Gifted children and the gift of stories

This post is a bit unusual for what I do on GITS, but it’s important and I would not be surprised if the issues discussed here resonate with the creative community that frequents this site.

I am contributing this post to the SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted) Blog Tour celebrating their National Parenting Gifted Children week (links provided below).

Over the last twenty years, my wife Rebecca and I have lived with two sons, both of whom have been tested several times and identified as profoundly gifted.

What is profoundly gifted?

I’m no expert — Rebecca has taken the lead on this front and has been the family’s primary advocate on the part of our sons while my focus is to generate income to keep our unusual and sometimes crazed ship afloat — but I know this much: A PG child is smart. Really smart.

The Davidson Institute of Talent Development, an organization that specializes in the needs of the profoundly gifted, provides this definition:

Profoundly gifted individuals score in the 99.9th percentile on IQ tests and have an exceptionally high level of intellectual prowess. These students score at least three standard deviations above the norm on the bell curve, so they are at the extreme end of the intelligence, or IQ, continuum.

Our oldest son Will is 20 years old, a rising senior in the five year dual degree program at Tufts University and the New England Conservatory. He is getting a B.S. in Cognitive Brain Sciences, and a B.Mus. in Music Composition and Music Theory. He has played the violin since he was 10 and took a collegiate level music theory class when he was 11. You can download one of his compositions here.

Our youngest son Luke is 10 years old and has been home-schooled since the second grade. He’s interested in history, archeology, mythology, science, music, Shakespeare, creative writing, movies — basically everything. He has only played piano for 2 years, but is already at a level of proficiency equivalent to students who have been studying two to three times that long.

When people discover you are the parent of a PG child, almost invariably their first reaction is, “Wow, aren’t you lucky.” And yes, we are. Both of our sons have remarkable minds. But along with keen intellects come enormous challenges — for them and for us.

Consider these excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on “intellectual giftedness”:

Generally, gifted individuals learn more quickly, deeply, and broadly than their peers. Gifted children may learn to read early and operate at the same level as normal children who are significantly older. The gifted tend to demonstrate high reasoning ability, creativity, curiosity, a large vocabulary, and an excellent memory. They can often master concepts with few repetitions. They may also be physically and emotionally sensitive, perfectionistic, and may frequently question authority. Some have trouble relating to or communicating with their peers because of disparities in vocabulary size (especially in the early years), personality, interests and motivation. As children, they may prefer the company of older children or adults.

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Many gifted individuals experience various types of heightened awareness and may seem overly sensitive. These sensitivities may be to physical senses such as sight, sound, smell, movement and touch. For example, they may be extremely uncomfortable when they have a wrinkle in their sock, or unable to concentrate because of the sound of a clock ticking on the other side of the room. Sensitivities of the gifted are often to mental and emotional over-awareness. For example, picking up on the feelings of someone close to them, having extreme sensitivity to their own internal emotions, and taking in external information at a significantly higher rate than those around them. These various kinds of sensitivities often mean that the more gifted an individual is, the more input and awareness they experience, leading to the contradiction of them needing more time to process than others who are not gifted.

Hypersensitivity to external or internal stimuli can resemble a proneness to “sensory overload”, which can cause such persons to avoid highly stimulating, chaotic or crowded environments. This kind of highly sensitive nature has also been called “overexcitability” by Kazimierz Dabrowski. Some are able to tune out such unwanted stimulation as they focus on their chosen task or on their own thoughts. In many cases, awareness may fluctuate between conditions of hyperstimulation and of withdrawal.

Hypersensitivity. Overexcitability. Perfectionism. Combined with elevated intelligence, this can lead to all sorts of issues including perhaps the most difficult — asynchronous development: They’re physically one age, mentally another, socially another, emotionally yet another, all of which makes life in a PG household… let’s just say interesting.

Some examples: As children, our sons had to wear their socks inside out due to skin sensitivity. We cut off tags on their T-shirts for the same reason. We had to remember to alert them whenever we were about to run the garbage disposal or vacuum cleaner. A roast chicken pulled from the oven sent them sprinting out of the kitchen due to the sudden overwhelming aroma. Food items rejected not because of their taste, but because of their texture.

To draw a movie analogy, remember in This is Spinal Tap when Nigel Tufnel proudly displays his special amplifiers that go “one louder” in volume, not just 10, but 11? PG kids experience reality at 11, 12, 13 and beyond levels. Everything that comes in through their senses is a heightened experience.

For instance, when we first took Will to Disneyland, he was three years old. A few hours into our time there, he developed a fever. Thinking he was getting sick, we left early and drove home. By the time we got back, his fever was gone. He wasn’t sick, his fever was a symptom of him being overstimulated by the sights and sounds of the theme park.

Another example: Luke has watched full-length movies since he was two year’s old. He is fascinated with the narrative form, often watching one movie per day at home on DVDs. During his life, he has probably been to a movie theater 200 times. Every movie he’s seen in that venue, he has done so with his fingers in his ears to muffle the noise level. The sound is too much, but he loves the experience of seeing a movie in a theater. Fingers in ears is his way of coping.

It may be difficult for you to imagine these types of experiences. But as writers, I’ll bet you can relate to this: emotional intensity. I can only speak about our family in this regard, but both of our sons feel things deeply and profoundly. Their degree of empathy is at times astonishing, especially in relation to stories. Movies, books, music, they immerse themselves into creative content in extraordinary ways. At times, this is a wondrous thing to behold, to witness your child transported entirely into another universe, then bring back something of that place in order to play in the guise of those characters. Other times, especially moments of a story’s sadness and grief, can create acute reactions that last for hours, including disturbing and disruptive nightmares.

It’s that empathy, that heightened ability to enter into a character’s experience, that both excites me and frightens me as a parent. Exciting to think of the creative possibilities available to these young minds. What stories might they tell, songs they compose? Frightening to consider that their degree of emotional connection could prove to be too much, causing them to run away and hide from their creativity and their feelings.

But I am am optimist, an unequivocal believer in the power of story to inspire and heal all wounds.

Here is a story about Will: When he was three, he fell in love with the animated movie The Brave Little Toaster. Its plot: “A toaster, a blanket, a lamp, a radio, and a vacuum cleaner journey to the city to find their Master after being abandoned in their cabin in the woods.” He was so swept up in the movie that one weekend afternoon, we drove up to the campus of UCLA, carting a toaster, blanket, lamp, radio and vacuum cleaner. We sat together on a grassy knoll, Will in my lap, and watched as bemused students passed by, searching for a boy with red hair, just like The Master. Finally we spotted a lanky young man with ginger hair. Will looked up at me with utter delight: “The Master!” We drove home with smiles on our faces, our hero’s journey complete.

Here is a story about Luke: At the end of kindergarten when he was still 5, as he and his mother would drive around town running errands, Luke began describing an imaginary place called Azthonia. After each excursion when they returned home, Luke would insist they write down what his imagination had concocted. In the intervening years, Luke supplied additional details about Azthonia including extensive character sketches, descriptions of the island’s flora and fauna, even complex bestiaries. Then in November 2008, Luke started writing a story about an archaeologist named Matthew Roscoe Jr. who discovers Azthonia and its inhabitants including Matthew’s band of explorers, a group of Azthonian fighters, an invading Beirutee army, and much more. To this day, he will occasionally drop into that story universe and explore its narrative possibilities. I am sure it is as alive in his imagination as his experience of our ‘real’ world. Just the other day after he’d been writing, he proclaimed, “I really wish my characters were real. I’d love to hang out with them.”

[This from a boy who when he was three years old gave me the best writing advice I’ve ever received: “Go into the story, and find the animals.” Hence the name of this blog].

I am not surprised that both of my sons are drawn to stories. A story is perhaps the ideal context in which to be profoundly gifted. A story allows the participant to have deep, intense feelings in a safe environment. It gives them characters through which they can project their own ideas and emotions. A story engages their insatiable curiosity — what’s going to happen next? — and feeds their imagination. It gives them a place to which they can go that becomes their own even if they feel at odds with this world.

Then there’s this: Behind ever story is a creator. Whether the story is a book or a song, a movie or a poem, it was brought into being out of nothingness by a writer. A miracle to most. But not to many profoundly gifted individuals. To them, the act of creation is innate, as natural as breathing. Thus when they experience a story, no matter the form, I think they feel that with the writer, they are in the company of a kindred soul.

My advice: Expose your children to as many stories as you can. In all forms. Here are some free online resources:

* Movies: Classic Cinema Online, Europa Film Treasures, Free Movies Cinema, Open Culture.

* Novels: Feedbooks, Online Novels, Project Gutenberg, University of Virginia library.

* Poetry: Poem, Poets (Academy of American Poets), Poetry, The Writer’s Almanac.

* Radio: A Prairie Home Companion, The Moth, The Story, This American Life.

* Short stories: American Literature, Classic Short Stories, Popcorn Fiction, Short Stories.

[Note: Parents need to provide oversight for any of these resources to ensure the content is age appropriate].

A form of narrative you may not be including for your children is this: screenplays. Interest in screenwriting has exploded the last two decades and I find that young people, who seem nowadays to be especially visual in the way they experience the world, are quickly drawn to storytelling in script form. In fact, my son Luke has an extensive library of screenplays, some of which he has read several times. He will see a movie he likes. Ask me if I can locate the script. Often I can. Print it out. Voila! Now he can experience the movie in a different narrative format. Here are a few online sites where you can access movie screenplays: myPDFscripts, SimplyScripts.

All children are gifted in their own distinct way. Profoundly gifted children offer unique challenges and opportunities. Just imagine the stories this generation of young people can create if we provide them with the resources and support they deserve.

For more information on parenting profoundly gifted children, see the links below:

National Parenting Gifted Children Week is hosted by SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted).

Follow the Blog Tour.

Download SENG’s free NPGC Week ebook, The Joy and the Challenge: Parenting Gifted Children.

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