Gifted and talented students are those with exceptional abilities and qualities in areas such as academics, culture, leadership, arts, creativity, and sport. Gifted and talented students are found in every cultural, social, ethnic and socioeconomic group.
Due to a gifted child’s rapidly developing cognitive abilities, often there is a large difference between their chronological age, intellectual maturity, and emotional maturity, causing some gifted children to experience an intensity or sensitivity of feelings and emotions.
This sensitivity or intensity of emotions may be displayed in a range of behaviours which may leave the gifted child open to teasing and social isolation at school.
Identifying a Gifted Child
Gifted children often display some of the following traits.
- Extremely Curious
- Excellent memory
- Fluent and flexible thinking
- Excellent problem solving skills
- Learns quickly and with less practice and repetition
- Unusual and/or vivid imagination
- Very sensitive, emotionally and even physically
- Concerned about fairness and injustice
- Perfectionism
- Relates well to adults
- Extensive Vocabulary
- Reads Rapidly and Widely
- Enjoys learning new things
Giftedness is accurately identified through a psychometric assessment. Psychometric assessments including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children- Fourth Edition and the Stanford Binet 5 are used to assess the general thinking and reasoning skills of children. Assessments should always be administer by a specialist Educational and Developmental Psychologist or a Registered Psychologist with specialist skills.
Recommendations for teachers and parents
- Gifted students love the idea of learning something new and they will enjoy being provided with additional, more challenging work. By accelerating a gifted child’s work, grades or by attending opportunity classes, it will help feed the child’s need to learn and help to keep their behaviour under control.
- Gifted students should be provided with opportunities to socialise with peers of similar abilities. This may be possible by attending a selective High School, or participating in Gifted and Talented programs.
- Gifted children may benefit from being provided with independent study or research projects, particularly in their area of interest.
- Extra curricular activities, such as drama, music, languages, sports, gymnastics, dancing, or creative writing, should be encouraged.
- Highly gifted children are often at risk of serious underachievement, social isolation, concentration or behavioural symptoms and may benefit from receiving counselling.
Recommended Resources
Quirky Kid published a range a resources to support the emotional and social development of children and adolescents. Parents can greatly benefit from some of this resources available on the Quirky Kid Shoppe. Below you can see the Face it cards, The Just like when cards and the Likes of youth
The Quirky Kid Clinic offers a range of services to assist gifted children. Please contact us to make an appointment or visit our assessment page for further assessment information.
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Information for this fact sheet was taken from an interview with Child Psychologist Kimberley O’Brien, and the following article.
Dabrowski, K., & Piechowski, M. M. (1977). Theory of levels of emotional development. Oceanside, NY: Dabor.
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