"Gifted" - a blessing or a curse?

The most usual reaction on being told about a child who is ‘gifted’ is to recall the image - which the press have ingrained in our minds - of a child who has completed ‘A’ levels at an age when most children are at primary school. We might even think of a young musical prodigy, who outstrips his peers as they are struggling to learn the recorder!

Perhaps many parents dream of having a ‘gifted’ child who sails though school with excellent marks and who also has perfect social skills, but this is rarely what it is really like. What is meant by ‘gifted’ needs to be examined more closely: it usually refers to a child who may outperform in one or two areas but often has to struggle in others.

From the child’s point of view, it can be hard to know he is extremely bright but feel at the same time ‘different’, not on the same wavelength as his friends, and not to understand why. Moreover, a child who considers his peers’ jokes or interests to be ‘kid’s stuff’ is not likely to be popular. Trouble can come knocking on the door, too, when a child begins to race ahead of his classmates and consequently gets bored during class. Danger looms when some of the signs of being ‘gifted’ are misread as bad behaviour: not sitting still, inattention because of boredom, high energy often not channelled into run-of-the-mill work, and rebelling against routine.

These signs are often even interpreted as Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I have heard again and again from parents who have told me of the danger of a very bright, gifted, child being diagnosed as having a special needs problem. I was told of children who were seen as underachieving because they were not sufficiently stimulated, and were mistakenly assessed as low-ability candidates. All parents of gifted children told me that it is necessary to tailor the learning of a gifted child to meet his needs before he becomes disinterested and acts out with unruly behaviour.

It can go the other way too: intelligent children are often penalized for poor handwriting, and although this may be because they are frantic to get all their ideas down quickly, it can be because they are dyslexic. A child seen as smart may have found ways of disguising this problem, and so a special need is not picked up.

These are some of the problems I discuss in the chapter on ‘Being Gifted’ in my book Does Your Child Have a Hidden Disability? There are many children whose especial talents go unrecognised. And parents should be aware that when their child has been recognized as gifted it may not be plain sailing for either the child or the parents.

© Jill Curtis 2003

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Does Your Child Have a Hidden Disability?