, of course, but I know if just one of my parents would have been able to support me and understand me through all of the social stuff when I was a teen, my life would have been drastically improved.

Not that I would change where I am now, but I could have saved a fortune in therapy and wasted tuition.

Hopefully I can save my boys from similar angst.

Ditto.

I find this the singular most helpful book on the topic.

I agree with all the above! I can easily be friends with many different people on a surface level, but I don't really have any true friends to speak of. I've befriended several different co-workers over the years and as they have come and gone so has our friendship even though we are still all living in the same area.

DD8 just asked me the other day if I have any friends and why I don't hang out with my friends. I wasn't sure how to explain this to her. I just told her that my family was more important to me than hanging out with anyone else and I'd rather spend time with her and DD9. It is pretty sad and lonely when you think about it. DH will tell me I can sometimes come off as snobby, but I honestly don't see it like that. I'm always friendly and quite witty (I think). I'm just picky and set high standards and I don't put myself out there for just anyone. I don't see that as snobby, but being cautious and reserved.

Like Nautigal said - I need to really think about this now. Good grief, I probably have some deep-seeded problem that I'm just now coming to realize by going through all these things with my daughters. Maybe we can all do therapy together.

Yes and yes

All this makes me remember entering college. I really believed there would be more people like me, who I could talk to and understood me. I became depressed once I realized it was the same people I went to high school with.

It took me a long time to learn to stop looking for a friend who had the same level of thinking and interests as I. Interesting enough, I have tended to date men who were HG+, but also workaholics. My dh is certainly hg, yet because of life experiences, has a healthier work/home balance. Therefore, we are quite well suited.

As I try to understand my boys, I am slowly learning more about myself. Hopefully, that knowledge allows me to support them more effectively than I was.

I LOVE living with intensity!

For this I have to say: you rock!

Yes-- and then when I finally DID meet other HG+ people in grad school...wow did I ever regret spending all those years dumbing down. I felt SO inadequate next to people who knew how to leverage their brains in ways that I didn't.


Most of the time, I like living with intensity, too... though it can make long car trips interesting, to say the least. We're all fairly opinionated and volatile.

HK- when I said I loved living with intensity, I meant the book.

Actually, living with intensity, I do enjoy, but it's very tiring.

Also, I agree that I wish I had dumbed down less.

oh wow that bit on friendships - I totally get that! I always feel like the outsider looking in, in any situation. At kids activities and classes, when they were at pre-school I felt it too (although in hind sight that may have been a touch of the typical "OMG your kid is the youngest in the class and can read!" kinda thing). And even with people my age - I have often, especially over the past few years, chosen to deliberately disengage from certain friendships.

It's been quite delightful to find a true friend here and there that I feel completely comfortable with or feel even out of my depth as I have spent so long dumbing down.

I have definitely felt misunderstood the majority of my life and I still often do, although at this point (30yo) I have learned to hide certain things in order to better get along with the general population, although there are plenty of things I do that people don't get. My Mother says I'm PG - I was tested when I was 5/6 so I'm not sure if she's remembering correctly or not! I have written before about how it's hard for me to even 'admit' to being gifted, as if I am lying because I'm not a neurosurgeon or astrophysicist. That's a whole other unrelated thought process.

My daughter is only 3, so she hasn't had much time to be misunderstood yet. I'm sure it's coming though. She's more like a 5/6 year old in most ways, so I can only imagine what it'll be like once she actually is 5/6.

As far as overexcitabilities go, my number one is definitely sensual. Some examples:

- Love to just go to clothing stores and run my hands over the racks to feel all the clothing textures. I always have liked this.
- Very obsessive over colors and color differences. I not only color code my closet (well, most of it is black) but I order by style as well. And I will even stress when a shirt is on the border of two colors, because I want it in the 'right' order.
- LOVE to organize. Alphabetize, size order, you name it. I will actually take all the books off the shelves and reorganize them in a different way, just because I find it enjoyable.

I also display tendencies of Intellectual and (a little bit of) PyschoMotor. My daughter definitely shows PyschoMotor, BUT on the flip side, is that just her being a young child? I'm not entirely sure.

Oh, yes, this. I have different friends for different limited roles, and I am very lucky to be part of a longterm online community of kindred spirits which sustains me. CTY summer camps, then college were the only times I really felt within a community of RL peers. Nowadays I don't connect deeply with people IRL though I have learned to fake it acceptably. Mostly.

I tested PG as a child - in one of the talent-search longitudinal studies and everything. Among my many issues :-) I have very low tolerance for noise (stresses me out), and strong intellectual and imaginational overexcitabilities. In the past couple of years I think I have finally gotten beyond my well-meaning sixth-grade teacher and her classroom library of dystopian and Holocaust literature. I still cannot tolerate the typical horror or action movie. Some of those fears run deep, deep, deep and holding them up to reality as it actually exists doesn't help.

DS7, at least HG+, shows major psychomotor, sensual (currently being helped greatly by OT) and emotional overexcitabilities. Right now we're throwing everything we've got at getting him more comfortable in his own skin. He's highly, highly 2/e.

DD4, I suspect PG, exhibits psychomotor (and then some), sensual, intellectual - really all of them, right now. It's hard being 4. She's up for hand surgery soon and then we'll look at OT for her as well given what it's done for her brother.

It does make home life interesting!

You are on point and still young, so you can benefit from all of the info. online. I read in English, so I enjoy info. from Australia and UK as well. If you can read in all of the other languages, I think you'll find documentation all over the globe.

Two points I wanted to make. One, use what you learn about giftedness to make your decisions about mating and procreating. I am very happy because my spouse and my child have a shared experience that we all relate to. Two, know when you are reading or listening to 'experts' (even if they are very smart), if they are not 'gifted' then what they are saying may not relate to you at all and that is very tough. You have to know yourself and stay strong and know that they may think they are trying to help you, but following them (and going against your instinct) will derail you and you'll lose time having to redirect back to what you knew was right for you in the first place. I hope everyone gives you great helpful advice.

Good luck in all of your future endeavors. Enjoy 23; it goes so fast.

[quote=QT3.1414]
Do any of you feel that you and/or your children are sometimes/often misunderstood by administrators, teachers, professors, psychologists, or even therapists because of giftedness? For instance, if you or your child indicates that a class is not sufficiently challenging, this might be taken as arrogance though this was never the intention? If you and/or your child has or still encounters this, how do you deal with these irritating incidences? Is this feeling of being misunderstood something we must become accustomed to?

My DS8 would probably love to elaborate to you on his feelings about this question. At 4, his private Kindergarten teacher (who we otherwise LOVE) misunderstood his response to something as "easy" and scolded him for being arrogant. We think he was simply explaining that the reading text he was given was "easy." Little guy broke down in tears that night at the dinner table, so upset that he had hurt his teacher's feelings by saying she didn't give him challenging work.

It has been a battle to minimize the damage that one comment made. To this day, he is afraid to directly talk with teachers about his feelings of "needing challenge." And we have tried it all from inviting him into conversations about educational planning with his teachers to weekly sessions with a psychologist (Ph.D) I don't think even the most seasoned teachers truly know how deeply some of these children feel and how long and intense their reactions can be to a negative response.

ALL.THE.TIME.

It is a shame that a statement is not accepted at face value, treated as authentic, and utilized to gain insight and discuss perspectives.

At a plein air painting gathering... each artist's work is different, and in looking at each piece, one can easily see where each artist had set up his or her easel... the view communicated on canvas is different for each artist, depending on their perspective and distance from the scene depicted. If our society would process a statement about the easiness (or lack of challenge, or boredom) of a class, in the same way we easily see an artist's relative positioning to their subject as revealed through their painting, it would make a positive difference.

The goal of communicating is ideally to enhance understanding, and that implies we are beings with different experiences, perspectives, and knowledge bases.

Sometimes ask/probe/clarify. Sometimes let it go.

It depends on the situation: in random, casual conversations people may wish to let it go. In relationships where more may be at stake, it may be worth investing the time in further conversation to clarify... hopefully with the idea in mind that everyone benefits from enhanced insight and understanding. When deciding, it may be helpful to also keep in mind that gifted are a minority (1%-10%) of the population.

On another current thread, a parent mentioned intensity and asked if it gets better... I didn't even think to answer about school...