Sometimes classroom behavior problems signal giftedness.
Brad and Karen were at their wits end. Their grade school children once again came home with stern disciplinary notes from their teachers, notes riddled with complaints of inattention, acting out, "back-talk", "bossiness", and an inability to "play well with others". The teachers had gotten together and decided to recommend that the children be tested for attention deficit disorder or oppositional defiant disorder. Perhaps the medications or therapy typically prescribed for these disorders would solve the children's obvious behavioral problems in the classroom.
The teachers' complaints made little sense to Brad and Karen. At home, their children were cheerful, compliant, and curious, with razor-sharp attention skills and a keen interest in everything around them.
A meeting with the school psychologist brought a much-needed resolution to the dilemma. After careful testing, the psychologist indeed delivered a diagnosis, and recommended a successful course of action. But to the teachers' surprise, the diagnosis was not attention deficit disorder nor oppositional disorder. Nor was the prescribed course of action medication or therapy.
Instead, the results of the tests showed quite clearly that the children were gifted, and the prescribed course of action was reassignment to a learning environment more suited to their cognitive skills.
Signs of Giftedness
Psychologists who study gifted children are familiar with this scenario. Gifted children frequently are bored and frustrated by the general education curriculum in their classrooms. Their cognitive skills may extend well beyond the schoolwork and lessons assigned by their teachers. They often exhibit a keen curiosity that leads them to overwhelm their teachers with questions, and to challenge answers that do not seem complete or detailed enough. Because they are cognitively more mature than their classmates, they may experience difficulty connecting with their peers socially. It is not unusual to find gifted children seeking out the company of adults or older children, feeling more camaraderie with them than with kids their own age.
Clues that a child may be cognitively advanced generally fall into three general categories—language skills, learning skills, and behavioral traits.
Language Skills: Here is a typical time frame for normal English language development:
Gifted children tend to reach language development milestones earlier than other children. By school age, their language may be far more sophisticated than their same-age peers. They may speak faster than their peers, and use longer, more complex sentences and vocabulary. They also readily pick up on nuances in adult language, and can hold their own when speaking to an adult. They will also modify their language to accommodate the skills of different listeners, such as using more "baby talk" when speaking to a younger sibling, and more complex sentences when speaking to an adult.
Learning Abilities: Gifted children typically learn to read earlier than expected, frequently before they enter kindergarten. They also learn easily, and exhibit an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, continually asking questions about what they see and hear. This tends to make them relentless interrogators who demand thorough explanations. It is not easy to put them off with aphorisms such as, "You'll understand when you're older."
Their rapidly developing memory skills allow them to understand and carry out multi-step instructions—instructions that would typically overwhelm a child of their age such as "Wash your hands, tell your sister dinner is ready, and bring me the apron I left in your room."
Behavioral Traits: Gifted children often are emotionally sensitive—they feel things more strongly and tend to show more empathy to the feelings of others than is typical for their age. Because of their intense curiosity, they often seem to be constantly on the move, but are capable of focusing for long periods of time when absorbed in an activity that intrigues them.
Because they think and speak more quickly than others, they can become frustrated when others ask them to slow down or when others seem to be speaking too slowly or taking too long to get their point across. This is sometimes interpreted as impatience or rudeness, particularly if the person on the receiving end is an adult.
How Giftedness is Assessed
Like Brad and Karen, parents often consider having their children tested for giftedness when conflicts appear to be arising in the classroom that are inconsistent with their children's cognitive performance at home. Gifted testing sometimes can be done by a school psychologist who is trained in identifying and assessing gifted and talented skills. Parents sometimes choose to engage the services of an independent child psychologist who specializes in such assessment. Testing before the age of 4 is typically discouraged because results can be highly unstable. Most children are tested between the ages of 6 and 12 years.
A common method used to test for giftedness is called above-level testing, a procedure in which a test is administered to a child who is younger or in a lower grade level than the group for which the test was originally designed. The validity of this approach is backed by dozens of research studies [1].
Other tests include:
Intellectual testing (IQ tests) which measures a variety of cognitive skills, including verbal and nonverbal comprehension skills, fluid reasoning, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning, and memory skills.
Supplementary psychological testing, which includes non-cognitive assessments, such as social problem-solving, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Guidelines for these assessments can be found here.
A comprehensive resource which details how giftedness is tested is The Parents Guide to IQ Testing and Gifted Education by Dr. David Palmer.
Duke University also provides useful articles on giftedness, including the challenges that gifted children face when trying to make friends in typical educational settings
How to Have Your Child Tested
If you believe your child may be gifted and would benefit from a learning environment more suited to their cognitive skills, there are several ways to have him or her tested.
In the U.S., most states have gifted education organizations that can provide useful information and guidance for testing.
The education departments in local universities frequently offer gifted testing or referrals to appropriate professionals. To find programs that offer these services, contact your state's education department
If these are not viable options for you, a useful resource is the Davidson Institute which provides useful information about giftedness as well as referrals to private psychologists who conduct such testing.
Take Home Message
If your child fails to thrive in the typical classroom environment yet shows high cognitive functioning in other settings, it may be worthwhile to consider having him or her tested for giftedness. You may also want to try free Online Gifted Screening Test available here.
References:
1. Warne, R.T.: Using Above-Level Testing to Track Growth in Academic Achievement in Gifted Students, 2014, Gifted Child Quarterly
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