Can being clever be a reason for bad behaviour?

[GooseyLoosey]

Question says it all really.

I am told that particularly clever children often have particularly challenging behaviour. Is their intelligence an acceptable reason for this or is it merely an excuse.

I am very sorry. maybe i am on the wrong thread. ds1 does not have problems with peers. many of your dc do. do your children have any sn issues. or adhd etc. ds is good as gold at school. little fucker at home.
i think i may have been misunderstnading what you guys were saying. maybe this thread is not the right place for ds1's behavioural problems.

DD would prefer to be an only child and in a class of her own I am sure.

DS1 gets pushed around a bit at school as the girls like him and that doesn't go down well with the boys in his class.

Both are well behaved at school, awful at home. DD is exceptionally bright. DS1 is just above average in some things, above in others.

Ds did have a problem with social skills Oblomov, he's needed support but there's no other indicators of aspergers/adhd/sn.

my ds is a genius this hols then

oh. based on the last 3 posts, maybe i have made a mistake. maybe i am supposed to be here. sorry. obviously i am all getting this all wrong.
will re-read.

GooseyLoosey - I don't know if this is going to be helpful but I while I can see that other parents attitudes are very hurtful to you and difficult to deal with, I can see their point of view.

Briefly, my quiet DS who has a very accute sense of right and wrong was bullied by an "underchallenged clever boy with leadership qualities". His Mum and I talk, have a friendship that has been tested and she has suggested playdates - I have made it clear that I won't stand in their way if they become friends but will not push them together. I know she thinks I have written him off and should give him a second chance, that it may not all have been one sided (I heard echos in your earlier posts) and that is partly due to my DS's inability to stand up for himself (which is possibly due to his over protective Mummy!).

I try really hard not to judge anyone else's parenting as I know no one has any idea from the outside how hard it is for any other parent. However, not very deep inside, I find it really hard to excuse bad behaviour on the grounds of intelligence and I will protect my DS from it as much as I can (I understand that I'm being over protective and can live with that!)

MistyB, we're not talking about excusing behaviour at all, just unpicking the reasons for it with an eye to working towards a solution.
But I can quite understand why you don't want your boy to be part of a plan or a solution, and it's perfectly reasonable of you to feel that way.

What sort of behaviour problems are you asking about? There's the general low level but PITA problems such as interupting, shouting out, then there's the big problems such as violence, there's several shades inbetween.

Any child can have behavioural problems, it's not the reserve of a bright child. Many bright children do have traits of SN (aspergers etc), but if we all look hard enough there's a trait in us all.

Goblinchild sums it up well IMO "Because a lot of highly intelligent individuals don't have an emotional maturity to match.
Social conventions often don't make sense unless unpicked and explained, and they get in the way if you are a very motivated and logical person."

DS1 is like this - extremely bright, was reading and counting to 100 at 2, doing times tables etc by 4, but didn't seem to understand social conventions and got very frustrated with things. We thought he was on the autistic spectrum and he was being seen by an Ed Psych, speech therapist, consultant, SEN inclusion team etc. Turns out he just needs to be constantly challenged and stretched and his behaviour and communication improved so much. He is still very logical and unpicks everything we say, but now that he is being challenged he is so much easier.

I think it's because what works for most children isn't always quite right for everyone and if you have a child who needs slightly different treatment and they're not getting it then they are prone to behave badly. Being bright might be one case where slight differences in approach are needed, the obvious one being giving ability appropriate work, but other interactions may work better if styled differently too. I think very bright children also have a tendency towards perfectionism sometimes and that can give them an easily fustrated temperement. It's never an acceptable reason though - they need to learn better ways of dealing with fustration than behaving badly just as any badly behaved child does.

Children who don't have the opportunity to be amng their intellectual peers, or who are obliged to study at the level of their less-able classmates can be very bored and frustrated. This can lead to disruptive behaviour, and also to bullying.

It is a reason - but it is not an excuse.

In order to improve their behaviour they need to have their intellectual needs recognised and fullfilled. Sometimes that is all that is needed, but without it no behaviour modification techinques will work.

There's alot of expectations placed on bright children. They are expected to have maturity levels that are the same as their intellectual level and they don't always recieve the pastoral support they need when it doesn't match up which gives them the 'naughty' label. It's a hard one to remove once it's there.

I've done that.
Looked at my wailing, flailing PFB and thought "Oh for God's sake Act Your Age!'
Then remembered that she was 4.

I'm guilty of that. I have such weird conversations with ds that I forget how old he is.

By GooseyLoosey Tue 27-Jul-10 11:00:17
"... How can he understand complex stuff which other children struggle with but not get that it will really wind them up to run off with the ball in football?"

There's 'academic' intelligence, which is what is usually receded to when talkinig about very able or intelligent children, and there's emotional intelligence - which is a very different thing. It is not at all uncommon for a particularly bright child to lack EI.

9yo ds1 is extremely bright academically but seriously lacking in emotional understanding. He cannot put himself in another's place to understand their emotions. He struggles to see how his actions can affect others, and cannot give validity to others' feelings. His 3yo db OTOH is already far more emotionally competent and is able to consider other peoples' feelings.

It can, fortunately, be learned!

Some children pick this up through osmosis, some have to be taught. How I see it, if ds was dyslexic then I'd get him some help. It's no different with social skills but others seem to not understand.

My ds 12 is v bright and he has always wanted to know why. Which can be a pita obviously. His best teachers have looked to keep him occupied as he finishes work quickly and especially when he was very young he got into mischief when he wasn't busy. Regarding peer relationships those improved once his peers understood him better. He has an impressive vocab but it was too impressive when he was 6.

Very interesting to read all of your views.

The reason I raised this was that Ds saw an ed psych recently as we were considering whether he was on the autistic spectrum. The Ed psych said he thought not and that the problems ds were encountering were typical of those faced by highly gifted children who do often try and dominate their peers or just don't get what motivates them. He referred to it as being a recognised phenomenon amongst the highly gifted.

Sadly, there appear to be no real solutions other than patiently pointing things out to ds over time and I was hoping for something rather quicker. If the Ed psych had said that ds had behavioural issues, I could have explained this to other parents. I cannot explain to them that my child is just cleverer than theirs and doesn't always understand that what he does is wrong!

MistyB - every parent should stand up for their child and if your child is not always able to do so for themselves, that is not an excuse for another child to bully them.

My feelings stem from the fact that ds is often collectively battered by a group of boys in his class - they will often only let him play with them on terms that they get to batter him. He is far larger and more articulate than them and their parents never ever see that their little darlings may have done something to make ds retaliate (often long after the event when they are not in a group) - they just see a big mouthy boy who has picked on their angels. They never see a child who is struggling because he is different and at times very unhappy and who gets victimised and taunted because of it. I am trying really hard, but I find that very difficult to forgive. I have tried to see their perspectives for several years, but not one of them (until very recently when dh finally broke down in tears watching the most recent incident at the school and shouted at them all to leave ds alone) has ever tried to see it from mine. Actually, I think I hate them, but I digress.

I know a child who is "gifted" - not bright or very able, but gifted - who has a similar experience to yours, GooseyLoosey.

I do agree that bright and gifted children can be disruptive (I have seen it, eg bright kid finishes his work in 5 minutes then messes around stopping everyone else from doing theirs) but I also think the waters get muddied as there are far less gifted children in the average school than there are children who are struggling.

A child who can't cope with the work is much more likely to be disruptive. When their parents ask them why, they say they are bored. Kids learn very young that this works for parents, because parents think this means their child is super-bright and that the teacher is at fault. (However I am sure that I would find a lecture in particle physics boring because I couldn't cope with it.) The child is off the hook with the boredom claim and the parent blames the teacher.

I would estimate that in a school of 100 children there are 15 children who are disruptive in class and say they are bored, and whose parents claim that this is because they are bright and unstretched. I would also estimate that this is actually the case for only about two of them - the rest sadly can't keep up with the class.

BalloonSlayer, I suspect you are absolutely right. I have often heard people complain that their children are not challenged enough and hence are disruptive and I too suspect that that is often a case of parental rose tinted specs.

This, and the general hostility towards people who claim to be very bright, makes me very cautious about making any claims on behalf of ds (off this board where of course I don't hold back as I do in RL). Somehow I feel that it would all be an excuse and we should just get on and deal with it and make everything all right and that all the difficulties ds faces cannot simply be down to the fact he is clever.

Ds is in the camp of the genuinely gifted according to the ed psych (in the top 0.1% for everything). However, even the ed psych said that he found ds particularly challenging as he wanted to extrapolate and expand on every test and had ideas about tests 15 minutes after they had finished and wanted to go back and explore them. I can truly see why a teacher might find him difficult and just prefer that he shut up!

GooseyLoosey I feel for you. I've been in the tears in the playground situation. Your situation sounds horrible. I have had a long talk to our Head teacher about bullying - some info on bullyuk website - and have asked that it be included in the curriculum evening that the school offers to parents at the start of the year. Good luck and chin up - it's hard to see your child unhappy (and even more so, being battered!!) and I can understand that you hate their parents - I hope you have friends in the playground too!!

Thanks MistyB - the school have generally been great and intervened on several occassions. However until recently we asked that they not specifically refer to ds as we did not want to victimise him further, but not anymore. Last time they all specifically owned up to what they had done.

I did not actually mean to whine on this thread, but its in my head all of the time so that it just comes out. I do have friends, but they are all mothers of dd's friends. The mother's of ds's "friends" may think that they are my friend, but I avoid them as far as possible and as I say, I really do think I hate them.

Goosey, I think you need to move him to a different school so he can start again. He sounds like a really lovely child, he's being bullied though, this isn't friendship. He's trying so hard to fit in and school shouldn't be like this. Bullying affects the whole family, not just the child. I used to collect ds from school and dread it every day because I'd worry about what the little shits had done to him. He's just left a really nurturing primary after being there a year as he's moving to secondary school and it's made such a difference to him, he has real friends that he talks to about birds, he's accepted and it's really helped him to mature.

I wouldn't leave him there, it'll just carry on. There are some labels that a child can't shake off. IME, private schools are alot better at catering for gifted children then a state school (not all state schools, I didn't want to keep moving ds to find the right one for him), the classes are alot smaller and the work is properly differentiated as opposed to 'if you can manage it you can do the opposite side of the sheet which is a little harder'.

Goblinchild - points for spotting mistakes (or helping them work out why they weren't mistakes) - that would have been perfect! If I'd been right, I'd have felt a million dollars, and if wrong, I wouldn't have minded having it explained. That's a fantastic approach.

Wish you'd been my teacher

We have thought about moving him but ds is adamant he does not want to move. He is in a small village school and it would have quite wide reaching repercussions if we moved him. As I said, the school is generally great and he loves the teachers.

I think so far we have maybe been too reasonable and unconfrontational about everything and approached it from the perspective of what ds could do differently to stop the what happens. No longer, I will still take that into account but I think that I have to directly tackle the bullying which goes on and let parents know that whilst their child may say that ds pushed them, that was because the day before, their child with others tied him up (in a game!) and dragged him around the playground leaving him covered in cuts and bruises. I wonder which behaviour is worse?