Advice for parents of differently gifted siblings: identify and play to each child’s strengths, emphasize effort and appropriate challenge, model mutual respect, accept differences, and enforce zero tolerance for ridicule. Ensure successful children enjoy achievements while struggling children receive holistic attention and a supportive home.
An experienced homeschooling parent describes choosing to educate two profoundly gifted, multilingual sons at home, tailoring a flexible curriculum that emphasizes languages, critical thinking, extracurriculars, and emotional development. She discusses challenges, community support, and fostering independence, character, and social-emotional growth while using tests and enrichment resources.
Discusses psychological androgyny, distinguishing gender, gender-role, sexual orientation and identity, and links androgyny to giftedness and creativity. Reviews research (BSRI, Silverman, Tolan, Sheely, Piirto, Kerr) suggesting many highly gifted children reject strict gender roles and advises parents to avoid stereotyping.
Psychologist Rose Blackett outlines strategies for identifying twice-exceptional (2E) students, advising oral assessment, scribes, extended time, non-verbal screening like Raven’s Matrices, and attention to short-answer performance. She urges educators to recognize hidden disabilities that mask giftedness and to adapt assessments accordingly.
Gifted children can display behaviors that resemble ADHD — hyperactivity, inattention from boredom or over-focus — and may also have true ADHD. Pediatricians should assess for both giftedness and executive-function symptoms, ask contextual questions, and refer or evaluate appropriately to ensure accurate diagnosis and support.
Twice-exceptional (2e) learners combine high ability with learning, emotional, or developmental challenges that often mask each other, causing underachievement. Identification requires recognizing strengths alongside difficulties. Support should focus on enrichment, targeted accommodations, and developing executive and social-emotional skills while parents advocate and foster self-advocacy.
An interview with Jean Sunde Peterson about social and emotional needs of gifted students. She discusses common concerns—bullying, isolation, perfectionism, sensitivity—and emphasizes the importance of developmental guidance, compassionate counseling, family support, and school-based psychoeducational opportunities to help gifted children and teens develop resilience and identity.
An interview with Dr. Vidisha Patel discusses behavioral and social-emotional challenges for gifted children. She advises parents to prepare and role-play, teach emotional vocabulary, model behavior, involve children in social activities, seek outside guidance, and practice patience while balancing appropriate expectations and self-esteem development.
Discusses secondary students who are both gifted and learning disabled, examining identification problems, emotional risks, and three scenarios where gifts or disabilities are overlooked. Recommends individualized, talent-focused education, counseling, interest-based instruction, and school reforms like enrichment models to support social, emotional, and academic development.
This article explores how gifted children’s intense traits—Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities and temperament features like intensity, sensitivity, and perfectionism—can be mistaken for psychiatric disorders. It discusses misdiagnosis risks, how environmental factors interact with traits, and practical strategies parents can use to reduce distress and support their children’s needs.
