Other points:
- it’s not mutually exclusive with any other neurodivergence, in which case they’re “twice exceptional”;
- In an environment with unprepared people and professionals, they may be wrongly diagnosed as having some other neurodivergence.
- It’s not just a high IQ score;
- Gifted kids can be problem students and have low grades;
- Homework feels like torture (this is true to any child, tho);
- They’re very likely to question authorities and point out perceived hypocrisy (emphasis here on perceived, because pointing something and being right are different things);
- As kids, they may have weird quirks for executing tasks, such as wanting to hold pencils the “wrong” way, or wanting to press against a wall to do homework;
If you’re Brazilian or can understand Brazilian Portuguese, this is the podcast I listened to - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apnuIIePeeA
Aos brasileiros que acabarem encontrando esse post, o podcast que assisti é o que linkei acima
If it was 20, maybe even 10 years later, I might have been diagnosed with ADHD as a child. But I wasn’t disruptive and I scored extremely well on tests. In the 80s, that overruled pretty much everything else. And when I had trouble later, it was because I was “lazy.” This is why I dislike the narrative that “gifted means everything came easily until it didn’t and then they failed because they didn’t face hardship.” I didn’t have trouble because I wasn’t challenged. I had trouble because I had undiagnosed ADHD and autism, but got slapped with the lazy label early and often. Nothing I did was ever enough, and I was told my whole life that I just wasn’t trying hard enough. All because I learned to read before kindergarten and scored in the 99th percentile on standardized testing.
Meanwhile, the 5-6 people from my elementary gifted classes that graduated with me all kept excelling through school and into their careers. Which also contradicts the easy narrative that sprang up around “gifted.” Not sure how many of them had concurrent neurodivergencies… but I was the weird one even among the weird kids lol.