Covid Impact on Teens and Young Adults- Understanding and Supporting This article explores social and emotional stressors on teens and young adults followed by ways to support them and resources. To summarize covid impact on teens and young adults from the CDC’s website: https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/stress-coping/parental-resources/index.html Changes in their routines (e.g., having to physically distance from family, […]
Archive | Gifted Child Struggles
If you think gifted kids have it easy, and they wouldn’t present parenting and teaching challenges, I implore you to reconsider. From emotional intensity to asynchronous development, the gifted child struggles. Unlike their age peers, they often feel different and outside of the groups they belong to.
In fact, more often than not, the truly gifted often present problems which can prevent them from being properly identified. In my posts and video course, you can learn
–Characteristics to aide in proper identification
–Gifted characteristics that interfere with proper identification
-The five domains of overexciteability
-Help an unmotivated gifted teen develop long-term goals
-Problems with perfectionism, Strategies to help
–Twice exceptional- when a condition such as dyslexia, ADHD, Autism, or an emotional condition masks their giftedness, and their giftedness masks a condition that needs to be considered and treated. This can leave parents and teachers very frustrated, because they see how smart the child is, and wrongly assumes all problems stem from bad choices, laziness, or defective character.
The gifted child struggles when they see no reason to demonstrate their learning. Many of them love to explore and learn, then quickly grow bored with a topic and fail to present and organize what they have learned in homework and classroom assignments. It is very frustrating when you know a kid is really smart and they are not appearing to perform up to their potential.
Unfortunately, the criteria for entering gifted and talented programs often include a teacher rating form for characteristics often called something like “leadership.” These characteristics often involve social and emotional skills, as well as classroom behaviors such as stays on task, completes assignments, follows directions, all often not the qualities consistently displayed by children who are truly gifted.
Add to that experience of rejection or “not being seen,” the gifted child also may present with social/emotional delays, a tendency to correct or lecture teachers and other students, difficulty regulating perfectionism and emotional responses, all of which can add up to leave the child frustrated, lonely, bullied, and even ostracized.
Google up the statistics of gifted children or kids who get perfect/nearly perfect SAT scores who don’t graduate from high school or matriculate from college. These kids often need alternative ways to engage them in education and rate their progress. Otherwise, we are wasting great people and resources who could be making our future as humanity better for all of us.
https://youtu.be/EZCUZpZfEZA
Gifted Autistic Tempering Perfectionism
Are you ready to help a gifted and/or autistic person with tempering perfectionism? Can these ideas help anyone identify problems with perfectionism and address them? Yes, turns out perfectionism is a widespread, well-documented, increasing problem in modern cultures. It’s ruined! I can’t eat it! If it’s not perfect, it’s no good. Part I of this […]
Metaphors for Teaching Children about Power in Feelings, Relationships, Teasing, and Bullying
Video explaining how to keep your power to feel okay when teased or disappointed Metaphors for Teaching Children about Power in Feelings, Relationships, Teasing, and Bullying Link to video explaining how to keep your power to feel okay when teased, bullied, frustrated, disappointed I once worked with a guy named, well, let’s just say his […]
Bullying Help, Autism, ADHD, Gifted
By middle school if not earlier humans in our culture, for whatever reason, begin to fear and sometimes target and criticize anyone who is different, even if the differences are small such as skin tone, how your voice sounds, the structure of your facial features, or how your hair is cut and groomed. Read on […]
Effective discipline for an exceptional child
Pitfalls of conventional guidance and discipline practice with children who struggle: Effective discipline for an exceptional child. The Fall From Eden In the beginning, there was limitless love. Unconditional No performance standards to meet No criticism No judgment No morality or immorality No wrong All right All good A baby brings joy to others just […]
What is Twice Exceptional?
What is Twice Exceptional? What if a child is gifted enough that nobody notices they are dyslexic, and dyslexic enough that nobody notices they are gifted? How often could this happen? The National Association for Gifted Children http://www.nagc.org/ reports that an estimated 360,000 students in America are twice exceptional gifted learners. Add in a guess […]
Teach emotional control and the power of thought
How do you teach emotional control and the power of thought? https://vimeo.com/131704250 It can be tricky to teach children emotional control. Trickier still to teach them how their thoughts can create fear, sadness, or anger. How do you help them understand that they don’t have to believe all their thoughts? Our brains are making thoughts […]
How do you get the anxious child to use coping strategies?
How do you get anxious kids to use coping strategies? Check out the video: Here’s what I see in my practice. Avoidance of the triggers. Which is fine, except if the trigger is school, homework, or social settings. Avoidance is problematic because it is reinforcing- it works. It can be difficult to get the anxious […]
Have enough strategies for kids who struggle? ADHD, Autism, Anger, Anxiety, Giftedness
Silly question, right? How can you ever have enough to stop the madness when it comes to the ways adults often interact with children who have differences? We can make it better. We can train adults in more loving and effective methods, and we can teach children emotional coping skills, social skills, and better ways […]
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Mind and Mood Control
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Thinking Errors Practice Your thoughts are so powerful they create your reality. Where do your feelings come from? What happens, or how you think about what happens? For example, it could start raining, and I could think, “Oh no- this is going to ruin everything, I’m supposed to go fishing!” I could be […]