The fact that so many gifted child have sensitivity issues aligns well with Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities and Theory of Positive Disintegration. However, it runs completely contrary to our local school, which assures me that it's not normal for gifted kids to have emotional or behavior problems.
This may not be true in your school district, but in our school district "gifted" includes kids who are at the 95th percentile and above, and honestly, I know a lot of kids who meet these qualifciations for "gifted", as well as having gone to a college where I suspect it would have been difficult to be admitted and in turn actually stay in school if a student wasn't at least in the 95th percentile of intellectual ability, and most of the people I've known that meet those qualifications for gifted are completely, totally, absolutely not challenged in any type of neurotypical way, at least not more so than I see in what I would think is the general population of all abilities.
I also suspect you'll find more of the quirky type of personality that is a square peg that won't fit into a round hole as you go higher up in IQ (to the 99th percentile and beyond) but I don't think that's something that can be categorized as "not neurotypical", and I also don't think a vast majority of PG folks are so out-there quirky that you'd recognize them. I've known *one* person like that irl (a person I worked with for a number of years) and although he had his quirks, he still functioned at an absolutely "normal" level in the workplace, had a happy homelife, and was an all around loved and appreciated part of our work team. He was a bit out of sync with the rest of us, but he absolutely was a person who I would define as "neurotypical".
I think you really can't draw conclusions about the occurrence of neurotypical vs not nt from polling parents on a forum such as this - most of the parents of HG+ kids (or any kids) I know irl do not hang out on forums. Parents that seek out places like this are often parents who's children have some type of challenge that brought them here. In the case of 2e parents, it's usually not easy to find other parents who've experienced the same thing with their children - which again, from my perspective, indicates it's not all that common. I can't tell you how many times in working with our schools and the private professionals who've worked with my 2e ds I've heard "We've never seen another kid like him". I suspect based on those comments and based on how difficult it's been to find anyone who's remotely in the same situation as us irl, that most highly capable kids are functioning very happily and are very neurotypical
And I'll be honest, I wouldn't be posting here if I was parenting a neurotypical child - I'd be out running around doing all the things my friends of neurotypical kids are doing with their time (and it's not hanging around on the computer). I found this place while researching how to help my very 2e ds. I stayed on because (I hope) I might be able to help someone else by sharing our experiences. As I stay on, and ds grows, I've run into additional times whee I've had questions and need advice, and I know there are parents here dealing with very similar 2e situations, so I know I can ask for and get advice here - so those are the reasons I hang around. If I need advice for a neurotypical parenting situaiton, it's easy enough just to make a phone call or ask another parent/friend at school or read a book
Best wishes,
polarbear
