ADHD - Typical Versus Atypical Behavior (James W. Forgan, Ph.D., and Mary Anne Richey)

We’re often asked, “How do you determine if this is normal boy behavior or behavior that is unusual?” You can probably arrive at an answer on your own, but you need to consider these three questions to know if your son’s behavior is unusual: 

• How frequently does the disruptive behavior occur? 
• How long do your son’s disruptive behaviors last? 
• How intense is your son’s behavior during this time? 

Think about how frequently your son’s disruptive behaviors occur. Once an hour? Once a day? Once per week? It is unusual for a child to get into trouble on a daily basis. We talked to one mom who felt like she had to keep her 7-year-old away from the other neighborhood boys because every time her son went out to play, he came home crying. He had an explosive temper and yelled at the other boys when he got mad but couldn’t handle it when the neighborhood kids yelled back, and he’d run home in tears. This was unusual behavior because it happened so consistently. 

Consider the parent with several sons who all have similar behavior patterns. They may think their children are behaving typically because their reference group of boys may be their only comparison. Thus, parents may think that everything is fine until their sons go to school. Once a young boy enters the school system, the parents are surprised to learn that their son’s behavior is considered problematic. 

When Should a Child Be Formally Identified as Gifted?

School wisdom and psychometric research differ on the answer to this question. In a study in Canada, only 50% of the preschool and kindergarten teachers surveyed believed that gifted children should be identified between the ages of 3 and 6 (Sankar- DeLeeuw, 2002). The purpose of testing advanced students in schools is for selection to programs. Where gifted programs exist, they may start at fourth grade and stop after sixth grade. It is common for school districts to test children on group IQ tests at the end of third or the beginning of fourth grade. Some school districts extend gifted programs to the primary grades or up through middle school. Coordinated kindergarten through 12th grade programs for advanced students are rare.

There are three major problems in waiting until around age 9 to test a gifted child. First, this is the age when girls go underground and are likely to hide what they know in order to fit in. Many girls say, “I don’t know” to test questions they can readily answer because they do not want to be separated from their friends. They also become perfectionist at this age and are unwilling to guess unless they are absolutely certain of the answer, which depresses IQ scores (Silverman, 1995). Second, at this age, exceptionally gifted children easily hit the ceiling on the IQ tests. Since

the content is of insufficient difficulty, the children may be considerably brighter than their test scores. Third, a critical period for the development of talent is lost.

Giftedness is exceptionality; therefore, as with all forms of exceptionality, early intervention promotes optimal development (Bloom, 1985; Guralnick & Bennett, 1987). Because of the importance of early intervention, it would not be appropriate to wait until age 9 to identify a child with developmental delays. For the same reason, it is best to identify gifted children as early as possible.

Since parents are able to recognize their child’s giftedness in early childhood, it is wise for them to obtain formal identification before the child enters school. This may sound bizarre to those who have bought the myths that early IQ scores are just the result of a stimulating home environment and that “by third grade, all kids catch up.” It is true that intelligence tests measure a mixture of environmental exposure and innate intelligence. But which child has had the most environmental exposure: the 4-year-old or the 9-year-old? The effects of environment increase with age, not decrease. As for “catching up,” the gifted mind has access to higher levels of abstraction, learns more information, retains it better, accesses it more efficiently, organizes it, and associates it with previous information more effectively. How, then, would it be possible for a child of average intelligence to “catch up” to a child of extremely high intelligence? It can only appear that way if the information being taught is at such a low level that children of vastly different abilities can perform at the same level.

A fundamental principle in developmental psychology is that “Development usually proceeds at the rate at which it started” (LeFrancois, 1981, p. 89). This principle has been found repeatedly to apply to the gifted: “The differences between gifted and non-gifted children were significant at 1.5 years and every age thereafter” (Gottfried et al., 1994, p. 56). From her review of the research, Robinson (1993) wrote: “Advanced ability tends to maintain its rapid pace of development. This evidence substantiates the notion that early giftedness, or rapid development, also predicts the subsequent rate of development” (p. 511).

The optimal time to identify a gifted child is between the ages of 4 and 9. Children younger than 4 may lack the ability to attend and respond to the examiner. Four-year old gifted children are intellectually more like 6-year-olds, and they usually respond to assessment like school-age children. Based on a half-century of research in testing, Elizabeth Hagen, coauthor of the Cognitive Abilities Test and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Revision IV, confirmed that accurate information can be obtained with 4-year-olds.

Source : Clinical Practice with Gifted Families. Handbook of Giftedness In Children. Linda Kreger Silverman and Alexandra Shires Golon. 2008

Understanding Giftedness [ 6 ]

For self-motivated learners, parents need to be careful about giving external rewards (for example, a gift for completing a good project) because the learner may begin to feel that the effort was really for the reward, not for the joy of the journey. Curious children need teachers to expose them to the various lessons, but then their curiosity and thirst for knowledge should help guide them through the maze toward mastery of the topic. If your curious learner isn’t burdened by self-inflicted,undue pressure to succeed and learn, and can still work within the confines that society sometimes imposes (for example, a tour guide at a museum cannot always stop to answer all of the questions posed by a particular patron), then the drive toward independence and self-learning can be one to encourage and foster.

In recent years, society has certainly witnessed the fact that childhood is not always carefree and that children sometimes have serious emotional struggles. A child that has advanced emotional maturity and social skills is a learner who is better prepared to weather the frustrating periods in life. The ability to cope with stress and the ability to empathize with others are valuable skills in personal as well as professional success. If your child has the emotional tools to overcome obstacles and frustration, this will help the learning process. Learning involves being receptive to information that may not have been presented earlier. If a learner only feels comfortable exploring topics that have already been mastered, then the learning process can be rocky. The emotionally mature learner may verbalize some discomfort with a new lesson but can focus the needed energy on the learning process and not on the anxiety of not knowing all the answers immediately.

A few other areas of giftedness are worth mentioning. Some children have keenly developed smell discrimination and/or taste discrimination. For instance, John can tell when his mother varies the amount of onions used in a particular recipe. Is this talent useful? Certainly if one aims to become a chef, then this skill is extremely useful. It can also be helpful in the learning process. For instance, a lesson in chemistry can utilize the combination of various food condiments to drive home the point that the end product can be greater than the sum of its parts. Some learners have gifts that are directly related to academic work. The child who has a talent in the area of written language may be encouraged to vary the form of writing (such as memoir or poetry) to generalize the gift to many areas of written language. The child who has advanced reading comprehension skills might be encouraged to read and discuss many forms of literature.

However, it is always important to remember that a learner may have advanced reading skills
but not advanced emotional maturity. Therefore, book selections must consider both factors. The math whiz could utilize this talent in everyday life. For instance, one activity could be to calculate how much money should be saved each week in order to get the “must have” videogame. Whenever lessons can be fun for the learner and also practical to the everyday lessons of life, then two important goals have been accomplished—academic growth and life preparedness!

The list of specific talents and gifts can go on and on. The important point is to highlight the fact that no two gifted or talented children fit one mold or profile. Therefore, you should interpret the information provided to you in upcoming chapters in the context of your particular child’s areas
of giftedness and needs.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 5 ]

Memory skills are a vital part of our functioning, since individuals build on prior experiences
as they grow and learn. Some learners have amazing gifts to remember factual information. For instance, Sam may be able to recite all the states at 24 months of age, while ten-year old Sheila may be able to spontaneously tell you the birth and death dates of all the American presidents. Alexandra is a different learner. While she doesn’t have the advanced memory for concrete facts, she is able to vividly remember events that have occurred in her own life. Therefore, there are many components to memory and many ways that children can be talented in their memory skills. Memory is not a single skill, and it involves many different steps and cognitive operations.

First, a student needs to immediately remember information just learned; then he needs to begin to store it for a longer duration; then he will need to consolidate it into long-term memory; later be able to retrieve it. At times, a student has one part of this process mastered but struggles in another area. For instance, a learner may have no problem listening to a phone number, then going to the phone and dialing it. However, if that same learner is asked to retrieve the number from memory a few hours later, it may be difficult or impossible. Memory is multi-faceted. Some memories are auditory, visual, tactile, or olfactory (associated with smell). If you think back to your own recollections of situations, there are times that you may vaguely remember a trip to someone’s house but have a clear recollection of the smell of something baking in that house. A learner who remembers information best by storing it through tactile (or touch) channels, may benefit from being able to touch and manipulate the materials in the lesson. Many math lessons can be taught utilizing objects to highlight points. For learners with an extremely accurate, detailed memory (sometimes labeled as a photographic memory),they may look at a page in a book and may not need to reread it when studying or reviewing the information. Rather, the learner may just need to reflect on the image that has been imbedded into memory.

An important part of any learner’s success is to have well-developed executive functions. These include planning skills, impulse control, the ability to pay attention, and the ability to organize tasks. If your child excels in these areas, it makes learning most lessons a little easier. A student with this area of talent can display more initiative and independence when completing projects and will likely gain self-esteem and self-confidence in the process. Similar attributes of motivation—being a self-starter, being curious, with a thirst for knowledge are characteristics that can generalize to most academic lessons as well as life lessons.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 4 ]

Processing speed is also an area that is often equated with intelligence. However, the specific information processed can vary from one learner to another. One child may quickly process the direction of a sound, another person may quickly look at a brainteaser puzzle and arrive at a method for solving it, while another individual may quickly grasp a new lesson. In some of the formal tests of intelligence (such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Third Edition), some tasks are timed to ascertain not only the child’s ability to master an item, but also the child’s ability to master it under a time pressure. Students who are quick processors may need less time to complete certain work. However, just because a student quickly processes, say, a word analogy question, it does not necessarily mean that understanding other concepts will come as rapidly. Jorge rapidly completes puzzles and grasps scientific concepts. In contrast, he needs more time to understand grammar concepts. In this case, Jorge’s processing speed gift is specific to certain areas of learning and thinking.

At times, a child is impulsive and quickly finishes assignments or tasks. If the end product is haphazardly completed and does not display the learner’s best efforts or level of reflection, then
speed does not constitute a gift, but rather an area for discussion. Speed along with successful mastery are both important for this form of giftedness. This brings up an important point: as the parent/educator, please resist the urge to condense lessons into shorter time frames and cover many topics in the course of a day simply because you understand that your learner can process information quickly. Some children think intensely and rapidly but require more frequent breaks. This is where the balancing act, between focusing on intelligence and emotions, becomes so important. As the parent and the teacher, you are uniquely able to determine the most suitable way to meet the multitude of needs that your learner has.

A strong ability to think in both divergent and convergent manners is another area that can be
considered a talent or part of giftedness. Convergent thinking is the ability to determine how various objects or events are similar. For instance, a learner may be able to draw comparisons about how words that appear to look so different actually follow similar rules. In addition, your child may be able to draw parallels between historical situations that preceded wars.

On the other hand, divergent thinking skills reflect a learner’s ability to determine how a single event, object, or word can be looked at in different ways. The learner may be able to generate numerous uses for a typical household object, such as a stick of gum. Young children often are called “creative” when they can utilize their divergent thinking abilities to make a piece of candy into a warrior or a pencil into a phone. Inventors may also display their unique divergent thinking skills when they take common materials and create a novel product. Learners who have advanced divergent and convergent thinking skills may be able to find several ways to communicate an idea, but can also narrow down ideas to arrive at the most common feature.

Creativity taps into divergent thinking skills and may be viewed as a specific area of giftedness.
Creativity comes in many forms, such as talent in the performing arts, musical endeavors, ability
to arrive at novel conclusions by synthesizing new and old information, and the ability to problem solve and arrive at a unique way to resolve a dilemma. A child who is talented in singing, but struggled early on with reading skills, may benefit from singing the words aloud initially. The actor may bring to life a character from a book by trying to identify with that character and understand the subtle nuances of being that person in the historical or fictional time of the story. A problem-solver may enjoy brainteasers that require the use of logical inference and creativity in order to arrive at a conclusion. Creative learners may ask to complete an assignment in a way that deviates from our own ideas of how it should be done. If your learner can explain the rationale behind the creative approach, and it is educationally sound, then supporting the idea also can support your child’s belief that venturing out and offering unique thoughts to others is worthwhile.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 3 ]

Next on the list of possible forms of giftedness, you can find one that is referred to as exceptional
visual-perceptual skills. For your learner, this can include such abilities as: being able to discriminate between two similar visual images, being able to quickly discover what is wrong with a picture, having a keen understanding of why photographs with different shading impact the gestalt of the picture, and/or an appreciation of paintings and sculptures. While these learners may be visual learners, this area isn’t just a preference but a talent. These learners may learn best when you add visual material to lessons. In the early years, a child with this area of giftedness may begin to truly understand the importance of time by developing photographs in a darkroom. The child can see that the same negative looks subtly to dramatically different if exposed to the developing process for a brief versus a longer time period. The concrete visual example of time can be very helpful to this learner who quickly grasps visual information.

The child who is talented in visual-motor skills has two areas that, in combination, form this kind of giftedness. The learner with visual-perceptual talent, as just described, may have an acute visual sensitivity and ability to be keenly visually alert. In visual-motor skills there is the added motor component. For instance, Rachel was able to surprise and delight her family when she, as a threeyear- old, made a complicated structure out of Legos. A year later, she visualized how she wanted a garden to look and, with some help from her mom and dad, eventually planted the seeds and witnessed her dream become a reality. Jim, a ten-year-old, drew his own comic strip series, with only minor guidance on his spelling from his father. Stephanie, age fifteen, followed a blueprint and made a lamp. These learners tend to have advanced fine-motor skills along with a keen visual/perceptual ability. Constructing a lamp, like Stephanie did, or building another object can allow the child to understand the value of fractions (while imparting the indispensable skill of following instructions.) For instance, if two pieces of wood are supposed to be identical to support a structure, having one 36 inches and another 363⁄4 inches could mean the difference between a stable and unstable product.

Athletic skills also involve both visual and motor components and are often described as tapping gross motor abilities. A soccer star, for example, must view the field, determine the placement of the players on both teams, make an educated guess about where each player is headed, then have the physical skills needed to negotiate the soccer ball past the opposing team. Athletes may have either fine-motor (small muscle group) or gross-motor (larger muscle group) skills. Sometimesthey have both. A learner with an athletic talent may learn other material through this gift. For instance, looking at baseball scores (hits, walks, runs) can turn into a mathematics lesson. A discussion about the angle of one’s best pitch could be equated with geometry concepts. In addition, the complexity of combining various actions (e.g., eye-hand coordination, timing of swinging the baseball bat, running speed) and repetition of practicing techniques to become a top baseball player can be compared to the top essay that must include the nitty-gritty, detailed work (research, editing, revision, proofreading) to have a finished, professional-quality product.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 2 ]

Some learners may not be able to succinctly retell or verbalize their understanding of material, but they have an acutely developed skill in the area of receptive language. Simply, this can be looked at as the flip side of expressive language. Expressive language is what the learner articulates, while receptive language is how the child understands the statements and comments made by others.

For instance, Billy is a competent reader, but he prefers to have others read to him. When asked
about his preference, Billy explains that he is able to engage in the learning process more easily when someone else talks to him about the lesson as he learns it. While this may just be Billy’s preferred learning style (auditory), it has been shown that when he listens to others teach lessons, he actually quickly, though quietly, grasps higher-level concepts and material that would ordinarily be geared toward students at a more advanced developmental level. For Billy, his area of giftedness can be utilized to help him overcome emotional obstacles to his learning process. For instance, at one point, Billy was refusing to learn poetry, claiming that it wasn’t real literature. His parents left him alone in the living room and went to talk with each other in the next room. They purposely left the door open and spoke loudly. Billy’s parents spoke to each other about the topic of poetry and the special messages that this form of literature can communicate. Billy, no longer needing to be argumentative, learned a lot by eavesdropping. This was a creative way to bypass Billy’s resistant attitude at that time and to help him to be available to the learning process. His parents effectively tapped into his comfort in listening to discussions and Billy was able to quickly grasp the lesson utilizing his receptive language skills. The previous example shows a somewhat dramatic case. Let us assume that your child is usually
motivated to engage in academic activities. Your learner, who has a receptive language talent,may feel more comfortable learning by listening to lectures on tape, books on tape, or by actually attending age-appropriate seminars on particular topics. Even if this approach is one that facilitates rapid learning for your child, it is still important to also teach in a multi-modal fashion so that your learner becomes comfortable absorbing information in many different manners. Flexibility of learning allows all of us to be able to adapt better to a variety of situations in which others will not always gear activities to our personal learning style or giftedness. This is true for any child, with any area of specific interest or talent.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002

Understanding Giftedness [ 1 ]

Giftedness or a highly developed talent can distinguish one child from many others. The gifted learner typically has a level of knowledge, sophistication, or skill that is considered to be within the top 1–2 percent of the population of individuals of one’s own chronological age or peer group.

Another way to define this is to say that they fall at the far, upper end of the bell-shaped curve. It is important to note that learners’ interests may or may not overlap with their areas of talent. For instance, thirteenyear-old Peter loves basketball and plays on a team in a civic league. He watches college and professional basketball on television and loves going to games. Despite this significant sports interest, Peter’s actual skills are considered to be only average or slightly above average in running the court and shooting the ball. Therefore, Peter has a specific interest in sports but not an unusual gift in this area. Perhaps one can argue that his persistence in studying the game is a talent. This is something that will be explored shortly.

Earlier, a few definitions were offered for general giftedness. However, one can create an extensive list of possible areas of specific talent. You may already know that your child has an unusual skill. There are numerous areas that can be considered talents or areas of giftedness, such as advanced abilities in expressive language, receptive language, visual-perceptual skills, visual-motor skills, athletic skills, processing speed, convergent and divergent thinking skills, creativity, memory skills, executive functions, self-motivation, emotional maturity and social skills, smell and/or taste discrimination, written language, reading comprehension skills, and mathematics skills. These areas will be explored in the next section, with the goal of helping you create academic lessons that may be tailored to fit your learner’s talents, resulting in a more meaningful education.

In the traditional classroom setting, there are typically a few students who are described as “always needing to talk.” These learners sometimes raise their hand throughout a lesson to add additional information or to personalize the material to their own experiences. A child who is highly verbal may have a talent in the area of expressive language. These learners are not just verbal, but skilled communicators. At times, they actually clarify their own understanding of a lesson by talking about it. For instance, some children with this area of talent may benefit from taking time to retell the message of a story or poem. By using their own words, the lesson’s meaning is reinforced. A person talented in expressive language skills may gain a more thorough understanding of the lesson by reteaching the lesson to another or by engaging in a debate with another about the topic. For example, Clara read an article about the quality of her neighborhood’s water system. Clara initially concluded that the water system should remain pure, without any added chemicals. When she and her older brother debated the issue, Clara’s parents asked her to take the opposing view. Clara reread the article, gathered more information from the Internet, then passionately used her verbal skills to create a powerful argument. Through the debating situation, Clara was able to think about both sides of an issue that was creating tension in her community. Without the added benefit of debating the issue, Clara was initially certain that her one-sided view was the only one with merit.

As a parent/educator you may want to utilize debating as a way to help your child utilize expressive language skills to more fully understand concepts. However, it is important that the debate remains in the realm of the topic of study and that respect for the other’s opinion is maintained—in other words, that the debate doesn’t become one of parent vs. adolescent. Both of you will probably have enough personal debates over the years without debating in the home-classroom setting.

Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd. Homeschooling Your Gifted Children. 2002