In Kindred Spirits, Critical Need--Part One, I discussed a common interaction that the BRIGHTLinks Team encounters regularly within our BL Community-- the leisure and friend gap that causes distress and alienation of the highly/profoundly (HG/PG) child. I introduced the Leisure Well-Being model (LWB) and described why and how appropriate leisure opportunities fall short for the children in our community.
Then, I shared information from the Gifted Development Center, which discusses the definitions of socialization vs. social development. The Gifted Development Center does a deep dive into foundations of social development of gifted children as well as stages of friendship and . This paragraph stands out,
Many gifted children receive a good foundation for self-esteem within their families. Then something happens: they meet other children. By the age of five or six, openness and confidence are frequently replaced with self-doubt and layers of protective defenses. Being different is a problem in childhood. Young children—even gifted ones—do not have the capacity to comprehend differences. They have difficulty understanding why other children do not talk like them or respond to their friendship in a predictable manner. They equate differentness with being “strange” or unacceptable, and this becomes the basis of their self-concept. It’s difficult for a child who has been wounded continuously by peers to feel generosity toward others. It takes positive experiences with children like themselves to build the self-confidence needed for healthy peer relations. Later, when their self-concepts are fully formed, they are better equipped to understand differences, to put negative feedback of age peers in perspective, and to gain appreciation of the diversity of their classmates. But acceptance precedes positive social values.
In Part One, one mother had requested more information and research so that she may educate her child's school staff and be able to advocate more effectively. In addition to the LWB model and the Gifted Development Center, here are the other articles I shared.
"Play Partner" or "Sure Shelter"? Why gifted children prefer older friends…by Miraca U.M. Gross This difficulty of the gifted child in forming friendships is largely a result of the infrequency of persons who are like-minded. The more intelligent a person is, regardless of age, the less often can he find a truly congenial companion. The average child finds playmates in plenty who can think and act on a level congenial to him, because there are so many average children.(Hollingworth, 1936, p. 79.)
Gifted Friendships: Age Mates vs. True Peer: Gifted children tend to seek out more mature friendships that are built on trust rather than merely wanting a play date. A friend who can serve as a confidant and share their unique interests is generally beyond what most same age peers are able to provide. As a result, many highly gifted children feel as if they don’t have true peers or a “real friend,” even if they generally seem socially accepted.
Social Issues and Asynchronous Kids: The portcullis story is a perfect example of the divide that happens with gifted children and their age-mates. How can I expect my son’s peers to understand and connect with him if his own mother doesn’t always understand him? No child was going have the ability, nor the time, to Google his words as I do.
How Can We Better Understand, Identify, and Support Highly Gifted and Profoundly Gifted Students? A Literature Review of the Psychological Development of Highly-Profoundly Gifted Individuals and Overexcitabilities: In 1930, Burks, Williams and Terman [30] concluded that “The exceptionally gifted child has one of the most difficult problems of social adjustment that any human being is ever called upon to meet” (cited in Gross, [3] p.16)
Hollingworth [2] noted a range of social behaviors, from opposition and defiance to a lack of care or indifference, and the extreme difficulty the highly-profoundly gifted faced in forming friendships, most often due to the absence of like-minded peers. Common interests, vocabulary and experiences are necessary to bond friendships.
Where can I find a friend? How asynchronous development affects relationships, by Dr. Gail Post: While asynchronous development, is best defined as a discrepancy in skills or development among gifted children, it is most apparent when a child's advanced intellectual abilities contrast with an emotional or social (im)maturity reflective of a much younger child. A child who tries to converse about chemistry on the playground, for example, and then melts down into tears when rebuffed, is not going to fare well socially. This predictable pattern is frustrating and heartbreaking for both child and parent.
Asynchronous development may continue through adolescence and young adulthood. These individuals often struggle to find peers who "get them." Socially delayed, awkward and insecure, they may delve further into their studies as an escape, or become angry and disgusted with the prevailing social culture. Some retreat and become isolated, socializing with only a few select friends. Dating and sexual experimentation may start later for some of these teens and young adults, further delaying their maturation.
...Sometimes gifted teens don't get to "exhale" until college, although even then, finding friends who understand them may be difficult.” Keep in mind that college is well beyond the time period of social development. Waiting for college hoping to find a true peer group and delaying important phases of social development can set these children up for social difficulties, poor self-concept, anxiety, depression, and identity disorders.
Highly gifted children and peer relationships: Gross (1993) found that the majority of these children tended to internalize problems. On the outside they looked more socially mature, but on the inside they experienced more loneliness, isolation and peer difficulties than moderately gifted children. The children themselves identified problems with social acceptance and feeling valued for their opinions, difficulties with social skills and dealing with being picked on by age peers. Hollingworth (1931) identified the ages of four to nine as the most problematic for highly gifted children due to differences in levels of social development of these children as opposed to age peers.
Ages four to nine are the most problematic for highly gifted children, this spans their entire time in elementary school and stages of early social development. Most children are socially developing their sense of self through play with like-minded peers who share similar leisure interests.
Gifted Adults & Second Childhoods: Revisiting Essential Stages of Development: This article identifies what stages of development might look like for gifted people. Our team finds that often, many of the parents in the BL Community deny their own giftedness and the fact that they were likely also poorly served as highly gifted children. When our new parents become more seasoned, they gain insight and hindsight about their own experiences that can help them become more empathetic to the social struggles their own children face currently. The mother who I shared this article with stated, “The gifted adults and second childhood article was SO good. Really gave me some great perception not only for my son but for myself!!. I reposted it as I think this could be so very helpful to others and want to highlight it. Thank you thank you for finding this.”
Social Development: NOTE: BRIGHTLinks does not support a belief in SEL or CASEL because of the same reasons that schools can't get things right academically for gifted kids. But this comment is spot on as to why gifted kids struggle socially. When schools neglect to acknowledge academic needs, they are also failing to acknowledge social needs as well. This sets up our PG children for social developmental delays.
Per this article, "to achieve healthy social development, children and young people need to form social bonds with others who can model and encourage positive social values and behaviours."
To create these bonds, children and young people need:
opportunities for social interaction
active participation and meaningful engagement with others including family members, educators, and peers
to learn social skills through guidance and modelling in daily informal interactions and incidental opportunities, as well as planned teaching which might include participation in social skills programs
recognition and reinforcement when positive social interaction occurs.
Opportunities, skill development, and recognition need to be appropriately matched to children and young people’s age and stage, as well as individual characteristics.
Children’s understandings and behaviours are closely interwoven with emotions and temperament and the values and attitudes of those around them. Through ongoing interactions with the important people in their lives (such as family members and educators), children refine social skills such as turn-taking, listening, cooperation and respect to help them build positive relationships and friendships.
Prior to the school years, families have the greatest influence on social development. As children and young people grow older, they become increasingly influenced by peer group values and the behaviours of community role models such as sporting heroes or media personalities.
When adults are fair, caring and respectful, children and young people feel a greater sense of trust and belonging.
Children and young people are more likely to cooperate with adult guidance when they feel valued and respected. By contrast, when they feel they’ve been treated unfairly, they’re less likely to listen and more likely to avoid or resist discipline."
Important from this article,
Prior to the school years, families have the greatest influence on social development. As children and young people grow older, they become increasingly influenced by peer group values and the behaviours of community role models such as sporting heroes or media personalities.
Why Canned Social-Emotional Skill Programs in Schools Can Harm Gifted Students More Than Help Them: “This sounds like a great thing- our students need to learn social-emotional skills, and our teachers are so busy that programs that can be rolled out quickly and easily seem like a quick fix to the problem. However, in reviewing many of these programs (those referred to both as social-emotional skills programs or character building programs,) it is apparent that these programs do not meet the needs of our gifted students for several reasons, and most could be downright dangerous for our most at-risk gifted children.”
In simplest terms, we cannot expect teachers and school counselors to "teach" social or emotional skills to students that they do not understand the needs of. Teachers are not trained group therapists AND they have no understanding of the overexcitabilities, intensities, or sensitivities of this atypical population.
Asynchronous Development, By Jean Goerss: The gifted child, because of his asynchronous development, cannot identify with the peers he finds in the local school. He usually does not share their interests and may find their behavior puzzling. He may be unable or unwilling to respond to his peers as they expect; or to conform to the school’s expectations. He may not be ready to cope with this new environment and, thus he may be unable to complete a basic developmental task. If so, he will suffer social and emotional complications that could profoundly affect his future.
The lack of exposure to true peers can widen asynchronous development, meaning create delays in healthy social development which in turn would potentially make it more difficult for them to mature appropriately so that they can handle the academic acceleration that they so desperately need. Because autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disability that entails social challenges, the lack of access to true peers and subsequent social challenges may lead to the appearance of ASD. It may also precipitate social anxiety, depression, identity issues, and existential crisis.
In our BRIGHTLinks Community we have a high percentage of families that are dealing with children with social issues, behavior problems, anxiety issues, identity issues, and loneliness. In fact that is why nearly 100% of you are here. We have had multiple parents express that they have been told that their children might have autism or autistic traits or they have been warned that their child might become narcissistic if they don’t succeed by socializing with their classmates. When it comes to the children in our highly gifted community, please forgive me, but there are few experts who have been exposed to children in this population enough to be able to really understand their needs.
Many of the children in our group have been prescribed professional and costly social skill groups to “correct” these issues. But will these social skill groups be of benefit? It is hard to say. In our case, it had no noticeable benefit. What increases the potential for benefit is intentionally curating a group of children who have much in common with each other both in academic and leisure interests. Without that, one is essentially recreating a similar environment to a school classroom with similar age mates.
REMEMBER from the beginning:
The Gifted Development Center states it perfectly,
Many gifted children receive a good foundation for self-esteem within their families. Then something happens: they meet other children. By the age of five or six, openness and confidence are frequently replaced with self-doubt and layers of protective defenses. Being different is a problem in childhood. Young children—even gifted ones—do not have the capacity to comprehend differences. They have difficulty understanding why other children do not talk like them or respond to their friendship in a predictable manner. They equate differentness with being “strange” or unacceptable, and this becomes the basis of their self-concept. It’s difficult for a child who has been wounded continuously by peers to feel generosity toward others. It takes positive experiences with children like themselves to build the self-confidence needed for healthy peer relations. Later, when their self-concepts are fully formed, they are better equipped to understand differences, to put negative feedback of age peers in perspective, and to gain appreciation of the diversity of their classmates. But acceptance precedes positive social values.
Children only learn to love others when they have achieved self-love. The process usually involves the following stages:
(1) self-awareness;
(2) finding kindred spirits;
(3) feeling understood and accepted by others;
(4) self-acceptance;
(5) recognition of the differences in others; and, eventually,
(6) the development of understanding, acceptance and appreciation of others.
Self-awareness includes being aware of how one is like others and how one is different from others. Gifted children are, in fact, different from their age-mates in many ways. They tend to be ashamed of these differences and try to hide them unless they find kindred spirits early in life. These kindred spirits help normalize their experiences and provide the safety for them to be who they really are. They provide the acceptance, understanding, and give and take on an equal basis that is required for true, lasting friendships to develop. When children find friends who accept them they become able to accept themselves. From this strong foundation, they can see how others are different from themselves without needing to imitate the norm.
When a solid base of self-esteem is developed in early childhood, gifted students are better equipped to branch out and make friends with others who are unlike themselves. Adolescence is developmentally the most appropriate stage for these widening horizons of social interaction. Gifted adolescents select their closest friends from among their mental peers, but they can also participate in team sports, band, extra-curricular clubs, church and community activities, and social events in which they have opportunities to interact with students who have a wide range of abilities. With a support system of gifted friends and classmates, they can join in other groups without fear of rejection, and they are more likely to gain respect and assume leadership positions.
Our Highly Gifted Children are "EXTRA"
For healthier social development, finding kindred spirits is important. Our highly gifted children are “extra”--Extra bright, intense, sensitive, empathetic, imaginational, energetic, existential thinkers, etc, think overexcitabilities. The International Gifted Consortium has now published new research indicating that overexcitabilities are as prevalent in highly gifted children as they are in profoundly gifted children.
A better understanding of highly and profoundly gifted children is needed by schools, experts, and even by family. Some teachers never see a student like yours except once in their entire careers, same with psychologists, counselors, and medical doctors. Our children interact with the world differently than most children. Our children are more rare, even among the general gifted population. They need to find and connect with others like them as adolescents for social development and mental health reasons.
As Cait Curly, from My Little Poppies, recommends three tips for finding peers in her article Social Issues and Asynchronous Kids,
One word: Google for local resources.
If you can’t find a community, grow your own.
BRIGHTLinks is growing our own community and encourages you to also grow one for your family. We have created this organization to enable parents to find a community of kindred spirits for their highly gifted children. We are trying to create an oasis in a social desert for our families. Our events are a first step to getting connected. Families must be willing to go out on a limb and exchange contact information and reach out to BRIGHTLinks “strangers.” They must be willing to drive distances and let go of the idea of our children having friends down the street to bike over to. We realize families cannot always get to our events because of barriers due to scheduling or distance, and that is OK! While we are being honest, sometimes we are just too tired because of our intensely busy lives with our intensely emotional children. Please do not let these barriers prevent you from getting your child and your family connected. We must be intentional and creative in finding true peers for our families. If our team can help you get connected either in person or virtually, please let us know.
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