Common Endogenous Characteristics of Gifted Students

To celebrate the final day of Gifted Education Awareness Week, we are honoured to share an article written specially by Dr Tracy L Cross, the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education and the Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Education at The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Common Endogenous Characteristics Among Students with Gifts and Talents

I have been asked to share some ideas about the social and emotional needs of students with gifts and talents (SWGT).  To that end, I will describe five examples of endogenous characteristics.  Endogenous means “about the person,” so these are characteristics about gifted children that I think are more common among SWGT than their peers of average abilities. I am not claiming that they are present for every gifted student, only that from my experience overseeing a residential high school for intellectually gifted students for nine years, my research and familiarity with the research literature, I believe that this list is supportable. The five are: asynchronous development, overexcitabilities, multipotentiality, excessive self-criticism, and perfectionism.

Asynchronous development results when there is a difference between two areas of development.  For example, among SWGT there is often considerable difference between a child’s intellectual development (e.g., IQ scores) and level of development in the social and/or emotional areas.  This gap can be quite difficult for the child.  We often see SWGT whose intellectual capacity allows them to converse with much older people, but they still may behave as children of their chronological age.  School personnel are often perplexed by these situations.  Some consider asynchronous development an actual definition of giftedness.

The Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) was created by a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist named Kazimierz Dabrowski. TPD posits the necessity for anxiety and tension to exist for positive growth to occur. An important part of the TPD is what Dabrowski called overexcitabilities, or heightened sensitivities. The theory has created a significant following among gifted educators, as it provides a good mechanism to consider the development of SWGT, to understand them and their needs.  In this theory, there are five areas of heightened sensitivities Dabrowski believed were more common among SWGT: intellectual, sensual, imaginational, psychomotor, and imaginational. The theory is very complicated and detailed, so I encourage you to read about it to gain a fuller understanding of it.  I found it particularly helpful when I worked as the executive director of a residential high school for intellectually gifted students.  I got to know many of the students and found that this theory could easily be mapped on to approximately 70% of them. It became a practical window into how they functioned and allowed me avenues through which to communicate.

Multipotentiality is just what it sounds like.  It is common for SWGT to also be especially good at, have great passion for, and/or be extremely interested in more than one area.  In general, this is a good thing for their future well-being, in that its can enhance agency and self- confidence.  However, when these areas cut across societal conventions and stereotypes, quite often stress is raised and limitations applied.  For example, when female SWGT approach college and are good at both physics and music, they will often be encouraged to pursue the field that more closely represents society’s stereotypes.  In addition to maintaining the stereotypes along gender lines, it also can cause considerable stress among the SWGT.  Being supportive of these students’ passion areas is very important to their mental health. Moreover, it can be confusing to them when no clear direction appears as it may for others.

Excessive self-criticism is a less well-known common aspect to SWGT.  Being self-aware and even critical at times are healthy aspects to growing as an individual.  Being excessively self-critical can be debilitating to young (and older) SWGT.  The good news is that it seems that excessive self-criticism is learned.  This makes it similar to most phobias.  Therapists are exceedingly successful at eradicating phobias, because what is learned can be unlearned.  Excessive self-criticism is the same.  With proper counseling, SWGT who struggle with this can successfully work through it with professional help.

The best-known and most misunderstood common characteristic has been left for last.  Perfectionism among SWGT is fairly common. I believe more common than the general population, but clearly not an issue for all SWGT. In the early days many thought it to be a pathological need for flawless performance.  In the past 20 years, considerable research has been conducted that better informs us about nuances of perfectionism.  It was originally thought to be unidimensional and always debilitating.  More recently we have learned that there are multiple types of perfectionism and that many, many SWGT function quite well as perfectionists.  This is exciting work and as it increases its sophistication, our ability to better understand it and treat it, as need be, improves.

For further reading, I suggest going to HoagiesGifted.org.  This website provides hundreds of publications about SWGT, including many on social and emotional issues.  The articles are free and provide a good foundation on many topics.  From there, I encourage you to contact me if I can be helpful to you.  My email is tlcross@wm.edu.

Back to School. Back to Reality.

For many gifted children and their families, the school holidays are a time of great relief. As we brace ourselves to re-enter the fray, we would do well to remember a few of those issues which can make school particularly difficult for gifted children. They are perfectly normal kids, just different, and we need to understand and make allowances for those differences so that we don't end up causing more stress than is necessary: 

• Gifted children learn faster in some areas than their classmates and often have interests not shared by children of the same age or taken to the same depth. They may find it difficult to find true peers in school and may feel isolated or somehow "out of sync". For further reading, take a look at Social Skills of Gifted Children by Louise Porter.


• A gifted child may "suffer" from oversensitivities and may find stimuli which other children take in their stride, to be overwhelming. School is full of loud noises, bright lights, pungent smells, odd textures, not to mention emotional encounters which they often take very much to heart. Check out Dabrowski's Over-excitabilities. A Layman's Explanation by Stephanie Tolan.


• While 60% to 75% of the general population are extroverts, about 60% of the gifted population are introverts. An extrovert is energised by being around others but an introvert finds their energy drained by others. After a period of time in other people's company, they need some time alone to recharge. A very worthwhile read for teachers and parents of gifted children is Introversion: The Often Forgotten Factor Impacting the Gifted by Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig.

Considering that at least one of the points above may apply, which of the following do you think your gifted child would most welcome at the end of a school day:

A. To be whisked off on a playdate with a couple of their classmates? 

B. To be greeted by you with a string of twenty questions about the details of their school day? (My own personal specialty!) 

C. To be left alone to escape into a world of their own for a while to process and "re-centre" themselves?

This doesn't apply to all gifted children, of course; some arrive home raring to go. But it's worth bearing in mind that many are exhausted, drained, frustrated, have had just about enough, thank you very much, and simply want some time alone. It's nothing personal!

A Gifted Family Comes Home

As I write, my family and I are nearing the end of an long journey by land and sea from south-west France back to Ireland. One car, two adults, two teenagers, one pre-teen, five sets of Dabrowski’s over-exciteabilities, 900 kms and 18 hours at sea, it's enough to make me exhausted just thinking about it! En route, we’ve had some interesting discussions and some tense moments. We’ve discussed art as an expression of language and whether music or painting can convey feelings and emotions better than prose. That led us to poetry where the teen passengers argued that rap is a powerful form of modern poetry in which young people can express their feelings. Eminem was judged by some as provocateur and by others as poet! We adults wondered if the offensive language used by some rappers was really “art” or used simply for its shock-value, but our teens were of the opinion that the bad language was part and parcel of the art form and the artists could no more avoid it as they could a sneeze. A generation gap if ever there was one!

We got much deeper than rap though. The size of the universe and the existence of God were covered in great detail. Which led to the inevitable subject of the catholic church in Ireland. The role of the Vatican in Irish education and state affairs brought us in a circuitous way to the history of Italian re-unification, Rome versus Florence and the formation of the Vatican as a “state within a state”.

From there opened a debate on religious freedom and religious states which involved the Middle East conflict and the powerful hold religion has on state affairs throughout the world. Dipping into some of these questions prompted me to flick through Philosophy for Kids from the wonderful Prufrock Press, where we explored the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein on language and feelings, Immanuel Kant on belief versus knowledge and Aristotle’s Correspondence Theory of Truth. Powerful stuff, and very lively when five opinionated minds got stuck in!

Of course we had the more mundane conflicts of getting driving directions wrong and blaming each other (the adults!) and numerous invasions and encroachments into personal space (the kids!). Urgent bathroom breaks, wild-goose chases and episodes of near-starvation also peppered our journey. Many times I wished I was somewhere else, even someone else. I wondered why I don’t have those teens I seem to see everywhere, sullen and uncommunicative, hoods up, heads down, earphones in. When things got loud and confrontational in the confines of the car, I half-wished for those disengaged, disinterested children….anything for a bit of peace!

But here I am on the ferry enjoying a quiet early morning, while they are still sleeping in our cabin. I am sitting by the window as the grey light signals that we are indeed getting closer to the familiar Irish climate. The waves are rolling, the ferry creating great white frothing masses of foam and an occasional herring-gull wheels by on the wind. And I realise that, in fact, I do have the family I want. They are lively, opinionated, engaged, interested and interesting. They don’t shy away from debate or verbal sparring. They are unafraid to hold an opinion and able to defend their position. We may not always agree, I am “ancient and out of touch” after all, but we are all learning to respect each other’s point of view. My family is remarkably knowledgeable about subjects I never even knew they had an interest in. Their powers of observation are acute and they hold some carefully considered views on a variety of topics. So while I might wish for some peace and quiet from time to time, while I may even feel I need a holiday after our epic journey home, I wouldn’t change my family for the world. To have three children, and a husband, who are so alive to the world and so passionate about living in it is a gift I treasure.