Intense Behaviors of the Gifted: Possible Roadblocks to Academic Achievement

talk by Mary Christiansen, PhD

Christiansen focused her talk on how to intervene and reverse the cycle of underachievement. Christensen's premise was that in order to help, a parent or educator must understand the psychological/emotional make-up of gifted individuals and how it is uniquely different from other children. If parents understand their children, they can see situations from their perspective.

Christiansen identified intensities that exist within gifted children. These emerge from psychological theory known as positive disintegration, put forth by a Polish psychiatrist, Dabrowsky. Dabrowsky calls the intensities overexcitabilities and defines them as channels of receiving information from the environment. Gifted children have heightened forms of reactions to the world and its stimuli. These are often very positive traits but they can become very negative qualities too.
Dabrowski identified five overexcitabilities. Not every gifted child displays all five intensities, but Dabrowsky's premise is that the more of these that are present, the greater the potential for advanced development intellectually and personally. For him, the five intensities are literally the building blocks of giftedness. They can also be the cause of enormous stress within the home.

1. The first intensity that Dabrowsky identified was psycho motor intensity which he explained as being the heightened response of the neuromuscular system. This comes out for the child in very high levels of energy, a need to move a lot, a restlessness. The child may or may not be the star athlete; psychomotor intensity doesn't translate into athletic success necessarily, but very often it is typical of a child who is going to want to go to the practice just to expend some energy. It can also be exhibited in rapid speech. Many gifted children talk very rapidly and will talk your arm off if you let them which can be difficult for a teacher. Often this quality is misdiagnosed as AHDD. It is the role of the parents to help children channel psychomotor energy into more appropriate outlets.
2. Sensual excitability: can manifest itself in a lot of ways that make the child a very difficult to deal with in the school environment. This excitability refers to a heightened response to sensual stimuli, in other words, to stimuli perceived by any of the five senses. This sensory stimulation can be pleasurable, however, if it is unpleasant, the unpleasant experience is magnified to the point where the child cannot ignore the stimulation. Christensen gave some examples of sensual excitability that she comes across frequently: the child who will not wear an outfit unless the tab has been cut out, the child who will not wear his or her socks if they're not even, the child who won't go out if her braids aren't tight enough, a child who will get upset if mom didn't pack her or his favorite sandwich and so on. These sensory experiences become a source of distraction for the child and the child's overreaction is irritating to adults. She stressed to parents not to discipline their children over these issues but to help them find ways to cope with this excitability.
3. Imaginational intensity can impact the school environment a great deal. This excitability can manifest itself in very animated visualizations, that if expressed to others, may be perceived as lying or making up stories. Children characterized by imaginational intensity can retell dreams in very vivid detail as well. This trait may go unappreciated by school personnel who perceive it as exaggeration.
4. Intellectual excitability manifests itself in heightened responses to intellectual questions and problems and can lead to problems in the school context. Children's intense interest in things/topic, particularly those outside the school curriculum, can divert them from school achievement and annoy teachers. Some gifted children's capacity for sustained analytical thinking, with an emphasis on ethical and the moral issues and implications, prevents them from completing assigned tasks. Very frequently it feels impossible for the gifted individual to let go of the world's dilemmas and major problems. In the most extreme cases this can divert them to a debilitating extent.
5. Emotional overexcitability is described by Christiansen as holding a magnifying glass to emotions. Emotions are experienced in extremes. Emotional overexcitability often exhibits itself in strong attachment to other people. Gifted children seek emotional relationships with others but often the competition and desire to achieve at high levels, mitigates against forming the friendships with peers that they desire.

Strong affective memory, another aspect of emotional overexcitability, may also cause problems in the school environment. A child may remember something from the past and the emotions it recalls are as strong as if the event had just happened. Depression and a concern with death can preoccupy gifted children. It can be very difficult to console a young gifted child who is worried and upset about something heard on the news‹something most other children would not even attend to. Dabrowsky's research showed that it is the combination of intellectual and emotional intensity that seems to give the individual the most potential for advanced development, but those are also the two qualities that give children the most difficulties.

These five intensities can block a child's enjoyment of the school experience or the life experience. If they go unrecognized, mistaken for irritating behavior, or regarded as occasions for disciplinary situations, the message that the child receives is negative and that there is something wrong with him or her. According to Christensen, the one message that you want to deliver to children when you're dealing with manifestations of the intensities, is that these feelings and reactions are normal for someone with a great mind.