Intellectually gifted children
- Why an evaluation?
- Stages of the evaluation
- Intelligence test for young children
- Intelligence test for children
- Intelligence test for adults
- Personality tests
- A gifted child
- Giftedness in adults
- Therapy for gifted people
- Choosing the right therapy
- Who asks for it?
- Can IQ be improved?
- ***
- Clinical psychologist, Psychoanalyst Paris
Gifted children's intelligence
A gifted child's intellectual efficiency is significantly higher than average. To know if a child is gifted, he or she takes an intelligence test:
- The WPPSI-IV is used with children aged 2 years 6 months to 7 years 3 months.
- The WISC-V is used with children aged 6 years to 16 years and 11 months.
A gifted child usually has an IQ score which is above 130.
Gifted chidren's personality
Beyond cognitive and intellectual factors, psychological assessment highlights personality characteristics, such as:
- hypersensitivity,
- intuition,
- creativity,
- a heightened perception of the world around him (hyperesthesia),
- proliferation of associations of ideas,
- simultaneous processing of data according to a very complex hierarchy.
Gifted children's difficulties
These characteristics and the gap that appears with peers are often the cause of a state of anxiety, psychological fragility, isolation and mental suffering in connection with the self-image. Moreover, boredom at school, school failure - when school is not, as it is often the case, adapted to intellectually gifted children - often appear. This sometimes leads teachers to ask that the child repeat a year.
How should one deal with an intellectually gifted child?
The first step is psychological assessment. It confirms the existence of giftedness and underlines the main features of the child's personality. The clinical psychologist will be able to advise the family so that giftedness becomes a precious asset and stops being a source of suffering.
