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My 9 year old son (4th grade) is highly gifted but having a number of issues. I'd appreciate any advice.

He is in the public elementary school's gifted program for math and language arts. Honestly, the math is not challenging him at all. The language arts teacher is a homework maven however, and tends to really pile it on. He's not challenged by the subject, but he is challenged by the volume of work in that class.

His biggest issue, though, is his temper and his inability to control his emotions and behave appropriately. This happens at home, at school, and elsewhere.

Once he is upset, he appears to lose the ability to think rationally and stick to the truth. And he can transition from happy to meltdown very quickly based on the oddest triggers. We know some of his triggers, but we're often surprised by the things that set him off. Once he's melted down, his emotional age is that of a 4-5 year old, and he will often refuse to communicate using words. Instead he will "communicate" through abrupt body movement, grunts, stomping, growls, and mean faces.

Usually, the best thing to do when this happens to not to try to reason with him and instead remove him from the stressor for some time. He often bounces back quickly.

Largely as a result, he doesn't have any friends this year. He says that he doesn't care about friends but I don't believe that is his genuine feeling, as he also has indicated that he'd like more friends. He claims that most other kids are boring and that he doesn't like them.

Unfortunately, between his tantrums and his intelligence, he is very hard to get along with. He can some across as arrogant and self-centered, without necessarily trying to.

My wife and I have tried speaking with him at length about his reactions. Any improvements have been temporary and fleeting.

We are also reading book on gifted kids, over-excitability, and possible medical issues. While these books are helpful with diagnosis, they tend to be short on treatment recommendations.

We are also looking into therapy and possibly home schooling, but we're not sure that the latter will be the right environment either.

This kid has got us at wits end. Most of the time, he's a sweet, happy, friendly, little guy, very affectionate, witty and bright. But he can very quickly turn into a monster.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Has he been evaluated by anyone? I mean a full evaluation-- probably by a neuropsych or someone like that? It sounds like there is some kind of dysregulation at play, rather than "just" being highly gifted.

I would make sure that you are getting that evaluation to find out what is going on with him, because that will give you some tools to help him manage better (and probably tools to help all of you manage better)!

This must be so frustrating; he sounds lonely, and you sound so very sad for him.

I don't have much insight for you on treatment, but I think I'm raising your son's soul mate. Your description of his behavior and attitudes is eerily like my DD8 (3rd grade in a full-time gifted public school). She has been diagnosed with dysgraphia and sensory processing disorder.

I also think that a neuropsych evaluation is warranted, if you can possibly afford it.

Your HG 9 year old may have the introspection and cognitive tools to try more sophisticated control mechanisms. My DS7 has it much more together than I did at that age or 8 or 9 or 10 or 11; but I can speak from my personal experience.

Theory...
Part 1: Fix a weakness with a strength.
Part 2: You cannot easily fix the scale of reaction.
Part 3: You can change the interpretation of the triggers.
Part 4: Better interpretations lead to better reactions.
Part 2+3+4: It is better to set the hand brake than to try to stop a car rolling down the hill.
Part 5: Laughter is one of the best medicines. (laughter seems to help erase some of the negative learning that comes from heavy emotional situations and reduce physiological stress reactions)

Going from my memories of getting through that stage myself with a little psychology training thrown in there...

Work out a "situation review strategy" with him, but let it be his to implement on his own. This should be him relaxing in his own space and thinking through what led to a blow-up (depending on his style preference he may want to write down his thgouhts.) As he contemplates each item, he can work to identify what bothered him and what in his mind reacted poorly to the situation. Then he can look for other interpretations for the same situation that do not lead to the negative outcome.

I also would suggest him looking for a funny perspective on each trigger, as that is another vantage point where he can diffuse and take control of his reaction.

I'd suggest finding some basic meditation technique for him to relax into a mindset to do this type of exercise.

Some self-coaching questions to help in "rewriting" his emotional filters:
- What is really at stake here?
- What is the worse thing that can happen? Really??
- What will I gain by becoming angry at this? What will I lose?
- Is my reaction in scale with the situation?
- What is the honest/fair level of reaction I should have?

I have an almost-9-year old dd who has the same challenge - and it's beyond frustating to deal with at times! I'm afraid I won't have any this-will-work type of advice for you, we're still working through it with our own dd, but fwiw, I agree with the suggestions for a full eval.

All children are different, so what we've discovered about our dd and what we are working on with her are of course not going to be necessarily relevant for your ds, but fwiw, these are a few of the things we've found in our journey:

1) Our dd doesn't appear to have a learning challenge *on the surface* (she's always been a high-achiever in school and she picks up math concepts uber-quickly - that's her area of strength). However, IQ testing revealed that she has one specific area that she has a large dip in ability in - it's related to associactive memory. We're still trying to figure out how this impacts her at school and in life, but when we look at what happens when she goes through that chain reaction of going from nice-as-can-be to blowing-her-top-and-not-coming-back... we are finding that it might be related to misunderstandings that might be linked back to her associate memory. She's also recently had a reading eval (because as she's gotten older, her reading ability seems to have lagged relative to what everyone expected it would be based on her verbal communication). Her eval was really wild - she was doing well across the board (and she's recently tested ahead of grade level by 2 years at school in comprehension)... but there was one specific area of her eval where she was scoring in the 5th percentile - just one *ONE* area... and we are still trying to figure out how that's impacting her schoolwork... but I suspect it's feeding into her frustration and anxiety. Things that are so subtle can impact a child in a large way, yet be very hard for someone outside looking in to see.

2) Our dd is into sports and likes being active. We've had her in an after-school sports activity (organized) every day after school this year. It's impacting her homework time - not great. BUT more importantly, since she's had this outlet for her energy, the number and duration of her tantrums has decreased significantly.

3) The tantrums and quckness-to-blow are much worse when she's hungry... and she eats a *ton*... and she needs to snack frequently. So... we try to keep her fed constantly!

4) This has nothing to do with our dd - but I would look closely at the amount of LA homework your ds has. Time spent on homework really stresses out my older ds (who has quite a bit of homework and who is also dysgraphic). Although your ds appears to not be struggling with his homework, do you know if it's taking him the same amount of time the teacher expects it to? If it's taking longer, is it taking longer for other kids too, or just your ds? Could you also perhaps post here a brief summary of the amount and type of homework he has in LA?

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks for your input. Yes, we are currently leaning toward a full eval. It will be good to see if we can narrow down what we're dealing with.

I am sad for him, but optimistic as well. As he matures I think he's bright enough to realize he has problems and he needs to address them so that he can have meaningful relationships with people.

Thanks. Feel free to share what works or doesn't with your daughter. All kids are different, but we're always open to ideas.

The difficulty we've had is that during and right after a meltdown he is not rational. No point having that discussion.

At other times, he is very reluctant to discuss his feelings. He'll often shut down if we try too hard.

But these are all great ideas and we probably should try to integrate them.

Interesting. I have theories that my son is generally calmer after exercise. However, his behavior is negatively impacted by being tired or hungry. Not sure that I have the evidence to conclude anything definitely, but that is what I suspect.

Our LA teacher gives MASSIVE hw assignments. For a kid like mine who tends to get easily distracted, one night's assignment can last 2 hours. My older son had this teacher for honors LA as well and he was reduced to tears a few times.

Unfortunately, the teacher seems to be the "tough love" type - she means well, but our hints that the hw schedule is too severe has only resulting in her indicating that they could use even more.

We're in a very competitive district, with lots of engaged parents, so I can see the desire to pile on the hw. But I'm a believer in quality over quantity.

Absolutely, I would only discuss it as a toolset for him to assert his own control and never anytime near a meltdown. But it's like the "How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?" -- "One, but the lightbulb has to want to change."