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Comment by FeteCommuniste | Hacker News Reader

> I know nothing about child psychology or anything adjacent, but I honestly think a lot of "advanced child" stuff is just maturity.

That makes me think back to my elementary school, where a lot of the kids who got into the "gifted" program just happened to be, surprise surprise, some of the oldest kids in their grade.

At that age the better part of a year in brain development can be exactly the "edge" one needs to excel. And then it can become self-reinforcing when kids gravitate toward the areas in which they dominate their peers.

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This doesn't match my experience with that term.

My son is diagnosed with ADHD and high IQ and labeled "gifted". He's very immature, has absolutely no method, is very impulsive and can't maintain focus for more than 20 minutes. He seems very much less mature than his peers in anything.

Yet, he just understands and remembers every single thing at school much better and faster than his peers. So I guess technically that makes him "gifted" but it's not a very useful gift. It just creates problems at school because he gets bored quickly but cannot be given more work to do because he gets exhausted quickly too!

I read recently a title of an article that said "gifted children are special needs children" and that marched my experience.

You should consider medication. I used to be against medication, but after talking with a few of my friends who have gifted children, things like ADHD are extremely common. Avoiding medication and letting them spin in the wind is not a good strategy and it destroys their self esteem. Get as small a dose as possible and then wean him off as he gets older and hopefully his prefrontal cortex will catch up and help regulate him.

Piggybacking here: also consider alternative forms of education. Montessori, Waldorf, home schooling, etc.

Many are more expensive in time and money, but you may find fairly cheap alternatives.

Worth a shot at least.

I think he meant physically mature. Like the brain is more well developed.

As a former gifted child who was emotionally immature and gifted, I hope your kid gets the guidance I never did both to understand his adhd and how it impacts him, but also emotional compassion for himself and from parents about how hard adhd can be

It's a complicated journey but we're getting there. It's not like you immediately figure out the diagnosis and understand what's the best way to treat it.

And every child is different because it's often not just ADHD but also other things.

But we're in a much better position now to help him.

My main point is that from my experience "gifted children" very often come with all other sorts of problems that put them in the category of special needs children and it's not just that they are mentally one step ahead of their peers.

Thinking back to my experiences in the program, there was a huge, readily apparent difference in the IQ of kids in the program versus "gen pop". In a regular class, the teacher would need to spend hours drilling the same concept, and still most kids would hardly grasp it. This wasn't a difference in maturity that could be explained by an 11 month age gap, but a literal IQ diff that persisted for the many years where I saw these peers.

FWIW, the test for the gifted program at my elementary school normalized their entrytest results for age.

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