Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Questions for you all about Giftedness

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.