Playing in the Realms of a Gifted Child

By Courtney Marchesani

When working and playing in the realms of a gifted child as parents or as therapists we can rest assured our kids will show us what their creative places, called realms, look and feel like. We only need to learn how to read the maps and signs into their physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual development.

Gifted kids might need a little help and special attention, but internally they are wired for self-expression that will give us ‘elders’ valuable insight. Children know exactly who they are in each and every moment and only need a bit of encouragement, love, and confidence to light their way.

In our modern society, children are confronted with serious choices and sometimes debilitating social juxtapositions. Adults have similar issues to face whether we want to admit it or not; we want to fit in with the social group, but we may have to play a different role, or at the extreme become someone else to fit in.

 
Playing challenging roles is an easy task for a gifted child.

Gifted children are: achievement-oriented, creative thinkers, out-of-the-box processors, natural problem solvers, think abstractly, may be advanced in subjects in school beyond their peers, idealistic, may experience heightened sensitivity, have high expectations, show unique abilities like “leaping” or “mapping”.

These are only a few characteristics of a gifted child. As examples, leaping or “leapers” are spatial learners. This type of child is a quick, mercurial thinker.  A leaper may not understand how they arrived at an answer, yet like magic they divine the right one. “Mappers” are sequential learners. These students map out an organized way of learning to get from point A to Z. Usually tying many of these traits together within a gifted child’s personality is perfectionism.

Perfectionism is an ideal of making our life, even our external world, perfect in every way. Which as we grow and become less rigid in our expectations of life, hopefully we come to understand as adults, this is never fully achievable. Perfection can be the crux which creates a lot of pain in our young ones lives. We want to fit it. We want everyone to like us. We have emotional needs and if we are afraid of being who we are in social or public settings for fear of others liking us, perfectionism becomes a slippery slope for self-identity which spins us on our heads.