The title of this piece -- Social and Emotional Issues in Gifted Youth -- was a hot topic in gifted circles back when I was involved with The TAG Project. My recollection is this is why the conference I participated in was called Beyond IQ -- because it was concerned with such issues, not just intelligence and academic performance per se.
This really resonated with me. My oldest son always had social issues. I have always liked him and he and I get along well, but he makes other people really crazy and finds social stuff hard to deal with.
Pulling him out of public school at the age of eleven to homeschool helped enormously. Making him cope with a bunch of ill-behaved classmates all day, every day was too much for his already feeble social skills and he was just cranky and difficult all the time while in school, especially that particular school which had serious issues.
I didn't have IQ test results for him, but I had academic grade level placement results from when my oldest son was 11 that placed him at the senior in college level. One of the speakers I saw live at Beyond IQ was Kathi Kearney.
Coincidentally, she said in her talk that an 11 year old with an IQ of 180 was the mental equivalent of an 18 year old or a high school senior. Since that struck a nerve with me, I went up to her at the end of her talk, introduced myself and asked "If an 11 year old tested as senior in college level instead of senior in high school level, what kind of IQ would that be?"
Knowing me from my work on The TAG Project, she said something like "Oh, you poor thing. But it will be okay because you homeschool."
I went back to my room, had a mild panic attack, called my sister and apologized to her for my derisive reaction when she previously suggested to me his IQ might be above 200 and generally wigged out for about two hours. Then I calmed the fuck down and decided everything would be okay. I could handle this.
I later learned that it was actually worse than that because the placement test he had taken only went up to the senior in college level. So he ceilinged the test which doesn't give you accurate information.
It tells you what the floor is. It tells you a minimum value and his actual ability may well be something above that.
Anecdotal evidence suggests it probably is above that.
We attended this conference shortly before he turned thirteen. When he was thirteen, I got him accepted to a local college for purposes of taking classes part-time to supplement our homeschooling because for some subjects, he was so far beyond my understanding already that I had no hope of really teaching him.
He's extremely uneven, having both big strengths and big weaknesses. He tested as well above grade level in some things and below grade level in others, so there were some subjects where I could still teach him but others I was already in over my head.
So we signed him up for a couple of college classes and they both fell through for different reasons. Then he told me "Mom, I don't want to go to college. I want YOU to keep teaching me."
He has health issues and social issues and he liked being homeschooled. He liked me being his teacher and he didn't want to return to a classroom setting.
So I did the research and rose to the occasion, though I had been looking forward to handing him off to someone else to some degree because he's a LOT to deal with and always has been. He's always been a growth experience for me as a parent, which I'm usually okay with but sometimes I just wish my life were less challenging and a little more relaxing.
Another thing that occurred when he was thirteen is that he was participating regularly in some online forum and someone there was shocked to learn he was only thirteen. They told him "I thought you had a PhD."
So the anecdotal evidence is that, yes, "senior in college level" (at age 11) was likely a low ball estimate of where he stood and anecdotal evidence is a large part of what I have to go on. If a child with such a high IQ is not properly assessed by about age seven by the right kind of professional, it's not possible to really determine an accurate IQ. Hand-wavy guesses is all you will really get from testing that occurs after that point.
But think about that for a minute: If he were REALLY someone in, say, his twenties with a bachelor's degree or a PhD sitting in a sixth grade classroom surrounded by eleven year olds and being treated like he was one of them and expected to "make friends" with these kids, how well would that go?
This is the crux of the problem for a lot of a high IQ kids: They don't really fit in anywhere. They have the body, life experience and lifestyle of a child paired with the mind of someone MUCH older. They may not know anyone they can genuinely connect with and relate to.
So a lot of my oldest son's social issues are rooted in the fact that most people are simply not able to really understand him and it was much worse when he was a child and people were generally dismissive and disrespectful to him.
He also gets a bit wonky if he can't adequately feed his mind. He readily starts "starving" mentally, which makes him difficult to deal with.
It has long been my policy to make sure he gets enough mental stimulation or food for thought to keep him from losing his marbles. When he doesn't have regular access to adequate amounts of reading material etc, he starts making me crazy in short order.
So I don't do this just because I'm a nice mom. I do it as a form of self defense -- to protect myself from him getting really difficult to deal with.
This is sort of a little known but critical issue for the gifted community. At least back in the day, it was something schools and such tended to be largely ignorant of and insensitive to.
Gifted kids are actively being caused social and emotional problems because of the way this issue gets routinely mishandled and then those kids typically go on to be fairly influential individuals as adults, sometimes but not always also making big bucks in the process.
And then we wonder why so many people say things like "Eat the rich."
This really resonated with me. My oldest son always had social issues. I have always liked him and he and I get along well, but he makes other people really crazy and finds social stuff hard to deal with.
Pulling him out of public school at the age of eleven to homeschool helped enormously. Making him cope with a bunch of ill-behaved classmates all day, every day was too much for his already feeble social skills and he was just cranky and difficult all the time while in school, especially that particular school which had serious issues.
I didn't have IQ test results for him, but I had academic grade level placement results from when my oldest son was 11 that placed him at the senior in college level. One of the speakers I saw live at Beyond IQ was Kathi Kearney.
Coincidentally, she said in her talk that an 11 year old with an IQ of 180 was the mental equivalent of an 18 year old or a high school senior. Since that struck a nerve with me, I went up to her at the end of her talk, introduced myself and asked "If an 11 year old tested as senior in college level instead of senior in high school level, what kind of IQ would that be?"
Knowing me from my work on The TAG Project, she said something like "Oh, you poor thing. But it will be okay because you homeschool."
I went back to my room, had a mild panic attack, called my sister and apologized to her for my derisive reaction when she previously suggested to me his IQ might be above 200 and generally wigged out for about two hours. Then I calmed the fuck down and decided everything would be okay. I could handle this.
I later learned that it was actually worse than that because the placement test he had taken only went up to the senior in college level. So he ceilinged the test which doesn't give you accurate information.
It tells you what the floor is. It tells you a minimum value and his actual ability may well be something above that.
Anecdotal evidence suggests it probably is above that.
We attended this conference shortly before he turned thirteen. When he was thirteen, I got him accepted to a local college for purposes of taking classes part-time to supplement our homeschooling because for some subjects, he was so far beyond my understanding already that I had no hope of really teaching him.
He's extremely uneven, having both big strengths and big weaknesses. He tested as well above grade level in some things and below grade level in others, so there were some subjects where I could still teach him but others I was already in over my head.
So we signed him up for a couple of college classes and they both fell through for different reasons. Then he told me "Mom, I don't want to go to college. I want YOU to keep teaching me."
He has health issues and social issues and he liked being homeschooled. He liked me being his teacher and he didn't want to return to a classroom setting.
So I did the research and rose to the occasion, though I had been looking forward to handing him off to someone else to some degree because he's a LOT to deal with and always has been. He's always been a growth experience for me as a parent, which I'm usually okay with but sometimes I just wish my life were less challenging and a little more relaxing.
Another thing that occurred when he was thirteen is that he was participating regularly in some online forum and someone there was shocked to learn he was only thirteen. They told him "I thought you had a PhD."
So the anecdotal evidence is that, yes, "senior in college level" (at age 11) was likely a low ball estimate of where he stood and anecdotal evidence is a large part of what I have to go on. If a child with such a high IQ is not properly assessed by about age seven by the right kind of professional, it's not possible to really determine an accurate IQ. Hand-wavy guesses is all you will really get from testing that occurs after that point.
But think about that for a minute: If he were REALLY someone in, say, his twenties with a bachelor's degree or a PhD sitting in a sixth grade classroom surrounded by eleven year olds and being treated like he was one of them and expected to "make friends" with these kids, how well would that go?
This is the crux of the problem for a lot of a high IQ kids: They don't really fit in anywhere. They have the body, life experience and lifestyle of a child paired with the mind of someone MUCH older. They may not know anyone they can genuinely connect with and relate to.
So a lot of my oldest son's social issues are rooted in the fact that most people are simply not able to really understand him and it was much worse when he was a child and people were generally dismissive and disrespectful to him.
He also gets a bit wonky if he can't adequately feed his mind. He readily starts "starving" mentally, which makes him difficult to deal with.
It has long been my policy to make sure he gets enough mental stimulation or food for thought to keep him from losing his marbles. When he doesn't have regular access to adequate amounts of reading material etc, he starts making me crazy in short order.
So I don't do this just because I'm a nice mom. I do it as a form of self defense -- to protect myself from him getting really difficult to deal with.
This is sort of a little known but critical issue for the gifted community. At least back in the day, it was something schools and such tended to be largely ignorant of and insensitive to.
Gifted kids are actively being caused social and emotional problems because of the way this issue gets routinely mishandled and then those kids typically go on to be fairly influential individuals as adults, sometimes but not always also making big bucks in the process.
And then we wonder why so many people say things like "Eat the rich."