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Although we often define gifted students by their intelligence, it's their social and emotional needs that are often the biggest challenge. As a gifted kid myself, I knew nothing about these common issues nor did my parents. I wonder if the teachers in my gifted program even knew? By having a better understanding of gifted students' needs beyond pure academics, we can better serve as their teachers and mentors.

Here are a few articles addressing some specific social-emotional needs of gifted learners.

Table Of Contents

They Doubt Themselves

Gifted students can suffer from Impostor Syndrome, doubting that they are as great as people have said they are. When people told me how smart I was or how great of a student I was, it added a very weird pressure. I felt like I was a fraud and didn't deserve the praise I had received. I started to think that people expected me to be perfect and not have to work at it. Eventually, my own self-doubt led to a bit of a breakdown. Turns out that this is a common experience. Even Tom Hanks and Emma Watson have gone through it!

Read more about Impostor Syndrome.

Challenges Don't Come Until College!

Everything's easy for gifted kids... until it isn't! They've been conditioned (often by our own well-intentioned praise) to associate "smart" and "easy." So guess what happens when things get "not easy"? Suddenly we have kids thinking "wait, maybe I'm not smart!" And, so often, this doesn't happen until college, when so many supports are suddenly gone... yet students need help for the first time.
Read more about how calling kids "smart" while offering them easy work is a big problem.
Advanced Here, But Not There

Although their intelligence is (by definition) advanced beyond their age, other traits may be slower to develop, matching grade-level peers or even lagging behind expectations. The fancy term for this is asynchrony or, simply, developing out of sync. I like to use super-heroes as a metaphor: sure, the Flash is fast, but that doesn't mean he's equally strong. Or smart. Or able to read minds. Just because one area is advanced, doesn't mean other areas will be.

Read more about how gifted students can lag behind and be advanced at the same time.

Surprisingly Intense

As part of their intense intelligence, gifted students often exhibit other intensities or overexcitabilities, including intense emotions, increased sensitivity to their five senses, lots of physical energy, and an intense imagination. These intensities don't fit the stereotype of a "smart kid," so students (and their parents) can start to worry that something's up. It's not!

Read more about intensities and overexcitabilities.

When They Don't Fit The Stereotype

Our stereotype of the gifted child is often wildly inaccurate, leading to misidentification or overlooking gifted kids who don't fit out preconceptions. My favorite example is Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, who is one example of a kid who probably would have benefited from a gifted program.
Read more about Calvin, the unidentified gifted student
Hard To Find Friends

Often, I hear parents say they kept their kid out of a gifted program out of a fear of some kind of social isolation. Friends. This is like denying someone water in the desert because you're afraid they'll get wet. Gifted kids need to be with people who are their intellectual peers. People who they can have a darn conversation with! Here's me talking about how my own love of dinosaurs made it hard to find friends my own age (even though everyone else loved dinosaurs too).

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While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students' social and emotional needs.

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Although we often define gifted students by their intelligence, it's their social and emotional needs that are often the biggest challenge. As a gifted kid myself, I knew nothing about these common issues nor did my parents. I wonder if the teachers in my gifted program even knew? By having a better understanding of gifted students' needs beyond pure academics, we can better serve as their teachers and mentors.

Here are a few articles addressing some specific social-emotional needs of gifted learners.

Table Of Contents

They Doubt Themselves

Gifted students can suffer from Impostor Syndrome, doubting that they are as great as people have said they are. When people told me how smart I was or how great of a student I was, it added a very weird pressure. I felt like I was a fraud and didn't deserve the praise I had received. I started to think that people expected me to be perfect and not have to work at it. Eventually, my own self-doubt led to a bit of a breakdown. Turns out that this is a common experience. Even Tom Hanks and Emma Watson have gone through it!

Read more about Impostor Syndrome.

Challenges Don't Come Until College!

Everything's easy for gifted kids... until it isn't! They've been conditioned (often by our own well-intentioned praise) to associate "smart" and "easy." So guess what happens when things get "not easy"? Suddenly we have kids thinking "wait, maybe I'm not smart!" And, so often, this doesn't happen until college, when so many supports are suddenly gone... yet students need help for the first time.
Read more about how calling kids "smart" while offering them easy work is a big problem.
Advanced Here, But Not There

Although their intelligence is (by definition) advanced beyond their age, other traits may be slower to develop, matching grade-level peers or even lagging behind expectations. The fancy term for this is asynchrony or, simply, developing out of sync. I like to use super-heroes as a metaphor: sure, the Flash is fast, but that doesn't mean he's equally strong. Or smart. Or able to read minds. Just because one area is advanced, doesn't mean other areas will be.

Read more about how gifted students can lag behind and be advanced at the same time.

Surprisingly Intense

As part of their intense intelligence, gifted students often exhibit other intensities or overexcitabilities, including intense emotions, increased sensitivity to their five senses, lots of physical energy, and an intense imagination. These intensities don't fit the stereotype of a "smart kid," so students (and their parents) can start to worry that something's up. It's not!

Read more about intensities and overexcitabilities.

When They Don't Fit The Stereotype

Our stereotype of the gifted child is often wildly inaccurate, leading to misidentification or overlooking gifted kids who don't fit out preconceptions. My favorite example is Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, who is one example of a kid who probably would have benefited from a gifted program.
Read more about Calvin, the unidentified gifted student
Hard To Find Friends

Often, I hear parents say they kept their kid out of a gifted program out of a fear of some kind of social isolation. Friends. This is like denying someone water in the desert because you're afraid they'll get wet. Gifted kids need to be with people who are their intellectual peers. People who they can have a darn conversation with! Here's me talking about how my own love of dinosaurs made it hard to find friends my own age (even though everyone else loved dinosaurs too).

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While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students' social and emotional needs.

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As a teacher, I made these mistakes with my highest-performing students:

I allowed them to work alone all of the time since they "didn't need help"

I gave general "good job" praise, rather than specific and useful feedback

I was satisfied that they always turned in 100% work. This should have been a cause of concern!

In short, I let these kids sail past me off in the distance without engaging. I didn't draw them close and give them real instruction. I didn't give them useful feedback. And this happened year after year after year to these same students.

Imagine!

Imagine going to school everyday for five, six, TEN years and only hearing "Great job! Another A+!" You develop a reputation for perfection. You're a " smart kid."

You begin to develop a horrible fear. A knot in your stomach. You're worried that, one day, you'll be exposed as a fraud!

See, YOU know that you've been making mistakes along the way. YOU know that there have been struggles. But, somehow, your parents and teachers have missed it. They've called you "so smart!" and given you yet another award.

But the struggle has been growing. Each year it's harder to maintain the illusion of perfection.

It's just a matter of time before everyone sees you make a mistake. They'll realize that, hey, it wasn't so easy for you. Wait. You aren't perfect!

You might start avoiding situations that are more likely to expose you. A high-achieving person with incredible potential is now taking the easy track, avoiding risky situations in order to continue to appear perfect.

Feeling Like An Impostor

Sound exaggerated? Maybe! But it's pretty much what school was like for me. And the more I've told my own story, the more parents who have told me that's exactly what happened to my now adult child!

They call this "Impostor Syndrome," a situation in which high-performing people are vaguely praised for being perfect and then start avoiding situations where they might be "exposed" for being imperfect.

[Impostor syndrome is] a shared learned behaviour common to high achievers - people are left on their own, competition is intense, and there's not much of a mentor system. From Feeling Like A Fraud (link broke)

This feeling was so intense that I avoided starting a real career because I thought the interview process would expose me as a fraud. Friends, I attended university on a full academic scholarship, was invited to the honors program, graduated with great grades in a tough computer science program, and was afraid I wasn't deserving of my success!

What To Do?

A decade (plus!) later, I understand the situation better because of my experience as a student teacher. Yes, it took me until post-college before a teacher gave me what I needed:

A mentor. For me, student teaching was the first time I was under close observation by a caring expert, my mentor teacher Nanci Cole.

Feedback I could actually trust. Nanci's feedback was based on my unedited (and sometimes terrible) performance, not an essay I spent hours getting just right. She was "in" on my secret and could give much better feedback than "You're so great!"

*Actual improvement: Over the course of eight weeks, I got way better at teaching. I felt improvement in a way that I didn't experience in school, where I often "got it" quickly. There's nothing like the feeling of getting better.

Finally, it helped to know that my feelings had a name. Impostor Syndrome is "a thing." Simply knowing that others experienced the same thing somehow makes it more manageable.

So, teachers, stay close to your students. Don't let the brightest kids just work on their own. This increases the feelings of being an impostor. Give useful feedback to your best students. Help them actually improve! Never give the impression that you think they've perfectly mastered a topic. They know they haven't, and then they'll stop trusting your praise.

Parents, connect your students with experts in their interests so they can get feedback and guidance from a master (whether that's guitar playing, LEGO building, or acting). And don't feel bad that your kids don't trust your opinions! Encourage risk and accept mistakes. Don't let the expectations of perfection cloud your students' judgment.

Most of all, make your students aware of Impostor Syndrome, especially as they move along in their educational careers.

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They believe that only they are aware of their limitations, near misses, and potential for error. They attribute their success to luck, not ability. In an attempt to maintain an illusion of perfection, they avoid situations in which they might not be the best. This is called Impostor's Syndrome.

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Recently I've become a bit obsessed with the word "smart" in schools. And I think we have a problem.

I don't know when it happens, but students learn that some kids at school are "smart." Everyone knows who the "smart" kids are. Survey your students and they'd probably name the same few kids.

"Smart" is extremely common praise at school.

What Does "Smart" Mean?

I got to wondering: what does "smart" even mean? It's a surprisingly difficult word to figure out. But in school it has a pretty specific meaning. Take a couple of moments and ask your class to define it.

Class, I've noticed that sometimes we say people are "smart" at school. Why do we call people "smart"?

I'll bet your students think that "smart" kids:

"know a lot" (this is the most common response I get)

finish quickly

are never called over by the teacher

have the answer (think about how students react when the "smart" raises their hand... but is wrong)

don't make mistakes (imagine the sounds students make when they see that the "smart" kid got an 80% on their test)

In short, kids think their peers are "smart" when school appears to be easy for them. Enjoy this wonderful Calvin and Hobbes comic about this very topic:

But "easy" isn't what smart should mean! And it certainly shouldn't be something we praise kids for. "Easy" often means they already knew it!

And... if kids think "smart" means "it's easy for me," guess what happens when it eventually (and inevitably) gets not so easy?

"Smart" Is Slippery

The more I thought about it, the harder it became to define "smart." I even looked it up:

Smart (adj): having or showing a quick-witted intelligence.

Oof! That's not very helpful. So what does intelligence mean?

Intelligence (noun): the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Wow. "The ability to acquire knowledge?" That doesn't seem right. Perhaps no one knows what "smart" actually means?

It might be fun to have your class survey parents, friends, siblings, etc and gather a bunch of definitions of "smart" to see what the patterns are.

Smart Leads to Unrealistic Expectations

When I was a kid, I had a great memory (as many gifted kids do). One of my mom's friends dubbed me "The Walking Brain" because I could recall facts about my mom's life that she had forgotten. Much like a purse, she could just pull info out of me to help her finish a story. I delighted in the praise and the feeling of "smart."

Since I was praised for knowing random things, guess what happens now when I don't know random things? Even as an adult, I am a bit ashamed. Seriously. It makes me feel like I'm less special for not already knowing every random fact. After all, I used to be "The Walking Brain!"

Praise has long term effects. Students value what we praise.

Make "Smart" A Bad Word

But if we don't have a clear definition of "smart", let's get rid of it. It's too vague. It has weird connotations. Make it a bad word.

I've tried eliminating "smart" from my own vocabulary. It takes work. I really have to think. What about this person am I praising? What did they do with their brain that impressed me? What do I mean by "smart"?

Brainstorm specific compliments that could replace "you're smart" with your class.

Class, it seems like "smart" means lots of different things. I don't think it's a very helpful word. It's a shortcut word. So from now on, let's try to be more specific. What could we praise someone for rather than just calling them "smart"?

You made an unexpected connection!

You understood that very quickly.

You used some information that no one else knew!

You noticed something that I didn't notice.

You explained that idea so clearly, a five-year-old could understand it.

Create a classroom collection of specific "smart" praise. This will absolutely be a year-long project. Be aware of moments to call out actions you notice and add to the "specific praise" list.

If It's Easy, Don't Say "Smart"

Finally, if something's easy for a kid, do not tell them they're smart. Point out how easy it was, congratulate them, but get them working on something interesting stat.

Always "easy" is an educational emergency.

In the next article in this series, we'll look at how "smart" becomes a burden for bright kids as they get older.

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Recently I've become a bit obsessed with the word "smart" in schools. And I think we have a problem. I don't know when it happens, but students learn that some kids at school are "smart." Everyone knows who the "smart" kids are. Survey your students and they'd probably name the same few kids.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Although we often define gifted students by their intelligence, it's their social and emotional needs that are often the biggest challenge. As a gifted kid myself, I knew nothing about these common issues nor did my parents. I wonder if the teachers in my gifted program even knew? By having a better understanding of gifted students' needs beyond pure academics, we can better serve as their teachers and mentors.

Here are a few articles addressing some specific social-emotional needs of gifted learners.

Table Of Contents

They Doubt Themselves

Gifted students can suffer from Impostor Syndrome, doubting that they are as great as people have said they are. When people told me how smart I was or how great of a student I was, it added a very weird pressure. I felt like I was a fraud and didn't deserve the praise I had received. I started to think that people expected me to be perfect and not have to work at it. Eventually, my own self-doubt led to a bit of a breakdown. Turns out that this is a common experience. Even Tom Hanks and Emma Watson have gone through it!

Read more about Impostor Syndrome.

Challenges Don't Come Until College!

Everything's easy for gifted kids... until it isn't! They've been conditioned (often by our own well-intentioned praise) to associate "smart" and "easy." So guess what happens when things get "not easy"? Suddenly we have kids thinking "wait, maybe I'm not smart!" And, so often, this doesn't happen until college, when so many supports are suddenly gone... yet students need help for the first time.
Read more about how calling kids "smart" while offering them easy work is a big problem.
Advanced Here, But Not There

Although their intelligence is (by definition) advanced beyond their age, other traits may be slower to develop, matching grade-level peers or even lagging behind expectations. The fancy term for this is asynchrony or, simply, developing out of sync. I like to use super-heroes as a metaphor: sure, the Flash is fast, but that doesn't mean he's equally strong. Or smart. Or able to read minds. Just because one area is advanced, doesn't mean other areas will be.

Read more about how gifted students can lag behind and be advanced at the same time.

Surprisingly Intense

As part of their intense intelligence, gifted students often exhibit other intensities or overexcitabilities, including intense emotions, increased sensitivity to their five senses, lots of physical energy, and an intense imagination. These intensities don't fit the stereotype of a "smart kid," so students (and their parents) can start to worry that something's up. It's not!

Read more about intensities and overexcitabilities.

When They Don't Fit The Stereotype

Our stereotype of the gifted child is often wildly inaccurate, leading to misidentification or overlooking gifted kids who don't fit out preconceptions. My favorite example is Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, who is one example of a kid who probably would have benefited from a gifted program.
Read more about Calvin, the unidentified gifted student
Hard To Find Friends

Often, I hear parents say they kept their kid out of a gifted program out of a fear of some kind of social isolation. Friends. This is like denying someone water in the desert because you're afraid they'll get wet. Gifted kids need to be with people who are their intellectual peers. People who they can have a darn conversation with! Here's me talking about how my own love of dinosaurs made it hard to find friends my own age (even though everyone else loved dinosaurs too).

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While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students' social and emotional needs.

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Asynchrony, " not synchronized," describes this common pattern seen in gifted children: their different abilities develop at vastly different rates.

"But all kids develop at different rates!" one might cry.

Yep, but since gifted kids' intelligence develops so quickly, the difference in these rates is more pronounced than in the general population.

Super Heroes

I think of superheroes as great examples of asynchronous development.

The X-Men, Spiderman, and the children of The Incredibles all have super-human physical abilities. Yet rarely does a superhero develop equally super-human emotional or social skills to accompany their physical gifts.

As a result, we see teenagers who can levitate objects, create fire with a thought, or race faster than light, yet they struggle with the typical issues of everyday teens. Worse, their incredible strengths highlight their areas of weakness, making their insecurities especially frustrating and (in some cases) even dangerous.

Because of their extreme asynchronous development, they need especially wise mentors to guide them through their youth.

Wide Discrepancies

The "wide discrepancies" experienced by gifted learners might lead to a highly intelligent child, thinking far beyond her grade-level expectations, but perhaps her gross motor skills are under-developed. Or even her fine-motor skills.

Can you imagine the frustration of being incredibly intelligent, yet always being called out for your poor handwriting? Dr. James Webb comments on this topic:

These children may see in their "mind's eye" what they want to do, construct, or draw; however, motor skills do not allow them to achieve the goal. Intense frustration and emotional outbursts may result. James Webb, Ph.D.

Emotional Considerations

The potential frustrations for a gifted child increase when you consider the potential emotional minefield that a high level of moral awareness at a young age brings.

Imagine being sharply aware of the ethical ambiguities present in the world at age six. Now imagine trying to deal with that with only a six-year-old's emotional abilities. Consider what it's like to feel the emotional devastation of a natural disaster, but without the experience to handle those feelings.

[The gifted] are emotionally intense and have a greater awareness of the perils of the world. They may not have the emotional resources to match their cognitive awareness. Linda Silverman, Ph.D.

Our Job

As teachers and parents of these children, we have to be aware of these issues facing our gifted learners. Not only are they dealing with the usual trials of growing up, but they are also often doing it with an increased awareness of their faults, a frustration with being unable to do everything well, and a world that often doesn't know what to do with them. Worse, they often lack the emotional tools to accompany their increased awareness.

We have to be their wise mentors. We have to make sure to teach them, even if it's not an academic lesson.

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Not only are they dealing with the usual trials of growing up, they are often doing it with an increased awareness of their faults, a frustration with being unable to do everything well, and a world that often doesn't know what to do with them.

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Although we often define gifted students by their intelligence, it's their social and emotional needs that are often the biggest challenge. As a gifted kid myself, I knew nothing about these common issues nor did my parents. I wonder if the teachers in my gifted program even knew? By having a better understanding of gifted students' needs beyond pure academics, we can better serve as their teachers and mentors.

Here are a few articles addressing some specific social-emotional needs of gifted learners.

Table Of Contents

They Doubt Themselves

Gifted students can suffer from Impostor Syndrome, doubting that they are as great as people have said they are. When people told me how smart I was or how great of a student I was, it added a very weird pressure. I felt like I was a fraud and didn't deserve the praise I had received. I started to think that people expected me to be perfect and not have to work at it. Eventually, my own self-doubt led to a bit of a breakdown. Turns out that this is a common experience. Even Tom Hanks and Emma Watson have gone through it!

Read more about Impostor Syndrome.

Challenges Don't Come Until College!

Everything's easy for gifted kids... until it isn't! They've been conditioned (often by our own well-intentioned praise) to associate "smart" and "easy." So guess what happens when things get "not easy"? Suddenly we have kids thinking "wait, maybe I'm not smart!" And, so often, this doesn't happen until college, when so many supports are suddenly gone... yet students need help for the first time.
Read more about how calling kids "smart" while offering them easy work is a big problem.
Advanced Here, But Not There

Although their intelligence is (by definition) advanced beyond their age, other traits may be slower to develop, matching grade-level peers or even lagging behind expectations. The fancy term for this is asynchrony or, simply, developing out of sync. I like to use super-heroes as a metaphor: sure, the Flash is fast, but that doesn't mean he's equally strong. Or smart. Or able to read minds. Just because one area is advanced, doesn't mean other areas will be.

Read more about how gifted students can lag behind and be advanced at the same time.

Surprisingly Intense

As part of their intense intelligence, gifted students often exhibit other intensities or overexcitabilities, including intense emotions, increased sensitivity to their five senses, lots of physical energy, and an intense imagination. These intensities don't fit the stereotype of a "smart kid," so students (and their parents) can start to worry that something's up. It's not!

Read more about intensities and overexcitabilities.

When They Don't Fit The Stereotype

Our stereotype of the gifted child is often wildly inaccurate, leading to misidentification or overlooking gifted kids who don't fit out preconceptions. My favorite example is Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, who is one example of a kid who probably would have benefited from a gifted program.
Read more about Calvin, the unidentified gifted student
Hard To Find Friends

Often, I hear parents say they kept their kid out of a gifted program out of a fear of some kind of social isolation. Friends. This is like denying someone water in the desert because you're afraid they'll get wet. Gifted kids need to be with people who are their intellectual peers. People who they can have a darn conversation with! Here's me talking about how my own love of dinosaurs made it hard to find friends my own age (even though everyone else loved dinosaurs too).

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While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students' social and emotional needs.

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We know gifted students are far more complex than their test scores might suggest. And while we might expect certain quirks, others blindside us: a strange reaction to sound, a sudden outburst of tears, or a need to stand up at inopportune times. Dabrowski’s five overexcitabilities provide some insi…

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Although we often define gifted students by their intelligence, it's their social and emotional needs that are often the biggest challenge. As a gifted kid myself, I knew nothing about these common issues nor did my parents. I wonder if the teachers in my gifted program even knew? By having a better understanding of gifted students' needs beyond pure academics, we can better serve as their teachers and mentors.

Here are a few articles addressing some specific social-emotional needs of gifted learners.

Table Of Contents

They Doubt Themselves

Gifted students can suffer from Impostor Syndrome, doubting that they are as great as people have said they are. When people told me how smart I was or how great of a student I was, it added a very weird pressure. I felt like I was a fraud and didn't deserve the praise I had received. I started to think that people expected me to be perfect and not have to work at it. Eventually, my own self-doubt led to a bit of a breakdown. Turns out that this is a common experience. Even Tom Hanks and Emma Watson have gone through it!

Read more about Impostor Syndrome.

Challenges Don't Come Until College!

Everything's easy for gifted kids... until it isn't! They've been conditioned (often by our own well-intentioned praise) to associate "smart" and "easy." So guess what happens when things get "not easy"? Suddenly we have kids thinking "wait, maybe I'm not smart!" And, so often, this doesn't happen until college, when so many supports are suddenly gone... yet students need help for the first time.
Read more about how calling kids "smart" while offering them easy work is a big problem.
Advanced Here, But Not There

Although their intelligence is (by definition) advanced beyond their age, other traits may be slower to develop, matching grade-level peers or even lagging behind expectations. The fancy term for this is asynchrony or, simply, developing out of sync. I like to use super-heroes as a metaphor: sure, the Flash is fast, but that doesn't mean he's equally strong. Or smart. Or able to read minds. Just because one area is advanced, doesn't mean other areas will be.

Read more about how gifted students can lag behind and be advanced at the same time.

Surprisingly Intense

As part of their intense intelligence, gifted students often exhibit other intensities or overexcitabilities, including intense emotions, increased sensitivity to their five senses, lots of physical energy, and an intense imagination. These intensities don't fit the stereotype of a "smart kid," so students (and their parents) can start to worry that something's up. It's not!

Read more about intensities and overexcitabilities.

When They Don't Fit The Stereotype

Our stereotype of the gifted child is often wildly inaccurate, leading to misidentification or overlooking gifted kids who don't fit out preconceptions. My favorite example is Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, who is one example of a kid who probably would have benefited from a gifted program.
Read more about Calvin, the unidentified gifted student
Hard To Find Friends

Often, I hear parents say they kept their kid out of a gifted program out of a fear of some kind of social isolation. Friends. This is like denying someone water in the desert because you're afraid they'll get wet. Gifted kids need to be with people who are their intellectual peers. People who they can have a darn conversation with! Here's me talking about how my own love of dinosaurs made it hard to find friends my own age (even though everyone else loved dinosaurs too).

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While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students' social and emotional needs.

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One of my favorite guides to understanding our students is Bertie Kingore's breakdown of the traits of "gifted" and "high achieving" students. The traits in the "gifted" category always make me think of Calvin from Bill Watterson's wonderful Calvin and Hobbes.

Calvin and Gifted Characteristics

As a kid, I read Calvin and Hobbes religiously. Now, I read these same comics and see Calvin as the perfect introduction to the unexpected characteristics of many gifted students.

The tragedy of these traits is that, despite being rather common, they are often the very things that keep students from being identified and placed in a gifted program. And, yet, such a program is exactly what these children need.

This is why I love Calvin. He reminds us that when searching for gifted students, our criteria shouldn't necessarily be compliance, great grades, or a strong work ethic.

An Intelligent Behavior Problem

Calvin's intelligence is highly advanced, but, rather than being used for good, it supercharges typical bad behavior. This kind of "intelligent misbehavior" could be a sign of a kid who's bored when things are slow and simple. A fascinating, fast-paced classroom could make all the difference!

Loves Learning, Dislikes School

Calvin has intense interests in preferred subjects, but is absolutely uninterested in the topics taught in school. His research report on bats illustrates this perfectly.

Asynchrony

Calvin's development is strikingly uneven. His brain, emotions, and physical abilities are all out of whack. This is known as asynchrony and is common in our gifted learners.

Calvin's poor physical abilities are an ongoing theme: he doesn't like PE, he only enjoys the sport he invented, and endlessly struggles to ride a bike:

At the same time, Calvin displays his above-age-level intelligence in the realm of art (and experiences the resulting disdain from a "philistine").

Further, Calvin's sense of justice and morality is quite advanced, but he certainly can't be considered emotionally mature.

Don't expect gifted students' to develop at an even rate. A young genius may very well be emotionally immature.

Imaginational Overexcitability

Calvin is the poster boy for the imaginational overexcitability. He doesn't just like learning about insects or aliens, he becomes these things. Here's Calvin as a plane, a dinosaur, an ant, and the intrepid Spaceman Spiff:

Calvin's wild imagination gets him into endless trouble, especially since his "stories" are easily interpreted as lies.

In this series of strips, Calvin has "created" a duplicator which leads, in his mind, to several "Calvins" running around and causing havoc.

A vivid imaginary world and even a habit of stretching the truth might be unexpected clues that you're looking at a gifted kid.

Emotional Sensitivity

Despite his tendency for selfish behavior, Calvin has moments of surprising emotional depth. In this strip, he deals with deep moral issues:

But this could also lead to other emotional outbursts, such as frustration.

If you work with enough gifted kids, you're sure to run into a real-life Calvin. And you'll certainly see some of his characteristics in many of the students you work with. An authentic group of gifted students should have a wide mix of characteristics, not simply good grades and compliant behavior.
The Calvin and Hobbes search engine proved indispensable when finding these sample strips. All Calvin and Hobbes strips are available online at Go Comics or buy the ultimate collection on Amazon

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As a kid, I read Calvin and Hobbes religiously, checking out collections from the library and cutting out favorites from the newspaper. Now, I read these same comics and see Calvin in a different light: an example of all of the unexpected traits of gifted students.

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Although we often define gifted students by their intelligence, it's their social and emotional needs that are often the biggest challenge. As a gifted kid myself, I knew nothing about these common issues nor did my parents. I wonder if the teachers in my gifted program even knew? By having a better understanding of gifted students' needs beyond pure academics, we can better serve as their teachers and mentors.

Here are a few articles addressing some specific social-emotional needs of gifted learners.

Table Of Contents

They Doubt Themselves

Gifted students can suffer from Impostor Syndrome, doubting that they are as great as people have said they are. When people told me how smart I was or how great of a student I was, it added a very weird pressure. I felt like I was a fraud and didn't deserve the praise I had received. I started to think that people expected me to be perfect and not have to work at it. Eventually, my own self-doubt led to a bit of a breakdown. Turns out that this is a common experience. Even Tom Hanks and Emma Watson have gone through it!

Read more about Impostor Syndrome.

Challenges Don't Come Until College!

Everything's easy for gifted kids... until it isn't! They've been conditioned (often by our own well-intentioned praise) to associate "smart" and "easy." So guess what happens when things get "not easy"? Suddenly we have kids thinking "wait, maybe I'm not smart!" And, so often, this doesn't happen until college, when so many supports are suddenly gone... yet students need help for the first time.
Read more about how calling kids "smart" while offering them easy work is a big problem.
Advanced Here, But Not There

Although their intelligence is (by definition) advanced beyond their age, other traits may be slower to develop, matching grade-level peers or even lagging behind expectations. The fancy term for this is asynchrony or, simply, developing out of sync. I like to use super-heroes as a metaphor: sure, the Flash is fast, but that doesn't mean he's equally strong. Or smart. Or able to read minds. Just because one area is advanced, doesn't mean other areas will be.

Read more about how gifted students can lag behind and be advanced at the same time.

Surprisingly Intense

As part of their intense intelligence, gifted students often exhibit other intensities or overexcitabilities, including intense emotions, increased sensitivity to their five senses, lots of physical energy, and an intense imagination. These intensities don't fit the stereotype of a "smart kid," so students (and their parents) can start to worry that something's up. It's not!

Read more about intensities and overexcitabilities.

When They Don't Fit The Stereotype

Our stereotype of the gifted child is often wildly inaccurate, leading to misidentification or overlooking gifted kids who don't fit out preconceptions. My favorite example is Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, who is one example of a kid who probably would have benefited from a gifted program.
Read more about Calvin, the unidentified gifted student
Hard To Find Friends

Often, I hear parents say they kept their kid out of a gifted program out of a fear of some kind of social isolation. Friends. This is like denying someone water in the desert because you're afraid they'll get wet. Gifted kids need to be with people who are their intellectual peers. People who they can have a darn conversation with! Here's me talking about how my own love of dinosaurs made it hard to find friends my own age (even though everyone else loved dinosaurs too).

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While gifted students look perfect on paper, their teachers know that in the classroom they are not all the academic angels and stellar scholars that people assume they are. Successful teachers of the gifted require a special understanding of their students' social and emotional needs.

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Photo by Gail Byrd
That's me in kindergarten wearing a safari hat decorated with plastic dinosaurs along with a dinosaur t-shirt.

In my childhood, I could not know enough about dinosaurs.

I devoured my dinosaur encyclopedia. I taped all the dinosaur shows I could find. I debated with other 6-year-olds over incorrect classifications (no, Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur, Neil). I read every dinosaur book at the library.

Only recently have I learned about Dabrowski's five overexcitabilities. My dinosaur obsession would definitely qualify as an "intellectual overexcitability."

I like this definition:

An intellectual overexcitability is associated with striving for knowledge and truth through questioning, discovering, and analyzing, but it is not the same as intelligence, which is seen as an ability. Anne N. Rinn's Overexcitabilities and the Gifted Child

It's odd to think about a kid becoming "overexcited" by an idea. Yet, if Wikipedia had been within my grasp as a child, I could easily imagine myself spinning out of control, simply overwhelmed by information.

You've probably already visualized several students who were obsessed with an idea.

In the classroom, a great tool for kids with this overexcitability is the independent study: a chance to dig deeply into an area of passion when other assignments are complete. It gives them an outlet for their preoccupation and gives you a chance to funnel that energy towards a paper, presentation, or another project.

And when that student's endless love for a topic begins to get on your nerves, remember that many of the inventions, novels, albums, and other creations that you enjoy might have been the result of just such an obsession.

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Dino Obsession: Intellectual Overexcitability In Action

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Photo by Gail Byrd That's me in kindergarten wearing a safari hat decorated with plastic dinosaurs along with a dinosaur t-shirt. In my childhood, I could not know enough about dinosaurs. I devoured my dinosaur encyclopedia. I taped all the dinosaur shows I could find.