The "G" word

Gifted.
How many of you roll your eyes when you hear someone gush about their gifted child?  I know I do.
"Wait. What?" you might be thinking. "You have a gifted child and you roll your eyes at them??"

Well, kind of, yes. See, before I knew I had a gifted child, I didn't realise just what gifted meant.   It's not *just* being smart or talented. It's not about being proficient at any given thing. I love hearing about other children's accomplishments and will clap and rave along with their parents. Because yes, it IS great that Johnny is doing whatever it is that warrants celebration...
It's just not the same as finding a parent of a gifted child to talk to. Who *gets* it.

I really don't like the word "gifted".  It seems like it's emotionally charged. Most parents I know with exceptionally or profoundly gifted children don't talk about it. It's not so much that it's a secret, it's that it offends other parents who have preconceived notions themselves.  "Oh she thinks her kid is so smart, hey?" and then the comparisons start.

Frankly? My son will not come out on top in a contest.  He will either get distracted by the other children, want to dispute the method and/or rules to the contest, or find something more interesting to do over there --->
Then when someone else wins, he will cry because he wanted to win, too, but you just CAN'T do it all, ever, and so he gets upset.

According to the evaluation he had done he is exceptionally gifted - using the "old" IQ levels, that's 160-179. At four.  His brain works in ways I can't even comprehend, and it causes a lot of problems for him and us, as a family.  It's expected that when a child is advanced in one area, there tends to be another area (if not more than one) that they are behind in.  For B, he's emotionally immature. "But he's 5, all 5 year olds are!" However in our case B's emotional level is on par with his brother's - at about 2.5/3 years old.

When the psychological assessment didn't give us any answers as to how to help him with that part of things, we took him to an Occupational Therapist, where he was found to have some severe sensory integration issues.  This is common in gifted children - it's known in some circles as "overexcitabilities" - from here:

Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski identified five of these intensities, which he called "overexcitabilities" or "supersensitivities": Psychomotor, Sensual, Emotional, Intellectual, and Imaginational. Gifted children tend to have more than one of these intensities, although one is usually dominant.

B has to deal with all five of these - but his main one is Emotional, followed by Psychomotor.  Occupational therapy will help him learn to cope with these overwhelming feelings, and help us to help him, as well as learn to cope ourselves with his energy.

Recently I learned the term "twice exceptional" - which is what started the idea for the blog growing in my brain.  I much prefer this term, because it not only indicates my son's intelligence issues, but also the fact that there is this OTHER thing.   For us, it's sensory - or Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). A quick look at the following can give you a little insight as to how this affects our life on not only a day to day basis, but often hour to hour, or minute to minute...

(click for bigger)

B doesn't deal with every one of these issues, but Z covers some, as do The Mister and I.  We are a sensory nightmare all together, and as a result, we don't actually do a lot of things that other families do.  The mere suggestion of going to the Show (like a County Fair for those not familiar) will make us recoil in horror.  We don't go to movies. We don't go to air shows or anything at all that might be crowded. Going to the shops can be a total nightmare and requires advanced notice and a lot of coaching. And I still have to leave in the middle of it sometimes, to bring them home, and go back, hopefully to find my trolley where I left it.

It was hard for me, for the longest time, to admit we weren't "just like" everyone else. Now, however, I'm okay with that. I love my kids. I don't want to change them, to make them conform, just for the sake of "fitting in" - I just want us all to have the tools to make life that little bit easier to deal with.