Difficult or gifted?

A qualitative investigation of parents’ experiences of their gifted children as infants

Rastogi, A., & Gordon, M. D. (2019, March). Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Conference, Baltimore, Maryland. March 22-24, 2019.

Intelligence is no longer considered to be just measured by IQ. Children who are ahead of the game can show signs in a variety of domains besides just schoolwork. Early signs of "giftedness" include the need for less sleep, unusual alertness, emotional sensitivity, persistence/perfectionism and stimulation-seeking behavior (Bainbridge, 2018; Tucker & Hafenstein, 1997). This qualitative study wanted to find out from parents what their identified gifted school-age child was like as an infant.

How this research was done

The purpose of a qualitative study is to gather narratives from participants in a mostly unstructured way. Seven participant parents were recruited and interviewed on Zoom. These were biological mothers of gifted children who ranged in age from four to eighteen years.

The only question that was asked was, “As a parent, what was your experience of your child in infancy, before your child was officially identified as gifted?” Narratives were recorded and transcribed and themes/commonalities were analyzed.

Key takeaways . . .

Commonalities between the participants' narratives:

There was a traumatic labor/birth experience (long labor, emergency C-section, etc.)
Early and intense alertness as a newborn (focused eye contact, tracking)
A high degree of difficulty with sleep
High level of sensory sensitivity (aversion to textures, loud sounds, etc.)
High degree of emotional sensitivity/empathy
Intense emotions and reactions (meltdowns, etc.)
High level of persistence
Early achievement of physical milestones (crawling, walking)
Verbally ahead (early reading, language ability ahead of years)
Intellectual intensity (very curious, many questions, lots of conversation)
Others often noted that their child was "different" (ahead on language, preferring the company of older children/adults) or that they were “quirky.”

It’s interesting to note that many of these behaviors overlap with what parents report in children who have the most difficulty with sleeping as infants. Is it possible that high levels of sleep problems, alongside some of these other markers could be early signals of heightened ability?