Giftedness: How does it work with Sensitivities, learning disabilities, and disorders?

There is a widespread opinion that gifted children – as well as gifted adults – have an over-sensitive, fragile, even vulnerable personality. This opinion is to be found both in the case study literature of gifted and creative people in all areas, among the general population, and also among gifted people who tend to explain their emotional, social and familial difficulties as a result – sometimes inevitable – of their exceptional cognitive abilities or their extremely high level of creativity. This paper aims to find out whether this opinion suits the clinical findings –both as informed by the literature and in my clinic. As expected, the results are quite mixed. Indeed, many highly gifted people have a fragile personality that might cause malfunctioning. On the other hand, many individuals with exceptional abilities, extra-ordinary achievements and proven achievements lead a “normal” family, social and emotional life. My conclusion is that in addition to individual characteristics of each and every child, gifted or not, with or without disabilities, the influence of giftedness on any child's wellbeing is substantially influenced by the support this child gets from school, home and the social environment he is exposed to. However, there is a large difference between a gifted child with a learning disability and a child who suffers from an emotional problem, whether caused by a disability or not. I will hereby give some examples of children belonging to both groups. In a series of case studies of highly gifted children with a variety of problems, I will confirm the assumption that giftedness per se is not directly related to emotional difficulties, but rather connected to it in many cases. There are many risk factors that contribute to the possibility of a gifted child to be prone to emotional problem; among them are creativity, non-conformity, and even being female, especially in traditional society. The article suggests a few steps aimed to help gifted children to overcome learning disabilities, as well as emotional problems.