SPD Connection/Printable Pages/Out of Sync and Off the Chart

Out of Sync and Off the Chart

July 26, 2004

Vol. 20 •Issue 15 • Page 40

Highly gifted children can experience difficulties due to their asynchronous development

By Jill Glomstad

If your child is bright, everything else will be fine, right? Not necissarily so, says Anne Cronin, PhD, OTR, BCP. And Cronin knows this from personal experience. A close relative was determined to be highly gifted, but "I always saw her struggle," Cronin recalled. "She didn't fit in well and was doing things that didn't serve her or anyone else well."

When Cronin had a daughter of her own, she found herself the parent of a gifted child. "I felt like an air traffic controller," she said. "She had this real intense drive to go-go-go, do-do-do. She got into all kinds of situations that other kids didn't get into; and as a parent, I was going crazy."

Once, when Cronin turned her attention to something else for just a moment, she turned back to find her daughter at the top of the stairs on the outside of the banister. Her daughter also had sensory integration issues, including tactile defensiveness. "It took two of us to wash her hair at age two."

Cronin, who has worked in pediatric OT for 25 years, started reading the literature on gifted children and found a number of resources to help her help her daughter. "Eventually, as I became more educated as a parent, I reflected on all the kids that I had seen [as an OT] and began to identify more kids as gifted."

What Is 'Gifted?'

"These kids are as different from the norm as kids two standard deviations below the mean," said Cronin, whose son and daughter, both gifted, participate in the Davidson Institute for Talent Development's Young Scholars program. The program, for children 4-18 with an IQ in the 99.9 percentile, provides supports for both child and family, including a case manager who identifies resources to help the child be optimally successful.

Gifted children often experience asynchronous development—their intellectual, social, emotional and/or physical development does not match their chronological ages. "When you have development where motor and cognitive skills are way out of line, it is likely that there is going to be distress," said Cronin.

Such children may often have handwriting difficulties because their motor abilities are unable to keep up with their minds. Often, however, the children do not get referred to OT through the school system because they are tested by age, not by grade. A 7-year-old may be writing appropriately for his age, but his motor skills aren't able to keep up with his schoolwork in his 7th grade classes.

According to gifted children advocate Stephanie Tolan, "The young gifted child may appear to be many ages at once. He may be 8 (his chronological age) when riding a bicycle, 12 when playing chess, 15 when studying algebra, 10 when collecting fossils and 2 when asked to share his chocolate chip cookie with his sister"

Gifted children who experience difficulties "are not that common," according to the Davidson Institute's director, Marie Capurro, who emphasizes a whole child—whole family approach to giftedness. "They are a small percentage of the larger population. We always look at the individual level. Some of their issues may or may not be related to being gifted, but they all need to be addressed."

SI and Overexcitability

Cronin sees SI issues as common within this population. Based on the work of Kazimierz Dabrowski from the 60's and 70's, Cronin believes that the mechanism that leads to their giftedness also makes these children prone to overexcitability. "People who are intellectually more sensitive, their central nervous system is also more sensitive—the nervous system is doing more," she says.

Capurro, speaking from Davidson's annual THINK Summer Institute, held at the University of Nevada-Reno, added, "[Gifted children are] often sensitive to light, noise, certain kinds of fabric, etc."

Cronin gave a presentation on the role of occupational therapy intervention in the gifted population at the AOTA conference in Minneapolis in May. She defined overexcitability as a "higher-than-average capacity for experiencing internal and external stimuli, based on a higher-than-average responsiveness of the nervous system." The more highly gifted, the more likely and intense overexcitability seems to be. Cronin stressed that overexcitability is not a disorder; it is a heightened responsiveness to stimuli that is a common characteristic of giftedness.

Cronin listed five different types of overexcitabilities, each manifesting in different types of behaviors as a result of understimulation: psychomotor, with physical behaviors; sensual, with behaviors that look like sensory dysfunction; imaginational, with the child "living in a world of fantasy;" intellectual, where the child displays a heightened need for truth/information; and emotional, where the child displays depressive symptoms and may often complain of headaches or nausea.

Often, gifted children may be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) because their overexcitabilities manifest as ADHD—like behaviors. However, Cronin explained, they often do not respond to medication and usually only exhibit such behaviors in certain settings. When the child is properly stimulated, they do not act out.

"This is the same for all students," added Capurro. "Any third grader is not average in everything. [Gifted] kids are so intellectually advanced, it has a larger effect when their needs are not being met there."

Proper stimulation often means grade acceleration, which Capurro said is supported by research. Contrary to some beliefs, children who are grade accelerated do not often have problems fitting in with their peers socially. "Their social age is more closely related to their intellectual age than their chronological age. They are much more socially well adjusted when they are accelerated."

OT Intervention

Cronin believes OTs are ideal professionals to work with this population when sensory dysfunction interferes with their participation in daily occupations.

"They look very much the same as other kids with sensory issues," she explained. "The things these kids want to do are far more advanced than the motor skills they have to support them, so we do see some secondary emotional stuff that you usually see with sensory issues, like becoming frustrated easily."

However, an OT working with a gifted child should be aware of what giftedness is and how it manifests behaviorally. "It would be valuable to be familiar with the characteristics of giftedness," added Capurro. "They will ask a million questions, they want to know the why behind why they are doing this. [The OT should give them information based on] what is appropriate to their level of maturity."

Cronin agrees. She has heard from parents who have been disappointed that the therapist did not engage their child at his or her intellectual level. "These kids cognitively can take the information and run with it. The most important things are listening and being flexible and being child-directed. The kids that have done best with OTs are the ones who problem solve what is going on, like how to manage your fidgets in your college classroom."

For OTs interested in working with this population, Cronin recommends cognitive-based approaches, such as the Alert Program (http://www.alertprogram.com). Using cognition as a tool works well because it is the strength of gifted children. "I see this as a very treatable population," she added.

If you encounter a child who you believe to be gifted but has not been identified, Capurro recommends talking to the child's IEP team to investigate the options for having the child assessed for giftedness. Mandates for gifted education are state and local, not federal, but Capurro adds that most assessments are done privately at the parents' initiative, not through the school.

An assessment is important because "you can't really serve a child until you know in what areas they are really strong and in what areas they need support, and how extreme they are," she explained. In the meantime, "don't patronize them; be honest with the child instead of just whisking them off to therapy. Explain to them that we want to help you be successful."

For more information, resources and articles on giftedness, visit the Davidson Institute at http://www.davidson-institute.org or call (775) 852-DITD or Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted at www.sengifted.org.

Jill Glomstad is ADVANCE senior associate/online editor. She can be reached at jglomstad@merion,com.

Characteristics of Intellectually Advanced Young People

Often profoundly and highly intelligent young people are not properly identified and, therefore, do not receive an appropriately challenging education. Research shows this can lead to underachievement or even dropping out of school — studies indicate that up to 20 percent of all high school dropouts test in the gifted range, and that 40 percent of all gifted students may be underachievers (Handbook of Gifted Education, p. 424).

Here are some of the common characteristics of highly intelligent young people:

An extreme need for constant mental stimulation
An ability to learn and process complex information rapidly
An insatiable curiosity; endless questions and inquiries about how things work
A need to explore subjects in surprising depth, to understand the why and how, as well as the what
An ability to focus intently on a subject of interest for long periods of time
An inability to concentrate on a task that is not intellectually challenging, such as those that involve repetition or that present material in bite size pieces
A need for precision in thinking and expression; a student who answers questions with "that depends..." is a clue that the child may be very intelligent

Differences in topics and styles of play or interactions as compared to chronological age peers