The most typical characteristics and behaviors of gifted children. Check this list and discover if your child might be gifted.
The day I realized my oldest child was truly gifted and not just a smart kid was one of my most poignant moments of regret as a parent.
I have always tried to parent without regret. Of course moments come up. I wish I had been more patient. I wish I had focused less on my to do list the day before. Little mistakes come along.
Most of the time, however, I have no major regrets. I parent very intentionally and don’t make major decisions lightly.
This was a day of regret, however. My son was in the third grade.
Eight years old.
I had spent eight years of his life not addressing the fact that he was gifted.
Sure, I always thought he was smart. I am an observant person, though, and it doesn’t take much observation to see that basically every parent out there, especially the first time parent, thinks their child is the best thing to ever walk on the earth and is supremely talented.
I knew I was super impressed with everything he did, but I also observed him daily from the moment he was born. To get to where he was from where he started was impressive.
Sure, most babies learn to smile at some point, but when my baby did that for the first time, it was the most amazing smile ever shone! At least that was my opinion, and I knew every parent out there felt the same about their own babies.
I thought he was smart. Of course, I did. I am his mother.
Why the regret when I found out he wasn’t just smart, but gifted? Because I didn’t push to have more of an idea of his level of intelligence. I didn’t educate myself on giftedness so I could help him navigate that world. It is learning your child has an aptitude for something and you haven’t done anything to help nourish that aptitude.
And once I started learning more about giftedness, I realized there is not only the aptitude side, but with giftedness comes the weaknesses. Gifted children typically excel in areas and lack in others. So not only was I not nourishing the aptitude, I wasn’t taking into account the weaknesses and responding to those effectively.
I will always be thankful to his third grade teacher who explicitly expressed to me how very gifted he was. She didn’t beat around the bush. She didn’t tone it down. She said it exactly like it was and made sure I grasped it.
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That is when I started researching how to parent a gifted child. A gifted child has unique needs. Just as a child in speech therapy needs specific education and help for that, a child who is gifted needs specific education and help.
Most gifted children are out of sync in areas of life. “The more highly gifted the child, the more out of sync she is likely to be within herself, with wide difference between areas of strength and areas of relative weakness” (A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children page 7).
I don’t want other parents to face that feeling of regret. Whenever someone contacts me wondering if their child might be gifted, I encourage them to research it.
I highly recommend the book A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children. I realize the emotional risk here. I was there. I didn’t want to be in a place where I pressured my child to be gifted if he wasn’t. I didn’t want him to feel the pressure to be gifted. I wanted him to know I loved him for him. No pressure.
But there is power in knowing! You are better able to help your child when you know what they may be dealing with. So it is worth researching.
It is also hard with teachers at school. No one wants to come across as a crazy mom, so when a Kindergarten teacher told me how he is really quite smart, I just nodded. I didn’t ask more questions.
He is my oldest and people didn’t know me. Teachers are hesitant to use the word gifted before age 8, typically. Before that, it is hard to tell if intelligence is because of nature or nurture. It truly is hard to tell. They don’t want to falsely label a child.
There are some common characteristics of gifted children. Page 11 of A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children is full of a long list of characteristics.
Of course, gifted people are humans, which means there is a wide diversity among them. And many of the listed characteristics can definitely be the result of nurturing.
Usual alertness as an infant? Sounds like a common comment toward Babywise babies in general? Longer attention span? Sound like a common result of a child who does Independent Playtime consistently? So it is tricky to look at the list and think, “My child is gifted!” without questioning some aspects.
It is worth noting that since that time, my second child has also been identified as gifted. Once my oldest was, I knew she was also, especially when it came to the language side of life.
With that said, I didn’t know what would happen with my third child for sure. She was later identified as gifted when she entered fourth grade due to the restructuring of the gifted program in our district. My fourth child was also labeled as gifted.
It is ironic that I hesitated to look into giftedness with my oldest because I didn’t want him feeling pressure. Now I have four gifted children. Knowledge is power.
Typical Characteristics of Gifted Children
That brings us to the 17 most typical characteristics and behaviors of gifted children. These characteristics can help you determine if your child might be gifted. These start on page 12 in the A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children book. Not all of these are listed in the book–I have added others I have learned about over the years.
- Strong verbal abilities. Gifted learners have large vocabularies and advanced language skills. “Their verbal abilities usually lead them to be early readers, and they often read extensively. Even before they can read, these children delight in (and insist upon being read to and are highly self-motivated to learn letters and numbers” (page 12-13). Here is the hard thing with this. I am one who speaks to my children like I speak to adults. I also read like crazy to my kids. These are things that will lead naturally to all of my kids, no matter what, having strong verbal abilities and loving books. Nature versus nurture can come up with every one of these characteristics. That is a big reason teachers tend to hesitate to use the word gifted before age 8. After age 8, nature versus nurture starts to even out.
- Usually good memory. Gifted students can typically absorb information quickly with few repetitions. They learn quickly and easily, typically have an excellent memory, and will “quickly notice if you omit a word when you read a bedtime story.” Sometimes personality can come into this. Kaitlyn would never corrected someone. She was too much of a peacemaker to tell the person reading the story they left a word out.
- Intense curiosity. Gifted children endlessly ask why. They have a strong intellectual curiosity. The hard thing with this one for me is, isn’t this every single toddler and preschooler out there?!? A gifted child is a learner. They enjoy learning and typically learn quickly.
- Wide range of interests. Some focus completely on one single interest (until they move on) while others have many areas of interest and move from interest to interest. Talents can vary from being hyper-focused on one area or having a wide range of talents.
- Interest in experimenting. They may take things apart, mix things together… They are good at problem-solving and will want to figure out how to fix problems.
- Passionate imagination and creativity. Gifted children often have imaginary friends. “…as long as the child gives and receives affection, imaginary playmates simply reflect the child’s high intelligence, active imagination, and creativity” (page 14). They have a lot of passion in life. They may enjoy making up stories or writing songs.
- Remarkable sense of humor. They delight in word play and silly one-liners. They have a quirky and keen sense of humor.
- Desire for reasons and understanding. Gifted kids are not satisfied with the answers of “Just because” or “Because I said so.” They have advanced comprehension. They really notice what is going on around them and beyond them. They have a unique perspective on the world. They want to know how every single thing works. You will often find yourself being asked things you have never before considered or wondered about.
- Impatience with others or with themselves. They are often impatient. Gifted people have always been gifted, so they don’t understand why others are not grasping concepts or moving through tasks as easily. They learn new concepts quickly and have rapid learning, so they can’t understand why someone else isn’t just getting it. I was labeled gifted as a child, and honestly, I was an adult before I really accepted that maybe people weren’t just playing dumb or being lazy when they didn’t get something. Gifted children can also be very impatient with themselves because they know what they want to accomplish, but can’t quite reach it yet. Perfectionism can be a problem for the gifted student. If your child is a perfectionist who is impatient with the process of working on things, there will be a lot of frustration. They will not want to do something unless they are perfect from the beginning.
- Longer attention span. “Persistence is a long-lasting trait of gifted children and adults” (page 16). This long attention span can lead to high achievements.
- Complex thinking. “The search for complexity leads them to become easily bored, particularly with routine tasks, and they may abandon tasks if they are too mundane” (page 16).
- Concern with social or political problems or injustices. Gifted children are rule followers and have concern for rules at a younger age than most children. They are also concerned about fairness. They also expand this concern beyond their own home and community. Gifted children will have great concern for the state of the world and politics. They can have strong empathy that leads them to have great concern for others. They look ahead and worry about natural resource consumption and how to make sure those things will be available for generations.
- Heightened Sensitivity. “Professionals are beginning to recognize that the brighter the child, the more sensitive he may be” (page 17). They can be sensitive toward the feelings of others, sensitive to the expectations of others, and sensitive to conflict (peacemakers). They can easily have hurt feelings. They can also be sensitive to touch and smell.
- Intensity. Gifted children are more intense than most. They do things with a high level of intensity. They believe things with intensity. They state opinions with intensity. Emotions can also be more intense. They can feel those emotions more intensely than others.
- Daydreaming. They can get lost in their own thoughts and daydream.
- Emotional. I mentioned intense emotions above, but it is worth highlighting and emphasizing. Not all gifted students will be emotionally intense (some are actually gifted in this area), but others will be quite emotional. It is not uncommon for a highly gifted child to have their intellect far outpace their emotional development. This can lead to trouble regulating emotions. It is important to help them become self-aware and for you to understand their emotional needs. My fourth child is so much like this that I ended up purchasing a super helpful book: Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students. You can read my review here.
- Asynchronous Development. This is a very important concept to understand as you raise a gifted child. Gifted children do not excel in everything. The will actually have asynchronous development, which means cognitive, emotional, and physical development are not aligned. Instead of all areas developing at a similar pace and working together, some will develop faster. This can mean the intellect can understand more than the emotions can take. This can mean that they do not really relate well to their same-age peers and seek older children and adults to spend time with.
Many, if not all, of these traits can be used for benefits and can also be a hindrance. Strengths and weaknesses. Daydreaming is a great skill for solving problems, but it can get a child in trouble in class if he isn’t paying attention. Playing one million questions a day can get old, quickly, but it helps a child learn a lot if an adult will answer those questions.
Conclusion
If you are wondering if your child might be gifted and these 17 gifted characteristics seem to describe your child, I highly recommend you read A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children. It will help you get a better idea if your child is gifted and help you nourish both the strengths and the weaknesses of your child. You can know you did what you could to nourish, and you can move forward with one less regret. You can also pursue gifted testing and IQ testing.
If you still are feeling unsure, be sure to read up on How To Tell the Difference Between Smart and Gifted.
Related Posts on Giftedness
This post first appeared on this blog in January 2017