#giftedadults

[giftedadults]

Ok, I am halfway through watching Malcolm In The Middle. I only watched the show sporadically if it was on TV, but never from beginning to end.

So I also failed to understand the whole premise of the show. A gifted child with no real prospects for life.

The show is actually more profound than I realized as a child.

On one episode, Malcolm gets career advice. And the answer he gets is that he could be anything. Which he hates. I can actually relate to it.

I couldn't be anything but I am not really very good at one thing. I am studying a subject that is not really what I am best at, but I do it so I have a job.

I don't think there is that one career for me. I also hate it when I am good at something I don't really care about.

I am pretty decent at spelling and also expressing myself but sometimes those feel like empty skills. Who needs to be able to do that beyond a certain point? Those skills are not as important as others and yet so many people struggle with them.

It's also kind of sad that I am surprised when I am actually good enough at something because I always feel that I am lacking.

I feel incredibly incompetent in writing university papers. I am only okay when I can make stuff up, but maybe then library science is not the best subject. I already push it in American Studies and that is a more creative subject.

University often feels more like a drag than my job. My job is very simple and basic and yet I enjoy it more, even though it is not very academic. But it feels more meaningful.

At uni I am often not sure if what is expected of me is really necessary. Like do I have to be able to write a 40 page paper to work in a library? I don't think so.

I already had a topic for my final thesis but it basically got rejected and I am not going back to it, even though I spent 2 years preparing it. Oh well...

[giftedadults]

The Problem of Giftedness

[giftedadults]

[giftedadults]

Reading was Emmanuel's great passion. He loved the imaginary world he could seek refuge in and that he had built up himself. Texts and words were his nourishment.

"Emmanuel Macron" by Anne Fulda

[giftedadults]

The gifted tend to demonstrate high reasoning ability, creativity, curiosity, a large vocabulary, and an excellent memory. They often can master concepts with few repetitions. They may also be physically and emotionally sensitive, perfectionistic, and may frequently question authority. Typically the rebellion, whether active or passive, reflects underlying feelings of alienation. Some have trouble relating to or communicating with their peers because of disparities in vocabulary size (especially in the early years), personality, and interests. As children, they are out of step with their peers and their social concept improves when placed with children of similar ability.

[giftedadults]

Some theorists in child development have estimated that between 20 to 40 percent of gifted individuals have a learning disability, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or some other neurological disorder. Others have postulated that the attribution of controversial disorders such as "ADHD" to gifted individuals arises from a misguided tendency to pathologize that which we do not understand.

[giftedadults]

Most children learn how to talk on their own, simply by being surrounded by spoken language. Then, after they've been talking for a while, someone very deliberately teaches them how to read. Children with hyperlexia are just the opposite. They learn how to read simply by being surrounded by printed words. We don't really know how. Then, after they've been reading for a while, someone has to very deliberately work with them on how to communicate verbally.

Julie Whaley

[giftedadults]

Hyperlexia is a syndrome characterized by a child's precocious ability to read. It was initially identified by Norman E. Silberberg and Margaret C. Silberberg (1967), who defined it as the precocious ability to read words without prior training in learning to read, typically before the age of 5. They indicated that children with hyperlexia have a significantly higher word-decoding ability than their reading comprehension levels. Children with hyperlexia also present with an intense fascination for written material at a very early age. Hyperlexic children are characterized by having average or above-average IQs, and word-reading ability well above what would be expected given their age. Hyperlexic children are often fascinated by letters or numbers. They are extremely good at decoding language and thus often become very early readers. Some hyperlexic children learn to spell long words (such as elephant) before they are two years old and learn to read whole sentences before they turn three. An fMRI study of a single child showed that hyperlexia may be the neurological opposite of dyslexia.

Wikipedia