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Home : 2007 : July : 3

ily
By josephineg

Your description of a "huge gap in these two areas"--social and emotional--sounds consistent with the asynchronous development which is actually quite typical of gifted children. Keeping a gifted child with age-peers will
not close that gap, according to the research, especially for the highly gifted. In fact, it will exacerbate it. Please also note:

"The child of 160 IQ is as different from the child of 130 IQ as that child is from the child of average ability. The kind of educational program developed for the highly gifted child of 160, 170, or 180 IQ often differs markedly from appropriate

programs for most gifted children, but ususally these programs are designed for the moderately gifted....there is evidence to suggest that the social/emotional development of highly gifted children differs somewhat as well (Hollingsworth, 1942; Roedell, 1984). They often exhibit an emotional intensity greater than that of many children. They are such abstratct issues as freedom, justice, or war, but they may not be ready to deal with the emotional impact of such issues....Yet such discrepancies represent perfectly normal development for the extremely gifted child, and should be accepted as such." (from Hoagies' Gifted: 10 most commonly asked questions about highly gifted education, downloadable from: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/10_highly_gifted.htm).

All the best.