Gifted Children

Adults

Click on age group for more details

Common Issues

Gifted children have a precocious need for autonomy. Their demand for this early autonomy can push parents away and deprive the child of living through the normal developmental phase of dependence.

Gifted young people often succeed well beyond expectations for their chronological age. Their amazing accomplishments seem to come naturally, with little effort. However, trouble may start in school when they elaborate grand visions but cannot execute them perfectly.

Empathy for others is a common hallmark of many gifted children. They may have an unusual sensitivity for the emotional distress of their friends and an unusual ability to help them resolve their emotional conflicts. However, these valuable personality traits may also create painful moral/ethical dilemmas and emotional conflicts for gifted children when they themselves feel misunderstood and mistreated.

Formulation of the Problem

A focused summary of the assessment of a child or adult is called a psychodynamic formulation. This is a concise description of the psychological pathways and psychological mechanisms for how conflicts about particular factors became transformed into specific behavioral and educational problems, as well as psychological symptoms. This psychodynamic formulation is the initial framework within which the therapy begins. It also helps avoid the pitfalls of misdiagnosis: mistaking an emotionally based problem for a problem caused by a neurobiological defect or a psychiatric disorder.

The consequences of misdiagnosis are serious. Helping a gifted child assumed to have a basic neurobiological defect focus exclusively on compensation techniques deprives him/her of a chance to resolve and eliminate their basic emotional conflicts. Conversely, it is clearly inappropriate to treat a gifted child as if he/she has an emotionally based problem when the basic problem is caused by a true neurobiological defect.

We will provide parents foundational education for a parenting approach that goes beyond simple behavior management.

1. We will explain the difference between normal and gifted development.
2. Based on the formulation developed, we will show parents how to differentiate circumstantial from developmental conflicts as well as conscious and unconscious conflicts.
3. We will explore together the conflicts about the inner experience” of giftedness”

Gifted children are most often referred for the assessment of reading and writing disabilities Referrals are generally made after previous assessments and interventions Have been ineffective

We will provide parents foundational education for a parenting approach that goes beyond simple behavior management.

1. We will explain the difference between normal and gifted development.
2. Based off the formulation developed , we will show parents how to differentiate circumstantial from developmental conflicts as well as conscious and unconscious conflicts.
3. We will explore together the conflicts about the inner experience” of giftedness”

Assessments for Learning Disabilities

Psychoeducational, Neuropsychological, and Psychodynamic assessments can help us identify areas of the gifted child learning issues:

• Psychoeducational: Indicates areas of academic weakness and strength
• Neuropsychological: Identifies specific cognitive weaknesses and strengths. These are thought to be located in the areas of the brain Responsible for “central processing” and “executive functioning”
• Psychodynamic: Differentiates a true neurologically based learning disability from an emotionally based learning disability as well as a specific learning disability from a child’s larger failure to achieve normal emotional and intellectual growth and development

When we seperate the emotional components of the gifted/learning disability Syndrome we can determine which are emotional responses to the learning disability, the emotional causes of the learning disability, and the emotional/psychological reactions to the giftedness that are expressed as a learning disability.

Interventions for Learning Disabilities

There are a few ways we go about interventions:

• Remediation techniques: repetitive efforts to correct the basic cognitive problem
• Compensation Strategies: using gifted strengths to work around cognitive weaknesses
• Psychodynamic psychotherapy: Facilitates the use of remediation and compensation strategies

These methods help resolve different psychological conflicts that inhibit cognitive functioning and prevent the full use of remediation and compensation strategies. This also helps resolve the psychological conflicts about giftedness that maybe the cause of the gifted/learning disability syndrome.

Learn more from our case studies in the resources section.