Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Are gifted kids really that special?

I agree. From what I've seen so far, Dabrowski's theory appears to be based on anecdata, yet it's increasingly cited as gospel by various gifted experts.

Yes, gifted kids have serious educational needs. So do lots of other kids. And I agree with MON, it's ridiculous how hard it can be for a parent to work with school to get those needs met, and aggravating to see how many kids do not get them met.

Glad yours has what looks like a good school placement!

I think that pretty much everyone is special to someone (even criminals have fan clubs). Clearly, children are special to their families.

That said, people with any kind of gift are special in a different way because they can do something that most ohter people can't or can't do nearly as well. If they weren't special, we wouldn't use the term gift to refer to their talents.

With respect to kids with cognitive gifts, yes, they're special, just as gifted adults are. Very intelligent people can think in ways that other people can't. Giftedness is more than being able to learn quickly; it's also a increased capacity to make connections that most other people can't make. So IMO, people with very high cognitive abilities are special in a significant and important way. It's very frustrating for me to see that our schools generally ignore this fact.

Gifted is a big basket. Did anyone see Adrian Romoff on AGT? That is a "special" gifted kid, with extraordinary talent, drive and intelligence. I think it would be a little difficult in a regular classroom with peers and he is in school but highly accelerated. Now you get gifted classes with 98th percentile scores through to 99.9. For the last 3 years, DD was in a classroom of kids who were pretty much in the 99th percentile, most 99.5, guessing. Now she is in the 98th and up and she wonders why they are considered gifted. So I defined special as having special needs. I do not lump all gifted kids like that. You said EG school. I think accomodating accelerated subject matter, teaching a little differently but I wouldn't call that special but more differentiated.

We had this problem with the gifted class my son was in during elementary school. Many of the kids in that class seemed to feel that they were better than the kids in the regular classes. Many of them were just copying their parents & the teacher. It wasn't received well by the other kids on the playground and was one of the downsides to the class.

UNESCO would beg to differ with the section I bolded.

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/right-to-education/

That said, I agree with the corollary that it is definitely also a parental responsibility, and that too many parents abdicate this important responsibility.

This kind of bothers me. Gifted kids tend to be far more sensitive than non-gifted children; they DO have "great emotional needs". All too often, I see people dismiss that as "all children are special" or "every child of every iq level comes with challenges" when, in fact, gifted kids have an OVERWHELMINGLY heightened sensitivity that is often dismissed by those around them.

This article explains the emotional intensity pretty well:
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10240.aspx

"Intellectual complexity goes hand in hand with emotional depth. Just as gifted children's thinking is more complex and has more depth than other children's, so too are their emotions more complex and more intense."

It isn't that they are being overly excitable or a jerk; it's that their world is intense and overwhelming and scary. They have to learn how to process and filter to a greater depth than non-gifted children.

It's not just sensory or emotions; it's also justice and morals.
http://www.sengifted.org/archives/a...ed-children-and-the-evolution-of-society
"Many parents (such as B’s mother above) have reported that their gifted children seemed to have an innate sense of right and wrong."

It's the fact that they can be four, speaking like a ten-year-old, reading high-school material, and still sucking their thumb. Adults forget that they are four because of their vocabulary and diction, and expect more of their behavior; they're still just four-year-olds sucking their thumb. Gifted children develop asynchronously and may be able to read college-level material while still writing in kindergarten handwriting (backward letters and all).

Gifted children have different needs and those needs very often go unmet by the world around them, particularly schools who refuse to acknowledge that some children have special NEEDS.

Exactly-- this is the overwhelming sense that one gets from our local GT services, as well; and they identify a full 30% of the kids in some schools. In that instance, I simply have to SCOFF that this is a "special" population by my use of the notion. That's the UPPER THIRD.

If "regular" education isn't serving those kids, then they need to fix that, not wring their hands and tell parents what a challenging problem this is. Because... it isn't. Not unless they are grossly incompetent as educators, I mean.

So that kind of rhetoric, used with THAT population, is pure entitlement and it. is. ODIOUS.

It's the sort of thinking that marginalizes truly "special" GT students (that is, those who are more like 1: 10,000 or so), those with 2e needs, etc. The kids that can't really FUNCTION in an undifferentiated setting, I mean.

Because the parents with kids at the 90th percentile are largely wanting to be told how Very Exceptionally ESPECIALLY SPECIAL their little snowflakes are, and look, X, Y, and Z... (basically, first-world-problems, ad nauseum-- the most challenging thing for many of them is whining that orchestra overlaps sports practices too many days of the week, that there is too much reading expected at home, and that the geometry teacher needs to accommodate track meets with less homework, or something like that)

In that instance the "Special" club can only have just so many seats, see, or it isn't exclusive any more. (Which feels faintly ridiculous anyway given that this already seems an awful lot like Lake Wobegon, given the bizarre, credulity-stretching statistics involved in this big picture, but whatever). Can't have the "wrong kind" of kids in here, either...

It also leads parents to feel that it is perfectly fine when their little darlings are insufferable gits-- to other adults, to teachers, or to their classmates.

I get that being out of sync with the world is hard. I live it too. But that does NOT NOT NOT excuse being cruel or downright NASTY and arrogant to less intellectually able people around you. EVER. It particularly doesn't excuse the behavior when you and the the other 30% of the school are all "special" like that. Not so exclusive that you ought to be using it as a badge of martyrdom to begin with, KWIM?

That's the kind of thing that gives real programs for students that have extraordinary needs a bad, bad name.

It also makes me enraged to listen to this kind of unmitigated whinging from upper middle class parents who have no concept of real educational, financial, or social problems of the kind of magnitude that the less fortunate kids in the district's classrooms face on a regular basis. Yes, I get that your kid being at the 90th percentile and not being able to fit football, basketball, martial arts, theater, AND two musical instruments in with the heavy homework load of AP classes must... really, really suck. Well, no. I don't, but I trust that it FEELS like adversity to you. But it doesn't excuse stepping on the kids that get lunch only because it's FREE, and can't afford any of your kid's extracurriculars because they are WORKING to help their families. Those kids don't have tutors to help them keep up the "special" banner, and nobody expects them to be nasty to others, either.

I fault administration for being cowed by over-entitled parents, myself. I was beyond appalled when getting the accommodations that College Board said my kid should have (for the SAT) meant demonstrating for the gatekeeping troll at the local school that my PG child was "worth it." Well, what if she weren't?? What if she was likely to just score a respectable 1700 and not a 2200+ on the day? It angers me, that attitude. NEEDING the accommodations should have been reason enough.



I realize this sounds rather bitter, but it's the kind of thinking that goes "Oh, we have a "special" group for the really Special Kids" which ultimately prevents authentic supports for kids who are truly exceptional in terms of educational needs.

When you offer "enrichment for all" that's a laudable goal. When the reality turns out to be "enrichment for the ideally advantaged in every way," that's just wrong. It adds insult to injury when that group treats everyone else as if they are subhuman via an air of entitlement.

Disenfranchisement may be part and parcel of being "special" (in the cognitive sense or in any other, I suspect), but feeling superior and put-upon certainly is NOT. I think that the OP's discomfort with the whiff of that kind of rhetoric would have made me feel a bit squicky as well.

What excuses are you referring to? Giftedness isn't a get-out-of-jail free card for misbehaviour, nor is it a guarantee of misbehaviour. It's a state of being that might elicit stronger-than-usual reactions to various stimuli because of heightened perception of various facets of the world.

Apologies for the tangent but this stuck a chord...


A friend of mine *used* to do recruiting for Carnegie-Mellon until the day that a kid that had stellar grades at school and a full-time job outside school ( he was the main breadwinner for the family) was rejected by the admissions office for not having any extra-curricula activities. Feeding his family was his EC for crying out loud! It was then that he realised that ECs are used as a covert proxy for SES by the admissions office at Carnegie-Mellon. This sickened him so much that after doing the recruiting for years he resigned from it.

I've seen similar. Egregious.