Most adults who work with gifted children understand that they are usually more sensitive than their average peers. The biochemical and psychological reasons for this are under debate. The culprit could be asynchronous development. Another reason could be their ability to perceive certain realities that others do not. The possibility that reflections from others that these children don’t fit in to “typical” child culture could contain a clue. Or, it could be all these reasons combined.
Theories relating to overexcitabilities and giftedness tend to fill the bookshelves of concerned parents of gifted children. One of the most influential is that of psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, who sorted the overexcitabilities of gifted children into five categories. By concentrating on these areas individually, and the ways they work in conjunction with one another, educators and parents can better understand the gifted and meet their needs.
These areas may also be understood as “intensities,” or super-sensitivities to changes, stimuli, people, and environment. It’s important to understand that these qualities in exceptional children cannot be “parented away.” Gifted children who exhibit these sensitivities or behaviors should not be punished or derided for experiencing them. Rather, caretakers and educators must concentrate on helping their charges in effective processing. Leaning into their giftedness is a proactive and productive way to tap into the creativity and talents of an exceptional child.
Psychomotor
Many gifted children demonstrate above-average energy. Children who display psychomotor overexcitabilities may seem hyperactive and need less sleep. They can also display intense concentration or stamina when working on preferred tasks.
But the combination of energy and a lack of intellectual stimulation can also lead to behavior issues in a school or educational setting. Given that psychomotor overexcitabilities are often paired with giftedness, some practitioners may misdiagnose it as attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
If your gifted child exhibits the following indicators, he or she may be intense in a psychomotor category:
- Jumping, dancing, or running about when happy or excited.
- Speaking in an impulsive or compulsive manner, or talking very fast.
- Focusing on competition and high-energy sports.
- Exhibiting nervous habits such as bouncing legs, tearing at nails, or picking at skin.
As you can see, these characteristics can mimic attention deficit disorder or ADHD, but they rarely affect concentration when the child is engaged in a preferred activity.
Senses
Those who are gifted often express their engagement with the world around them via their senses. For some children, this can be overwhelming. They cannot separate themselves in public from their parents, older siblings, or caregivers in a safe way. The patience of these children is often quickly exhausted. Their senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing sometimes feel under assault. Sometimes, they go to extremes to arrange their lives or schedules to avoid sensory overload. These extremes may seem baffling to the adults around them. But to the gifted child with an overexcitability of the senses, these are their attempts to make their lives tolerable in the only ways they know how.
Children who process their environment in this way may show a low tolerance for pain. They could avoid certain foods because they cannot force themselves past their smell, texture, or appearance. Some cannot bear certain usual household smells, such as the odor of food preparation. They may become overwrought if their clothing is uncomfortable or has scratchy tags. Despite their revulsion of being physically in contact with things that bother them, they may need to be held when upset. The could also be more likely to overindulge in their favorite foods.
Like the psychomotor overexcitability, children who display an overexcitability of the senses may be misdiagnosed. They might be categorized as autistic, highly sensitive, or having a sensory processing disorder. Keeping track of the nuances between these neurological issues and a sense-related overexcitability can assist your child in working effectively with the realities of their surroundings.
Intelligence/Intellectual
Some might consider this the most traditional marker of gifted children. Children who are intellectually overexcitable show deep and analytical thinking, sometimes in ways which may not manifest in standardized testing or structured seat work. They can exhibit strong emotions regarding ethics and may come across to peers or adults as “bossy” or arrogant.They become impatient with those who do not share their interests or cannot follow their imaginative or complex ways of thinking. Since they are independent thinkers, they may bombard others with questions. Hence, classmates or instructors might view them as impertinent, troublesome, or egotistical.From an early age, children can be encouraged to work with this overexcitability in healthy, socially-adept ways.
Imagination
This overexcitability cannot be quantified in structured testing or other forms of intelligence measurement. Children who exhibit this characteristic might be mischaracterized as lazy, inattentive, careless, or immature.
However, these are the children who grow into writers, artists, composers, actors, and re-conceptualizers. Imaginatively overexcitable children have rich inner lives. They spend much of their time in their own heads, and sometimes their fantasy lives and reality may spill into one another. Sometimes, this can lead to what seems like dishonest behavior, either because they are so adept at spinning tales or because they actually believe the untruth they are sharing.
Imagination-rich children can be oversensitive to violence, upsetting images, and tragic news or stories. Questioning them in an open-ending fashion or providing space for them to combat their fears in an imaginative way they can control, can be more effective in assisting these children to channel their creativity.
Emotion
This can be the most frustrating aspect of gifted overexcitabilities for parents and educators. Emotional needs and intensity may manifest hand in hand with asynchronous development and can mark a child as immature. They can be dismissed as “cry babies” and “over dramatic.” While these children can swing between emotional extremes, they also tend to be empathetic and sensitive to the needs and moods of others. Some become over-attached to places, people, animals, or objects which make them feel soothed, safe, comfortable, or fulfilled in some way.
Like many of the other overexcitabilities, emotion carries over into adulthood. It sometimes disguises itself as bipolar disorder. However, this personality trait cannot be medicated away.Sometimes these super-intense emotions display as temper tantrums, ulcers or irritable bowel syndrome.