Gifted Children – Characteristics and Difficulties

Children with high abilities (gifted) are those who present remarkable performance and/or high potential in any of the following aspects, alone or in combination:

General intellectual ability: includes individuals who demonstrate characteristics such as: intellectual curiosity, exceptional powers of observation, ability to abstract and develop questioning attitudes.

Academic talent: includes those who perform highly in school, who do very well on knowledge tests, and who demonstrate high ability for academic tasks.

Creative Thinking Skill: Includes students who come up with original and divergent ideas, who demonstrate an ability to elaborate and develop their original ideas, and who are able to perceive many different ways a given topic.

Leadership: includes students who emerge as social or academic leaders of a group, who stand out for their use of power, self-control and the ability to develop a productive interaction with others.

Visual and performing arts: includes individuals who have superior skills in painting, sculpture, drawing, filming, dancing, singing, theater and playing musical instruments.

Psychomotor Skills: Individuals who exhibit athletic prowess, including superior use of fine motor skills and mechanical skills.

A gifted child is often seen as a threat by peers, as he or she can make classroom work standards more stringent and the teacher expect more from their students. Furthermore, average IQ children are not comfortable around a very “intelligent” child because they appear “stupid” when compared to the latter.

Another problem faced is the fact that he faces the consequences of his divergence from the majority, a trait that leads to various difficulties related to how to deal with the social pressures of being different, even if such a difference occurs in the context of a greater ability.

The fundamental problem of the creative individual is to learn to face the nonconformity that results from his divergence. This leads to various difficulties related to how to deal with social pressures by being a strongly original and almost compulsively innovative person. Stephens (1966) states that the creative child rebels against the rigid approach in which he is told what he must learn and what he must consider to be true.

Other problems may arise, such as:

– Possibility of group rejection,

– opposition to the medium;

– defense of the value system itself;

– intolerance;

– occasional resistance to the imposition of tasks;

– omission of details;

– non-acceptance of routine activities;

– difficulty accepting the illogical, the superficial and poorly structured and poorly defined knowledge.

Gifted children and adolescents have specific needs to be met in order to maximize their chances of a healthy and happy development.

The gifted need extra stimulation and attention, but they should not be segregated in special schools. Thus, when talking about the education of the gifted, it is essential to observe how they behave at school, also considering the attitude of parents and the school towards students with high abilities.

Related