Hi everyone! 😊 I’m hoping to hear from parents who have been through a similar experience and can share some advice.

My son is only 6 and was recently assessed as gifted. His WISC is extremely high scores across the subtests, and his WIAT too. Honestly, as a parent, I’m still trying to process everything.

His teachers have been in contact with us and are willing to help provide the support he needs at school, which we’re really grateful for. But if I’m being honest, I’m feeling a little anxious about what comes next.

I was just a regular kid growing up, and I’ve always believed that the most important things I could teach my son were respect, love, kindness, good values, and practical life skills. I’ve also encouraged him to enjoy being a kid and explore different interests. He does piano, choir, basketball and football, so we’ve always tried to give him a balance of learning, sports, activities and just enjoying childhood.

But now that we know more about his abilities, I sometimes worry that I might not be able to give him the academic support he needs as things get more complex. He’s only in Year 1 but is already doing long division and multiplication and excelling at school with history with his great memory. I’m happy to see him learning and enjoying it, but I also find myself wondering how to keep challenging him without putting too much pressure on him or taking away the joy of learning.

I want to make the right decisions for him, but I honestly don’t know what the best path looks like yet, or whether we even need to think that far ahead.

For parents raising gifted children, how do you navigate day-to-day life? How do you support their academic needs while making sure they still have time for sports, friendships, play and just being a child? How do you know when to push, when to step back, and which educational opportunities are actually worth pursuing?

I guess I’m learning that being a parent of a gifted child comes with its own set of questions and uncertainties.

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences, lessons learned, or even things you wish you had known when your children were younger. I’m still figuring this out, and it would be reassuring to hear from parents who have walked this road before. Thank you!

My entire early life I was told over and over that I was intelligent, gifted. It was proven over and over with IQ tests and unit test scores with no studying and programs and standardized measures like the ASVAB. I couldn’t convince myself to do my homework no matter how much I wished - but my principal pulled me into his office to tell me I ranked highest in the school by far and one of the highest in the district or state. That I wasn’t just gifted, I was exceptional.

What followed, and to some degree preceded, was brutal abuse, neglect, trauma, loss, injury, and more. I almost died many times. It was horrific, and it shaped our development into what we are now.

We are a DID system. With disabling memory issues. We have half a dozen diagnoses, physical issues among them. Permanent damage to this body from what we went through. We are alive, but so different than what we were meant to be.

That’s the thing - I can feel the pull towards achievement, towards using our gifts. Sometimes, something will remind me of them, and all of a sudden I can feel that deep well of potential to change things - but the dissonance between that sense of purpose and our mundane, limited, painful, brutally empty life is impossible to integrate. Right now I feel that depth, that pull, and I don’t want to ignore it.
Does…anyone else relate to any of this? Struggle with how deep that well is, how little of it they’ve used? Am I the only gifted who went through the unimaginable?

I just… want some answers.

Hi I’m a 17 year old and I found out a couple of months ago that my iq is 130, but if I’m being honest I kinda suck at everything in school, I don’t really try either but even when I do I can’t get myself to do it right. I have ADHD and I had depression sense I was a kid, apperantely those two things are connected to my iq somehow. When I talked to my therapist about intelligence and iq she said that almost everything I describe screams that my iq is high, I have a good pattern recognition and I can tell how people feel by looking at they’re faces for a few seconds or less, I learn complex guitar songs like playing god by polyphia and psychosocial by Slipknot, and I’ve been getting into learning Japanese and playing chess for fun lately because tbh I’m bored. But if I want to and try I can learn math just depends if I try, a proof is that I learned a whole unit in 3 days in math and managed to get 78 on the test, not an amazing grade but good for 3 days worth of work. I notice almost everything and anything around me but I still can’t shake off that feeling of not being smart enough, idk what to do it’s getting into my head and I can’t even explain how much it reflects on by day to day life.

Was shocked and disappointed when i got back my IQ test results.

Ik this is a bit of a different post but ..

I’m currently a college freshman at a T20 selective SLAC that is known for being weird/quirky. I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed since coming here is that.. I’m not special nor am I smart. Everyone was in a gifted program and everyone is smart/intelligent. For the first time in my life, I’ve realized that I’m not smart compared to so many people. Throughout my life, I’ve breezed through everything without lifting a finger. I didn’t care about school and was still able to get an A regardless of how much I paid or didn’t pay attention. I’m not special for skipping a grade and I’m not special that things I like come naturally. 

Idk. Kinda just have a lot of imposter syndrome especially since it’s midterms and I realized I can’t coast through school anymore. 

Desde que soy muy pequeño había vivido en un entorno adverso en cuestión de maltrato tanto físico como psicológico por parte de mis padres y duró hasta la adolescencia siempre viví desmotivado e inseguro sin razón para hacerlo desde la secundaria sospeche de que era un superdotado y les comenté a mis padres solo recibí burlas y comentarios sobre lo estúpido que era me desmotive y dije el tema hasta ahí, hace poco volví a investigar del tema y veo que muchas cosas que sufren encajan perfectamente en mi caso pero al sufrir en un entorno adverso en ves de desarrollar mis habilidades, terminé ocupándolas para sobrevivir y hasta la adultez me vine a topar con los problemas de haber vivido así he tenido una vida bastante llena de errores básicamente siento que arruiné mi vida desde hace mucho así que estoy tratando de rehacerla aunque ya sea muy difícil. Lo único que quisiera es saber alguna opinión de qué puedo hacer para descubrir si lo soy o mejorar mi vida igual perdón por la mala redacción solo lo escribí como desahogo

After being told how smart i am just to become an adult and be mediocre, I realized that I was never actually that smart to begin with. But I want to change that. I get all my thoughts and opinions from other people but I want to start thinking for myself. I also feel like I'm only bookmark but my intelligence is lacking everywhere else. Im not street smart nor do I have awareness nor do i have social intelligence. Those are much more difficult and intangible to improve on but I want to try. I also have doomscrolled so much that I genuinely am less smart than before. I can't even read anymore. I don't want to put all my self worth in being smart again but I feel so stupid these days and I want to do something about it. I can't even talk properly anymore. I have nothing in my mind because of how much I doomscroll. How do I actually become smart and improve my intelligence? Does reading help as much as people say it does?

I was something you might call a "child prodigy" - went to a gifted elementary school, was still limited academically so was pulled out to homeschool, did dual enrollment 15 credit hours/semester for a couple years, got a full scholarship through Grad school for Business Analytics at UNCC. I then became rapidly disillusioned with my life, dropped out, and from 16 onward have been working random entry level jobs living paycheck to paycheck.

Most of my free time is spent playing strategy games and self-reflecting. I am obsessed with metacognition, and for better or for worse have effectively been a hermit for the past 8 years quietly building out my understanding of my mind and untangling the emotional and intellectual "spaghetti code" that I was left with after living a very lonely and completely outlandish life. I like to think I'm in something of a springboard position - I'm very competent in a wide variety of domains but due to the isolation hole I've dug myself into there's no telling when I'll be able to break through and germinate. I've run face first into many of the glaring societal issues that have destroyed community for a lot of people. I've been very resentful of these issues for much of my life, but I like to think I've moved past this and try my best to maintain a dispassionate outlook on my condition. I don't know that there's much to do other than bide my time and keep quietly searching for a path out.

What do I do?

I want to change my life but being famous could ruin making a family later

and I think I have the intelligence to instill skill in my children even though they would probably grow up rich [nepo baby ]

I know this can be hard to believe but I used to isolate and use the computer as a literal new born baby in the 90s

I knew how to use windows 98, 2000, xp, etc

I had a gun pulled on me turned the situation around and got a haircut and got paid $20

Also I can do half court shots in basketball sometimes and I barely practice

Also when I was 9-12 years old on a regular qwerty keyboard on 10fastfingers I could do 120 WPM perfect accuracy

Man my lore is crazy but it's true but I do a lot of stupid shit and mostly due to my own fault and others theft and my altruism

I am broke xD

But I had a dream of immense wealth and I think god and the universe will conspire to make it happen

But the greatest thing was the love I gave out and the spiritual experience I had of unconditional love + bliss

Now adays most people are always looking to use others .. I'm not like that so that was sooo beautiful

Despite my intelligence I regularly do stupid and risky things all the time :( I get bored lol ... I wanna sky dive

I wish I had a cool genuine friend

When I was young I was a something like a prostitude then my sister went to the woods and started twirling and she went crazy I told her your soup bowl has a fucking hole on it and it spills then she told me I am the one who is crazy, then It was raining and my lip got blood on it but not injured and I didn't slipped from the rain drops, then some guy payed me to enter a room with a bunch of guys and my lip got better. Turns out they were medical engineers.

Now I am a gysah.

Hello everyone! I believe this is my (45F) first time making a post on Reddit... More of a lurker or answering on others posts. I guess I just earned my OP wings :)

I'll provide some background that will clarify, hopefully, the motivation behind this post. Also, sorry in advance for the quality of my English. It's my 3rd language and it's self-taught so...

TLDR : Looking for a gifted person to join our micro firm that does accounting, taxes and corporate strategy (Canada or Quebec).

My Gifted Backstory :

I've spent the first 30 years of my life being brainwashed into accepting that I was retarded and crazy. Not the funny kind but the actually severely intellectually impaired one. It sounds silly saying that today but back then, it was the only reality I've ever known and nothing exterior never dismissed that. Other factors contributed to solidify the validity of it all... I could never keep a job, dropped out of school at 16, struggled hard to socialize and never fitted anywhere. Didn't feel retarded but I was probably too stupid to understand because if they were wrong, I would have been able to function like a normal person, right ?

Fast track to age 30, I was victim of a violent event that changed the course of my life. In my 2nd major depression, in such pain, that I went and checked myself into a hospital psych emergency. It was time that I faced reality.

An Angel must have been watching over me because I didn't know at the time, but you can't leave once you pass those doors. And regardless of diagnostic, the mention "psychiatrized" gets added in your medical records forever. It's quite serious. Can't get medical of life insurance afterwards, good luck with jobs or other background checks, etc. They kept me for 2 days and during that time, 5 psychiatrists questioned and studied me extensively. Barely allowed to sleep and, in order to evaluate me, they cooked the hell out of me to get everything out. At the end, they made me sit on a chair facing all of them and it felt like the movies when a panel of officials give the verdict.

What they told me ?

• I was actually too smart and others couldn't understanding me. So to them, my intelligence level was the problem and not theirs.
• Not only was I not impaired nor crazy, but they evaluated my IQ between 142-145, near genius level (their words, not mine).
• I should write a book about the things I told them. That I could, among other things, help save people suffering from major depression.
• That they never give patients their results in this manner, with a grand panel, but they wanted this to mark me as much as possible so I would believe them and I would feel they meant every word. To break the brainwash.
• That they felt very stimulated to have had the chance to study a live case like mine.
• They ended with: We are kicking you out and we will erase you ever entered this facility so your medical record stays clean. To never show myself into any similar facility ever again because I didn't belong there.

I was such in state of shock, I didn't speak a word for a full week. Why am I sharing all that ? I guess so you don't feel alone and also that for what comes next. It doesn't matter how ugly it was or how much you struggled to navigate this world. You just need to find the right place for you. And there is. You just haven't found it yet.

Looking for an accountant

School bored me. Jobs bored me. I needed something that makes me use my brain however I see fit (to it sees fit really haha). When I found it, I've never let go until it was done. I've spent 13 years in University studying accounting and small business management and strategy. I am a licensed Chartered Administrator specialized in Accounting, Fiscal law and Corporate Strategy. I run my own very small firm located in Quebec, Canada. It's perfect for my type of brain. It's hard, focuses on problem solving. We're helping people but through, majorly, their business data. My brain makes a difference in people's lives. My capacities have an impact. And I wouldn't trade it for the world even if it's really demanding more often than not. It gives me purpose. Somewhere I can feel I belong.

But as you can imagine, finding teammates is extremely difficult. My way of functioning just doesn't blend with the normies. I'm ADHD (diagnosed) and probably some level of autistic/ asperger (not diagnosed). Normal people love structure. But structure is the death of the likes of us. To shine and perform, our brains need to have an environment adapted for it rather than having to adapt to it.

I'm burnt from work, from too much for far too long and I can't find help that actually reduces my workload instead of burdening me more. No one can follow my speed or reasonings. It feels lonely but also a lot rests on my shoulders. We are a small team of 2 full time (my husband, smart but not gifted, and I), plus 2 part-time helpers. Everyone works remotely for the majority of the work. I don't care when things are done as long as it's in time for deadline.

I don't need an exact second copy of me (but a CPA would be nice addition). What we care about loyalty, honesty, skills and dedication far more than titles and diplomas. I can coach for whatever is missing. Also need someone who can deal with me. I'm am not toxic or difficult to be around per se, but I'm quite transparent and good at my job. As a result, when being around me a lot, none-gifted people tend to struggle since people aren't that honest usually or get self-esteem issues (ridiculous but it is what it is). With only a high school diploma, no Uni and no title, I landed a position of a Vice-President Finance and Strategy, at only 32 and being a female. Also started my firm years before finishing Uni.

So this morning, I had the idea that I need a second one of me. But where the heck do you find that ? r/Gifted.... maybe? Quite the long shot but if this post resonated with you, and you're located in Canada, even better in Quebec, and have either knowledge, experience or diplomas in accounting... Message me.

Wish me luck!

Hello, I have thought about something interesting and thought that I might share this.

From little on we have been taught to express ourselves with words in order to describe reality, but words are solely descriptions and therefore highly subjective. And I don’t know what it is per se or how people approach this but there is this certain kind of capacity that allows an individual to experience reality deeply far beyond words. It is highly ‘difficult’ to really compare ones inner world with the ones of others to find some kind of consensus plateau with words to create a mutual understanding but I guess that it is the best one can do in order to create order and close gaps in ‘understanding’.
I always thought when it comes to relations to other people that it is kind of depictable with circles and radii. This capacity I spoke upon is comparable with the radius of the circle and whenever two circles meet, the relation is set once the outer circle line hits the core of another individual, bluntly speaking the individual with the greater radius can map out the whole other circle while the circle with the smaller radius is only restricted to the outer parts of the circle. The inner parts of the circle can be compared to the main mechanics of an individual, the raw ‘potential’, unfiltered expression if one might call it that, the further out the radius goes the further it is what is expressed of ones individual mechanics, when you now go back to the analogy that I have presented with the relation you can see that a individual with a comparatively smaller radius is only restricted to see what an individual expresses and that individual will never have the ‘raw’ potential to see further.

I refer to myself as dumb-smart. Im always the last to catch onto things. My concentration and focus is weak, I'm easily distracted. Im also very clumsy when I'm nervous. On the flip side I have an exceptional long term memory. I can recall dates, events, memories from my life as early as the age of four. For instance I've seen about one hundred movies in theatres and I can remember every single cinematic experience. I can also recall each birthday, each Christmas, what I did, where I was, who I was with etc. My facial recognition skills are off the charts. I have the ability to recognise people very easily. Like spotting someone within a large crowd or remembering someone I only met once many years ago.

i have adhd my fluid iq is 140+ but my wm is really bad, i have not had it measured but i have all the symptoms of it most prominently i can understand math concepts and think ways to use them creatively but when it comes to calculating for example thing literally fall apart (even if write it down) as i will forget what step i am on, what is the next step, what intermediate value i just got and so on. don't even get me started on mental math only as in of recently (when i started training my wm) is when i was finally able to consistently do 2 digit * 2 digit multiplication mentally, usually before that if i attempted that i would forget the intermediate values that i got and would have to recalculate basically until it was no longer in my working memory but rather my long term memory, also i forget what i just read pretty much instantly and need multiple trials to be able to "save it" to my long term memory.

i just want to know if you have a low wm and are gifted can you relate?

and

if you have a high wm can u explain to me how much faster (if at all) do you learn concepts such as math, language, biology and so on?

(i would appreciate if you comment how fast you can mentally calculate and your working memory)

TLDR: my learning is slow even though my fluid iq is high and i think its because of my low working memory

Hasn't been created as an actual poll, because making a poll on Reddit requires the smartphone app.

1‍) What do you think is the correct answer to this question?

2‍) What do you think the results of the poll would be?

This topic risks seeming combative: it relates to conflict, and a lot of people don't like conflict. They prefer to remain in their safe spaces. As Terry Pratchett put it,

Knurdness strips away all illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then after they’ve screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again.

The joke here is that if people say or think things that aren't true, it's not their fault: it's because they aren't exposing their body to substances that would lead to a different result.

I hope you've already tried to answer those questions before you read the following.

I think that smart people are 'collateral damage' in the war between rich and poor. The intensity of this war varies: in countries where most people say that 'most people can be trusted', like China, inequality can be just as high, people can suffer just as much from being poor, but poor people are less likely to view rich people as their enemies. They would agree that rich people can be bad, and people can become rich through government corruption, but they would say that most rich people are not like this, even if it's important to pay attention to evidence that certain rich people could be bad. (Leading to 'witch hunts', like after a Chinese male actor died from falling off a balcony during a party.)

In peace time, if an event happens, it could be reasonable to say that just as many people benefit from it as are harmed by it. In wars, most people are harmed. I think that people who would not consider themselves to fit in a community called 'Gifted' would say that smart people tend to benefit from an increase in economic inequality, while stupid people are harmed by it, and they would ignore the prejudices people have against smart people to arrive at an answer to the poll's question.

It's also worth pointing out that sometimes bad outcomes happen without anyone intending for that result to happen.

I'm not suggesting a solution in this post, just giving people in this community an opportunity to say what they think about the question.

If it wasn't for your giftedness, tasks that you currently enjoy doing like maybe programming, learning very abstract philosophy, getting perfect grades in school literally would have been hell for you, and you would much more likely have to deal with things like needing to re-read couple times, re-watch videos lot of times just to understand concepts much precisely and difficulty with following instructions.

As someone who has a low IQ, I get very annoyed hearing those "struggles of high IQ" meanwhile humble bragging about how much you were able to easily get high GPA in high school, grew up with perfect life style habits like reading books instead of being in loop of doom scrolling on your phone all day all because of very little minor inconvenience like oh all because you do not "fit in" with the average squad which doesn't mean shit at all.

You really think I enjoy having to re-read lot of times, needing to suffer through endless grind to achieve things?? No the hell I do not. So please stop assuming that low IQ people are happier.

I'm like, yeah, no shit 🙄

The more I learn about brain development and nutrition, the more it infuriates me to realize that I could've easily been smarter, more patient and had a better memory if I got all the B12 and other necessary vitamins as a kid. I had such expectations for grades piled up on me but nobody bothered to take me to a library before I got attached to movies and video games more than to books. My grandma got me varied encyclopedias, but she should've noticed I reread the same stuff related to biology and taken me to get deeper books on the subject. Or caught me leafing through a dictionary and got a bilingual book for my self-study. You can see I've gotten far enough into English with the help of a friend and some media (no thanks to school) but a language can't be a profession on its own if you don't have patience for tutoring. And now that I have the patience, I have no credentials for advertising myself, and my memorization ability is too busted to prepare for any exams.

If I could write a letter to my young self, or somebody gave a crap about what came easy enough to me to turn into a profession despite my low energy, the following speech would've turned around my life and prevented me from descending into losership:

"I know you hate people enough to think that you want to dissect their dead bodies, but imagine the mess and stench of that, and all the physics and chemistry exams that stand between you and the profession you imagine. Why wouldn't you dissect people's minds instead? You get to study people's behavior as if they were insects, knowing them helps against social anxiety same way knowing which spiders are dangerous helps against arachnophobia, and the writing of Freud is not that different from Stephen King's".

It could've even been my mom that said something along the lines because she herself had studied psychology. But nope, everybody seemed to believe I knew what I was doing instead of warning me that medical schools were designed as a total wringer to weed people out on purpose. I could've been writing innovative psychology research papers, and instead I can barely afford food.

P.S. it wasn't the Western system of education, there weren't any "majors", you had to choose a relatively narrow specialization right after school.

I have a understanding of IQ but still couldn't get the hang of the Eq

What makes it high and can we measure it like we do in IQ if so how ?

after 19 years of feeling different from everybody and even being diagnosed with psychotic depression at 12, I'm starting therapy to get a possible diagnosis and I'm so afraid I'm a fraud, I'm stupid and everyone will find out how dumb and just weird I am

is someone else feeling or had felt like this?

Just curious if any gifted person could identify any gifted traits my sister could possibly have? for context she’s 16 and autistic. She was capable of reading at a very young age, i think she was only a toddler when she began reading children’s books like where the wild things are and hairy mclary etc. She is VERY creative and academic, she treats art like drawing and music as therapy and would often get in trouble at school because she would skip due to feeling frustrated at the lack of challenge. She’s doing all the sciences at school (bio, chem, psych, physics) and she fast tracked year 11 math methods with a lack of interest to pursue math due to the “lack of theory”. I don’t really understand what she means by lack of theory but if she doesn’t wanna do it we won’t force it on her.
I feel like she’s smarter than most people because of her autism, I feel like it made her an observant person and that could’ve made her smart? But that’s just a suggestion, anyways, can anyone gifted point out any potential similarities

Provider started me on 20mg on viibryd. Fucking miracle drug bro. I forgot that I’m super curious about everything. I have this itch to learn like everything. I didn’t know the depression was that bad. Anywho.

I’m really just looking for people to talk to about stuff.
A lot of the people that knew me knew the depressed me. I really wanna branch out and like just say what’s up lol.

I don't know of any better solution than extended periods of isolation.

It causes such despair in my life.

Trying to protect my nervous system is so draining it feels one day I'll lose myself entirely.

People say I can read their minds, I can feel someone's emotions, they call me a witch, I can guess things without external stimulus, my pattern recognition is so intense I can't seperate from it, and my visualizations are an overlay to eyes wide open.

It's chronic migraines, insomnia, and hyper vigilance.

Feeling misunderstood is starting to hurt too.

I'm currently being tested for autism and ADHD. So far my assessor says that ADHD is likely but unsure about autism because despite many traits I am very good at reading people's social cues, I understand motives, I'm able to put myself in their shoes. But I'm wondering, isn't that just intelligence? Like I really am awkward around people, a lot of the time I need to cognitively force myself to make small talk etc. I also have lot of the other traits. But I've never been confused about what someone is feeling and why.

So I am wondering what it feels like to be really intelligent but still unable to read social cues, having trouble working out motives. Because to me that just feels like intelligence and pattern recognition, but maybe there are different types of intelligence in this case.

My test result it's 128(To be honest),But I'm here to make something clear, and anyone with high reasoning skills would realize it: an IQ test definitely doesn't measure your full intelligence; it's simply a very accurate estimate Based on the answers you provide, however, intelligence is much more complex than it seems; furthermore, there is the discrepancy: you can be good at reasoning but forget very quickly,Furthermore, these tests verify and prove things like:

Logical reasoning

Critical thinking

Pattern detection, inconsistencies and contradictions

Logical and mathematical thinking in general

Having an IQ of 75, 80, 90, or 100 doesn't mean you're unintelligent, nor can we rule it out (unfortunately, for the same reason).

So if you got a low score, no, you shouldn't feel bad. Just keep improving and find what you excel at, and you'll see a big difference between a simple number and what you manage to demonstrate.