I was "gifted" with the gift of being told how gifted I am every time I fail. What a gift

Pretty much describes my experience.

I graduated in 1988. When in primary school I often couldn't tell the difference between the gifted & the special educational needs kids. Both groups always seemed a bit socially off.

Hmm, I never looked into this, it makes sense.

Lewis.. I recognize that. My internet activity is very restricted/controlled, I think. It seems likely I might have the ability to like have some good ideas sometimes. Even if I'm just guessing in areas I'm not really educated in. It seems to be useful, I see signs in reality sometimes that correspond with things I'm not aware of but that seem to have some connection to things I've thought about. I did very much drugs, not going to lie about that. I did ask for legal help, first, though.. So I won't take like all the blame for that. But yeah.. I kinda avoided basically all substances that would have helped calm me down, though, which is a little weird, I guess :) They would have been the most useful. I've asked the psychiatry for like 15 years. I finally worked up the courage to ask again recently, since I had just had an exceptionally troubling period of many years. But no dice, they did not even believe me, called me paranoid and wanted to put me on antipsychotics. Which doesn't like do anything for the symptoms I have/had. Anyway, I like fired her, and aside from like ADHD meds, I've been stone-cold sober now for like 4 months. First time since I was like 13. Everyone thinks I'm crazy/on drugs, though. But I'm not :) Even quit nicotine and my depression meds, citalopram. They always tell me not to quit those things stone cold turkey.. But I almost always do, :D I think it's because I hate them a little for never listening or doing what I say. Same reason I like don't hang out with my family.

Oh my goodness! You might have saved my sanity. I have so many hobbies and recently learnt crochet ( i am 60 ) i am gifted, my three children are gifted, we are all loners perpetually curious and just plain weird, according to others. My husband used to ask me ‘so, what IS wrong with you?’

It’s like being normal but everyone else around you is a Forrest Gump. They don’t get you because they literally can’t. So you live with Forrest and appreciate him, but that lack of connection makes you feel very alone.

You have no idea how much this resonates with me. My major problem is I don’t know how to make them see what I see, since I was a kid, I notice all adults are so ignorance. I skip steps and i just know the answer. Initially I didn’t know I am talented because I thought everybody can do it. I thought what I do is normal . Until my math teacher told me otherwise. My math teachers are the group of people who really fascinating the way my brain work because I have answers with all kind of short cut nobody ever discover. But, when I grow up, I don’t have math teacher anymore who truly appreciate my talent. In fact I have to hide what I already know all the time, because it only create conflict in most case, they won’t be able to see what I see. I get irritated by the conversation with others. I am working in an engineer company, I understand everything in 5 minutes and see all risk and know the result, but I can’t make them understand how far I already know, I have to shut up and watch them make all the mistakes and found out what I already know at beginning. I always face the choice of “should I tell them the truth, or play along with the game.” It is so lonely.

Thinking steps ahead of people is so real. I just assume that everyone sees the obvious 🤷

Omg, always awkward with people, always good with grades, always aware internally and externally of peoples feelings( an intuition that something just wasn’t right). I’ve always felt alien, like I was different and didn’t belong. I’ve always been good at art and a very quick learner in anything I did. I’ve always been very analytical. People would always call me an “old soul” when I was a little girl. I have trouble showing people I’m interested, because my brain is racing at the same time. I get bored in conversation and sometimes angry if I have to talk to someone I feel has a lower intelligence level. I had to “breakup” with my last therapist for that reason. I don’t think anything has ever resonated with me so intensely.

Omg, always awkward with people, always good with grades, always aware internally and externally of peoples feelings( an intuition that something just wasn’t right). I’ve always felt alien, like I was different and didn’t belong. I’ve always been good at art and a very quick learner in anything I did. I’ve always been very analytical. People would always call me an “old soul” when I was a little girl. I have trouble showing people I’m interested, because my brain is racing at the same time. I get bored in conversation and sometimes angry if I have to talk to someone I feel has a lower intelligence level. I had to “breakup” with my last therapist for that reason. I don’t think anything has ever resonated with me so intensely.

Another one: how easily we change our minds when presented with new information. Typical people will feel their stance challenged and need time to absorb the new information. Gifted minds just sort of hit the “refresh” button and the world view is updated, sometimes with a complete 180 on a previous firm belief. As I grew up I found this to be one of the trickier ones to deal with. Smart people don’t do this, they still need to re-process and re-evaluate. And they tend to be pretty proud and not accept failure easily. So it can really confuse them when we just instantly accept we were wrong, adapt and move on. I guess it also links a bit to the existential part. When you know you are really smart you don’t need to hear it from other people. Instead you go for no-nonsense curiosity of “what’s next?”. After all, realizing that a “constant” in your world view was wrong opens up a whole new range of possibilities for what else could be re-assessed. This rapid shift towards challenging EVERYTHING confuses the hell out of most regular smart people. Because their brain cannot follow the lightspeed expansion of thoughts in all directions to recalibrate. It challenges their understanding of their own intelligence/self that triggers a stress response that just makes it worse. The irony is that they will likely conclude we are not as smart as they thought. Which is a problem for those gifted that did not develop the number-skills most people will associate with super-high intelligence. Like instant multiplications of large numbers. Most gifted minds learned enough math to practically live life and obsess about things. Only a few will choose mathematics as their passion for working memory fun during their forming years. The rest will likely lead a life of being misunderstood and classified as strange. Bonus one: along the lines of shooting down ideas because we evaluate them while listening… We don’t like “brainstorms” and “bouncing ideas” with typicals. They tend not to like fixating on combining the few novel ideas to see where they lead, as they are too busy reinventing the wheel. Which frustrates the gifted as there may be something new and novel at hand, but people are busy exploring the concepts they feel they can contribute to while we already know where they will lead.

It's like having a Lamborghini and no commuter car. Its flashy, can do some things really super fast and stuff but... its not exactly practical for daily commuting and picking up the groceries.

All the things you mention are very recognizable, but for me it did not directly lead to depression,but extreme anxiety. If I am not feeding "the beast" with complex material to chew on, it will start checking every signal from outside and inside my body to make sure I'm "safe". This means analyzing every symptom into all possible diseases (my brain is an encyclopedia on these by now) computing likelihoods of failure of structures, being very sensitive to smells. It. is. so. tiresome.

From experience, the checklist of life events that many Gifted experience. It's not fun and takes a lot of patience, calm, failure, and acceptance to get over these: - Endless interest in things, no interest in learning them properly or from others, and poor ability to finish projects because of other interests (something shared with ADHD). - Brains skipping steps, having issues explaining how they got there, and seeming like they're not paying attention it the meantime. - Terrible small talk (and related, empathy) skills. It's too boring or they can't imagine other mindsets well (something shared with Autism). - The social expectation they'll be good at everything, something only more intensely felt from inside their minds, and crippling anxiety because of this. - Valuing their self worth based on impossible standards (Perfectionism), then hating everything that isn't perfect, or never being happy with their work. - Expectation of ease and instant perfection that, when shattered, cause emotional shattering. This can create cynicism, despair, anger, and learned helplessness. - Total inability to do or learn things the normal, slow way resulting in crashing and burning in life (see: rates of suicide or permanent disability). - Inflated ego, they're better than everyone else. Also staggering loneliness, for the same reasons. - Existential dread, a need to contribute or understand more, and the inability to really appreciate the present.

I have all except good memory

yeah ! thats me !

This definitely sounds like asperger to me. 🤷‍♂️

I wonder if another thing some gifted people experience is discovering that many doctors and other experts have no clue about a lot of what they are talking about and don’t like being corrected because it’s “backed by experts”.

Giftedness is a lot like autism then...

I moved to outside Oxford. Now my friends are Dons and Oxford alumni. My best friend had three degrees and is doing her PHd this year. We just gravitate to each other.

Not only am I gifted but I'm also considered a high functioning autistic individual. My fixation is music and that's where I shine, though I naturally lack the ability to play with others face to face or in front of anyone due to social complications (I immediately shut down). It's fun to do on video and there's no trouble there, but you'll never catch me posing for a photo (cause that's to me the equivalent of acting and acting is fake). Ask me how I'm doing and I'll tell you, but ask me how I am and watch me stumble to make sense of the question.

My daughter is like this. Shes in prek 4 at a daycare school. Lots of issues of being bored. Her doctor told me the schooling isn’t challenging her. So now I’m looking into school options. Idk what to do. She’s not old enough to be enrolled into kindergarten

You are helping me. Thank you!

There was no need for a museum of Antarctic art in DC: There is already a museum of Antarctic music and culture a few hours south in Richmond, VA. It's a pretty small facility though, about the size of a bar...

My daughter I wouldnt say is gifted but she's really mature for her age and has mostly friends 1-3 years older than her (she does have some same age or younger friends). She is really strong with reading and comprehension. She's 6.5 and can read at a grade 3-4 level and understand what she reads. She did Dragon Masters series up until she was 5.5 and loved it. Earlier this year she also read The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls series. She's currently reading The Little House on the Prairies (book #3) as part of her homeschool. Book #1 (Little House in the Big Woods) I did it as a read aloud about a year ago. Skipped #2 cuz that one can be read separately from the series. We also read directly from a real bible. We use ICB/NIrV (grade 3 reading level) so that she can read and understand it. She has just told me yesterday when I asked her what her favorite subject is and she said bible. Not to toot my own horn or anything, its just nice to know that your child loves reading God's word cuz that's is the foundation of everything in life (as a Christian). Math she is struggling a bit more and not as strong. She is technically in grade 1 and she's doing grade 2 math. I contemplated after a few weeks of doing the Primary Mathematics 2022 level 2 maybe I should've done level 1. And the more I looked into level 1, its tooo easy for her. So we stuck with level 2 and we just do it slower.

I’m gifted at English

I have a gifted+ADHD+ASD brain faild school massively when I was a child and teenager, as my brain didn't get activated and I got no dopamine for my brain doing endless of repetitions, and the slow pace of the teacher talking my brain runs on 1.5 speed level instead of the normal 1 speed level, and highly analytical and my pocesseing speed is super fast. I learned nothing before age 21 years old when I rebelled and did it my way, I learnt to learn the way my brain works. I always was told to be more like the others at home, in schools in clubs, I understood that as I am not good enough unless I do as everyone else, but that is physically impossible, but no one understood. So relatable, luckily we have the knowledge how to raise our gifted or 2E kids in a way that makes them feel loved and seen for just being their wonderful self, and the ability to teach them to accept and understand why others are unwilling or possibly unable to understand them and their learning style, but being misunderstood is a big part of our life we can teach our children to deal with in a healthier way than how we have dealt with it growing up and until we knew what kind of brain we were born with. Our 7 year old is already ahead in most subjects in school but isn't allowed to move in difficulty, so she actually learns something new and fun, because she copys her classmates to try to fit in socially, and struggle to do the endless repetition assignments she gets no dopamine or knowledge from. At home she gets to learn exactly what she wants in the difficulty she wants to learn it in, we are not pushing her just allowing her to develop and learn in her pace.

5:42 Teleporting 😂 Well said. But it’s like a spaceship- why waste time when I can teleport in various places and, once I find something interesting to explore, I stop and take my time exploring in depth or just enjoying it as aesthetic pleasure? Speaking of feeling like an alien… call me insane, I don’t care, but I am an alien. I must be, otherwise I cannot explain to myself what has been going on all of my rather miserable life amongst humans.

6:35 🤐 I feel you 😕 I am not gifted but many times my mind makes connections that are hilarious/ the perspective reveals something as funny that I laugh by myself. I am trying not to let it show because the others think I am insane. I might be insane but not really. It’s very isolating.

I never really classified myself as gifted until watching this video. Looking back it makes sense. I find conversing with AI does help sometimes as AI can keep up with the analogies that I use.

Also, a lot of times we work just like an NLP AI system and we constantly interrupt people in the middle of a sentence because we can predict what they will be saying next. I guess the capacity to store data allows us to develop predictive models.

Can you define gifted? iq level?

I’m not diagnosed but I decided to look into it… a relate to all what you said here, and didn’t ever consider any possibility of being different… I’m 42…😢

Two jobs

I just learned from a file folder of seemingly lab rat level testing throughout my entire childhood that I’m somewhere between “highly” to “profoundly” gifted. Help. What do I do? What resources do I tap into?

Wow. This describes a lot of what I’m going through now 🙈

Hey Kathleen, I've recently found out about my giftedness too, and would love to make some like-minded friends. We're so alone right?! Its like always just living with and by ourselves no matter who's around. I've got a year old toddler as well so I want to ensure I can give him the structural and environmental support that I lacked, so he can bloom...any tips??

I don’t have depression. It’s past that point because I really don’t see the point of continuing to subject myself to abuse from the stupid. It is painful and downright insulting. Being with gifted people won’t solve the problem because I have met very intelligent people who are complete arseholes. I am an alien and I am SO going home. Or whatever, anywhere but here. I am done. 100%.

12:47 Not for me. On the contrary. My existential despair is due to the appalling lack of life in others. Most of the time I wonder if I am the only one left alive on this planet. It feels like walking through a cemetery filled with gloomy ghosts who can inflict harm due to their stupidity (mostly).

11:16 Maybe IQ goes hand in hand with EQ? Humans have very low emotional intelligence, especially in the West. They are dim in every damned respect.

7:40 But it’s not gonna work. Why waste time? Can we try something that might work? No. Of course not. Because the stupid idea is the other’s baby and it took him/ her 9 months to produce it; they’re not just gonna discard it. Let’s wait 18 years to see.

Very useful 🔥

What do you recommend for kiddos who have advanced past this book? I hope to find something similar, but further along in concepts.

One of the best uploads I have seen about the subject

I mean be better than than, or

Myself,my three son and my grandson who made us realize why we're the way we are. Thanks for explaining it more.

For a gifted preschooler, it's worth checking out the Right Start book "Activities for the AL Abacus." It presents a sequence of activities for teaching the concepts in the Right Start way. The difference is that it's not scheduled out into individual lessons, so you aren't facing a bunch of spiral review. You can just work through the activities in more of a mastery approach at your child's own speed. It also doesn't require as many manipulatives.

Like speaking a language that's not your native language when speaking with people. That resonated.

thank you!