club enhances children's lives in many ways, perhaps mostly by encouraging them to be themselves, to develop their own particular gifts and skills. So I was surprised at the anxiety level in a staff support group as 10-year-old Tara was being discussed.
Tara was joining club the next day. 'She's gifted...bit of a brain box,'
said one worker with a nervous smile. Tara's teachers and parents were concerned that she was isolated from her peer group at school. She had no particular friend and the other children certainly regarded her as odd. The hope was that our after-school club would help her to socialise. Helping children to socialise is the essence of a playworker's role, so why were the staff anxious?
'Well, can we meet her needs?' commented one, provoking a torrent of worries to pour out. 'It's difficult to know how to plan for her,' summed up another. When I asked what would be different if they had known only that Tara needed help to socialise and not that she was gifted, everyone immediately relaxed feeling there would be 'no problem'.
What is a gifted child?
Adults label children. It seems difficult for us to accept a child as 'the sum of their parts' and to think of them holistically, especially when they are difficult for us to manage. Of course, nowadays a child needs a label to qualify for any special need and in that sense a label works in the child's best interests. However, in Tara's case the label was in a sense alienating in that the staff felt temporarily deskilled, unable to think beyond the label. Indeed, blinded by the word 'gifted' they had lost track of their own giftedness in helping children to socialise.
A gifted child is an ordinary child with an extraordinary talent. While being gifted doesn't automatically cause a problem for a child, it does raise the question, how much does a child's gift adhere them to other people and how much does it separate them from other people?
Impact on the child Tara couldn't remember when she didn't feel different to other children. As a small child she felt special as her precociousness earned her adult approval. At the end of her first term in school she was moved up a class which met some academic needs but emotionally exaggerated her sense of being different. She knew she pleased her teachers but was less confident about how to please her peers and how to make friends. The more she felt she didn't belong, the more she turned towards adults for 'friendship' by becoming a rather loud 'know all' in class. Challenging behaviour can sometimes be an indication of giftedness, as can withdrawn behaviour. Both may indicate that a child's needs are not being met.
Tara experienced a common dilemma of gifted children. She believed her 'super brain power' was the primary and most important aspect of her and seemed unaware of her other admirable qualities. She believed people liked her solely because she was gifted intellectually. Her feelings of being special and different were also providing her with a refuge from being sociable.
We all have to learn to make friends and children have to be helped to think about their part in difficulties with peer relations. But Tara had an obvious and immediate explanation for her difficulties and had not been encouraged to think any further than that the other children were jealous of her 'super brain power'.
Tara began to find herself in a double bind. She needed adult friendship but also desperately wanted to have friends of her own age and to feel she belonged to her peer group. She gradually became contemptuous of her teachers, often describing them (not in their hearing) as stupid and incompetent. Deep down, gifted children can feel surprisingly humiliated.
Tara was ashamed she had no friends and her mockery of her teachers was her way of living a reversal - she felt humiliated and mocked and set out to pass on the pain by being the humiliator and mocker.
Impact on adults Gifted children cross adult/child boundaries. We can feel threatened by gifted children, especially those gifted with intelligence. While adults may feel a sense of awe around a child with a special talent such as music, it seems easy to admire and warm to them.
Perhaps children like Tara worry us because they risk shaming us. We all live with the fear, conscious or unconscious, of being exposed about something and above all, adults are supposed to know, to the extent that it feels as though there is something wrong with not knowing. Gifted children can remind us of what we haven't achieved. However gifted the Taras of this world may be they are children and need adults to see them as such.
Tara's playworkers' reaction highlights a crucial issue in giftedness - what do adults feel they have to do with the gift? For example, if parents noticed their three-year-old can play Mozart by ear what do they feel the child is demanding? Is the child saying, 'I must have first-class piano lessons' or simply 'I love playing the piano'? The question is what is the child asking for, if anything?
Sometimes a gifted child may be unconsciously expected to act as a redeemer for the adults. Tara's parents had not had the opportunity to fulfil their own academic potential and were determined that Tara was going to achieve hers, for Tara's sake and, in a way, to compensate them. This made it difficult for them to balance Tara's giftedness and the rest of her personality causing her an additional problem as she approached the pre-teen stage.
She knew her parents valued her academic prowess but she was beginning to turn her interests to more teenage preoccupations. As she lacked the support of a peer group she was more than usually troubled at the idea of upsetting her parents.
Impact on peers Tara had difficulty in settling in club mainly because of her brash attitude towards other children. Her playworkers tried to help her to understand how the other children construed her behaviour as 'showing off'.
They encouraged her to try less forceful ways of expressing her views and answers.
The most powerful influence on the way a group of children treat the gifted child lies in the attitude of the adults around them. Other children will feel envious, they may feel shamed by their lack of ability and they may feel awkward around a child who is different. They need help to see beyond the gift to the ordinary child who emotionally is likely to be at their level. You can facilitate this by asking questions like, 'What do you think you have that Tara would like?' One boy who was envious of his friend who had 'flown all round the world' with his musical gift responded to such a question with a shocked silence and then, 'Well, he never plays football with his dad.'
Managing the gifted child
* Hold in mind the relationship between the gifted child and their needs.
It is important to meet their gift and their needs.
* Help the child to realise they are more than their gift by valuing other qualities. Tara's playworkers made a point of praising her for ordinary qualities, 'You are a helpful person' (ie you are not just an intelligent person).
* Don't let the idea that the child is special and different provide them with a way of not thinking about why their friendships are not working.
* Avoid the temptation to suggest that the gifted child reduce or hide their gift to make friends. Help them to understand the impact their gift may have on other children and work out ways of managing it.
* If other children cry 'not fair' agree with them. Try to avoid compensatory remarks such as, 'But you are so good at swimming', but rather comment, 'It is disappointing you are not as clever, but I guess you have things she would like.'
Andrea Clifford-Poston is an educational therapist and author of The Secrets of Successful Parenting - Understand What Your Child's Behaviour is Really Telling You (How-to-Books: 9.99)
