Are gifted children more emotional in your opinion/experience?

[One2Three4Five6]

I've known for a while DD age 3 is very advanced for her age, her nursery teachers and HV think she is borderline 'gifted'
My question is, for those of you with advanced, gifted or talented children, do you find that they have an extra build up in their emotions? And I don't just mean the negative ones?
DD seems to overdo all emotions, if she is happy she is ecstatically happy, if she is sad it is done to the extreme, anger is massive, frustration leads to tears.
The anger and frustration I'd always put down to terrible twos and so on. But I've noticed it's the same with every emotion she feels, it's like they are heightened.

I've got two older twin DC, who never displayed this amount of emotion, but they had severe speech and language delays, and were behind academically in comparison to their peers, so I don't know if that makes any difference?

I've met quite a few children who seem to feel emotions more extremely than other children. They are not all at the high ability end, the one I teach currently is slightly above average but not gifted at all, she's prone to crying/giggling at any point in my lesson.

Both my dds have been described as gifted by their schools, they're very bright but I don't think they're exceptional. Neither of them seem to do this extreme emotion thing, unless extreme shyness counts.

Hmmm..not sure.

Would work for my parents: my mother is very up and down and also very bright and mentally agile; my father more stable but with fewer flashes of brilliancy.

But out of 3 biological siblings, I would say the least academically gifted is the one most like my mother in temperament, very excitable, emotional, door-slamming, easily moved; me and my db showed up as "clever" early on and have gone on to have academic careers, but are far more like my plodding father in temperament, like things to stay on an even keel, dislike open shows of emotion.

What I reckon is there might be separate genetic traits: say a trait X-x for high and low excitability and Y-y for high and low academic agility. And if we add the trait Z for musicality (DM is very musical, DP is tone deaf) we get:

db1 Xyz
db2 xYZ
me xY and kind of in-between for the z (I can sing in tune but don't really understand music)

out of my children dd has inherited the excitability gene and ds is more like me

Dd was identified as gifted early on, but has not actually done terribly well academically despite being very well read and well informed; partly due to ill health, but also (I am increasingly beginning to think) because she just hasn't got that much of an analytical mind: she doesn't seem interested in organising her thoughts in that way. Otoh she is artistic and creative and good at acting. "bright" can mean all sorts of different things.

.

My dd is hard work, have no idea if it's emotional but she's hard work and I suppose you'd say demanding, and has always been.
She is very gifted according to her school, but the term means nothing in her discipline as it isn't measured. In fact the term can be applied to almost any child in any school so pretty meaningless imo.

DD was put on G&T list in year 3. At the time I did a bit of research into it as I didn't know what it meant or its significance (or not as it turned out). One of the books I read about gifted and talented dc was that some display hyper sensitivity. DD comes into this category and at 12 it shows no sign of diminishing. I think it's to do with emotional maturity which doesn't match the levels that dc exhibit in the areas where they excell. I don't think a lot about DD being gifted anymore or her hyper sensitivity I just accept her as she is and deal with it accordingly

I bumped across this Canadian article and thought you all might find it interesting.

calgaryherald.com/life/swerve/gifted-children-are-frequently-misunderstood

"Gifted children might express heightened physical sensitivities to light, touch and textures. Parents of some gifted children have to cut the tags out of their kids’ clothing, for example, or buy specially-designed socks with no seams."

So what about non-gifted children with sensory issues? Surely there are plenty of those about?

What this article seems to do is to take something that is typical of children on the autistic spectrum (and some others) and make it about their giftedness instead. Which to me is problematic, because it suggests:

a) that we have some kind of expectation on children on the spectrum to be academically gifted, some kind of Rain Man

b) that children who do not display "gifted" behaviour risk falling under the radar

In short, we are defining giftedness not as actual ability but as being "different".

'My ds can be both extremely emotional and logical at same time"

My DS is the same, he's 5 and we constantly flip from one extreme to another. The professionals who have been involved with my DS surrounding his giftedness gave me a book about parenting 'The Strong willed Child' and nurturing their gift - it honestly has been a god send! The positive emotions are easy to handle when they are heightened but I continue to find it so difficult at the opposite end of the spectrum!

My DS, while on time out can quite rationally articulate why it's actually my fault that he's there and how my actions led up to it. The trouble is, by the time he's finished I'm usually in total agreement with him! 😀😂 I've now made it a silent zone just for my own sanity!