Gifted children and the emotional intensity they come with

• I had my 6yo tested and she came out as highly gifted
• She had just started school at 5yo as she finished kindergarten and speaks fluently both Romanian and English
• She is incredibly sensible and every single disagreement of opinions throws her into an emotional meltdown

It all started with my 6yo child who was quite a hand-full and basically cried all kindergarten when we dropped her off. She went through 2 years of nursery and 3 years of kindergarten and spent most in tears.

Although the environment was highly supportive at home and at the kindergarten, it was a truly long accommodation process that finished towards the end of the last of the 3 years of kindergarten.

Looking back at the the time she spent in nursery and kindergarten and my child is still remembered by all her educators and kindergarten staff who took turns talking to her while she struggled with understanding the need for her to be there. The guilt that I feel to this day for taking this path of kindergarten is terrible and if I had any other option I would have done so, but this is a story for another time.

Now, when I ask her on the reasons for which she cried, she mentions that she wanted to stay more with us and that she remembers kindergarten to be fun and regrets that she did not enjoy it more as school is more complicated and comes with more emotions.

Besides the intellectual aspect that poses a challenge in it’s own and deserves a dedicated space, there is the emotional part where the gifted and highly gifted children are in a class of their own. Before I will explain what we are going through, I want to point out that I am not a doctor or hold any sort of medical qualifications so, before proceeding to apply any of the things I describe before, please visit a qualified psychologist and discuss your particular situation.

She was always a very emotional child and from an early age she would show signs of having a low tolerance to change or anxiety. Even the smallest of changes like a schedule shift or a few vacation days taken by any of her educators would trigger emotional storms. She would just want to get that change over with and her normal back and she was very vocal about it. One clear example was when, in 2020 I had to go give birth to her sister and as it was a particular time with COVID. There were no visits allowed so I basically disappeared from home for 3 days and came back with her baby sister. Although she appeared to understand and we spent quite a lot of time explaining the situation it was too much for my then 2 years and 8 months old. I had asked my mother to come in and help my husband around the house while I was gone hoping for some quality grandma-niece time. Unfortunately, my girl understood that grandma is there to replace me while I am gone and decided to transform from a very sweet child to one who shout “GO HOME!” to her grandmother every time she saw her.

I came back and what I was faced with was flabbergasting to me. When I asked my daughter, she simply explained that she understood that if she determined her grandmother to leave earlier, I would come home sooner. She understood, from our explanations that while I am away, grandma is here so if she makes grandma leave earlier, I will come back earlier.

This is one first trait of highly gifted and gifted children, the ability to make unexpected connections. Another one is that with intelligence comes emotional intensity hence the rage that she was sending in the desperate hope to fulfill her objective as soon as possible.

And that was just the beginning.

Later, the psychologist who interviewed all children in the kindergarten mentioned that she seems to struggle with making real friends. That she gets along with everyone but she does not seem to form deeper connections with any particular colleague but prefers to go speak to whichever adult was available. When she chose to play, she chose the game she liked and that only after deciding if she knows and understands all the rules. Her approach was: this is the game and if you want to play with me, you should play this game. We worked together and try to make her more flexible and during this process, we understood that she has just a on/off switch. For her it is very hard to dose her emotional response or energy. In essence she is all in or all out.

Now school started and a new set of colleagues expected her. Unknowns are terrible for such children and she could not sleep for a couple of nights before school started. She verbalized that she was very concerned about the fact that her new teachers and colleagues would not like her. Time flu by and she is now happy and engaged with a few friends that she is starting to get closer to.

I can imagine that in the mind of the normal person, the age group that I am referring to when discussing these concepts of close friendship may be strange but bear with me as the sooner these behaviors are identified and discussed, the easier it is for the child to understand them.

Going back to the school start, some new stories started to come. She said that she was coloring at her desk during recess and that her colleagues play a game. Then she continued to say that the colleagues would not invite her to play with them. When I asked more she said that she wants to play but she was not there when the rules were set and how can she play something or decide if she can play if she does not know the rules. When I suggested that she just start to play and when she would break a rule, her colleagues would tell her she found the idea incredible and swiftly reacted : “NO WAAAAY!”. It was inconceivable for her to even consider such a thing and she was waiting for some sort of invitation followed by a rules tour and then she could decide… I was speechless.

In essence, she is a child that is very keen on factual accuracy to the point where she is oblivious to the notion of empathy. She treats almost all play encounters with incredible enthusiasm and truly enjoys them however she doses her reactions based on a sort of decision tree. Her logic is: “I want to go all in but not to scare children”. As such, she maps the situations and searches for similar situations and her response to them. Then she proceeds to “deliver” the pre-used level of intensity. Her barometer is not naturally regulated but rather logic-triggered. The more feedback, the more accuracy in appearing normal.

More situations of different and similar nature appeared and ranged from the cute to the awkward. One cute example was that, as now she started reading books, she turns to read the last chapter of the book as soon as the action starts in order to get the emotions out of the way. Then can enjoy the narrative freely.

At this point we decided to get her tested as she was coming back with straight As to all competitions that she attended and qualified to the national levels. The result surprised us and also clarified some things. Now we are reading books on the Emotional Intensity of gifted children in order to help her better cope with explosive feelings.

Time went by and now our youngest is coming in strong. She also speaks fluently English in addition to native Romanian (I should mention that we speak Romanian to them at home even if we both speak several foreign languages) and they play very nicely together. My youngest is showing the same signs and we will get her tested in a couple of years and now she is teaching herself how to read. Although she seems to be on the gifted side as well and that she is enlisted in the exact same kindergarten with the exact same educators, she adapted to nursery and kindergarten life instantaneously. Besides that, the emotional intensity part seems on a similar path of development with age.

One good thing is that my two girls can practice together and while this makes for a particularly noisy house and very tired parents, I see a lot more progress in terms of coping with emotions than any other sort of practice play that we were able to conceive to play with her.

A note on the test that we chose. There are a lot of tests on the market and I advise specialized assistance when choosing. We had such consultations and concluded on a test model. Among the many other points that we took into account was the fact that for this type of test we had access to trained clinicians that could administer it and help us interpret it.