Devon Adams's List: gifted

• Adaptability. Children with a fiercely independent sense of their own vision may insist on completing what they started in the way they imagined, regardless of adult attempts to reason, cajole, or threaten. Flexibility and compromise are considered the abandonment of their vision, and requests to stop before completing their mission are seen as arbitrary and unreasonable. In a culture where “being a team player” is highly valued, gifted children may thus be pegged as rigid, arrogant, controlling, and intolerant.
• Difficulty with peer relations. Idealism, a heightened awareness of hypocrisy, unusual interests, and asynchronous development (when a child is mature in some areas, such as intellectual reasoning, but immature in others) can cause difficulty making and keeping friends. Unusual sensitivity can make a child vulnerable to perceived rejection; she may feel betrayed by a peer who plays with her today and with someone else tomorrow, referring to both as “friends.” In other cases, gifted children who like to organize others or insist on rigid adherence to rules can have trouble with the give-and-take of social relationships. Unable to find the deep friendships she envisions, a child may invent imaginary friends or make do with stuffed animals, pets, or characters from video games.

• and who tantrums when adults urge her to hurry – may be seen as demanding and spoiled when her behavior is actually due to cognitive overload.  

• Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Many gifted children have a strong sense of self; they don’t automatically respect adult authority figures and may challenge rules that seem (to them) arbitrary or illogical. But that doesn’t mean they’re pathologically defiant. Arguing or refusing to comply with requests can be an expression of independence, not an act of spite.   
• Asperger’s has become a convenient label for children who are smart but odd

• . Like depression, the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome should be reserved for the children who truly merit it.   
• Help your child isolate and normalize her area of difficulty.
• telling your child it’s “not a big deal” doesn’t help him calm down – it just proves you don’t understand.
• Externalizing can also help him organize the ideas that are flooding his mind.

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