Contrary to popular belief, high-potential children will not necessarily excel at school, nor will they necessarily flourish there. Indeed, in our collective imagination, academic success is directly associated with intelligence. However, there are many other skills involved, such as social skills, emotional management, behavioral control, a desire to learn and so on. Let’s discover the 3 main difficulties encountered by a HP child at school.
The boredom of an intellectually precocious child
Thanks to their above-average IQs, High Potential children think fast, naturally making connections between previous and new knowledge. As a result, they memorize and understand faster than others. Like an adult in a first-grade class, they quickly become bored, restless and scattered or, on the contrary, drop out and lose themselves in their own thoughts. As a result, they miss information and accumulate gaps…
“During confinement, Lily-Anne mastered her learning speed. Where his peers needed three four-hour lessons to integrate a notion, he needed one hour. The rest of the time, she read… Going back to school was impossible”, testifies the girl’s father[1]. Being early is not a false problem!
Lack of effort and approach to learning
A HP child doesn ‘t need to put in much effort to learn to read or count: key notions are learned implicitly, without difficulty. But once he’s reached a certain academic level, his intellectual “edge” is no longer enough. Without courage and self-discipline, he can’t cope with this workload, which his peers have had to assimilate gradually over the course of primary school.
For Gaspard, a young man of 14, when the HP diagnosis was made “I was tempted to say to myself, ‘Ah great, I’m a genius.'” But I feel like I ‘m less intelligent than the average person, and I don’t have any special abilities…”1 An HP child often has the impression of being out of step, frustrated, badly calibrated in the French school system… Being ahead of the game is not a false problem!
The extreme sensitivity of an HP child
Although intellectually advanced, HP children can quickly appear emotionally immature: the gap between their level of reasoning and their emotional development can be a source of great suffering. Extremely sensitive, intolerant of injustice and touchy, he often develops interests far removed from those of his peers. An inclination that leads toisolation and social difficulties…
Clarence, 14, remembers: “In third grade, I had a breakdown. I had no friends, I was bored in class and I said I wanted to die. I was given the test. I skipped a grade, it was a little better, but my friends picked on me. When I got a good mark, people would say, ‘That’s easy for you. 1 Being early is not a false problem…
Don’t hesitate to put your HP child in touch with one of our psychologists Available online on the Ora-Visio platform, our professionals understand the issues behind these intellectual skills, and will be able to offer your child a sympathetic ear!
[1 ] Quote: https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20230105.OBS67948/a-l-ecole-des-hauts-potentiels-j-ai-l-impression-d-etre-un-pokemon.html
