An Unexpected Deer Sighting or the Causes of Nervousness in Talented Kids
A truck stopped at a traffic signal in front of us with a four-wheeler in its bed and a freshly shot deer draped over the seat with its carcass strapped down to prevent it from slipping off. I was driving my four-year-old son to a friend's birthday party. My son's reaction to seeing the deer's lifeless body was immediate and powerful.
“Bring me home, Mom, please! How am I going to be able to go to the birthday celebration after witnessing this injustice?”
He was able to sense and describe the deer's anguish, both bodily and emotional, after it was shot thanks to his amazing empathy. His feeling of justice made him angry at the hunter for taking a deer that was probably not needed for sustenance and killing it for fun. My son was devastated by what he perceived to be the potential social repercussions of this apparent disdain for the worth of all animals' lives, which was evident in the public display of the deer carcass strapped irreverently over the seat of the ATV.
Why the Fear?
Gifted children frequently experience anxiety as a result of their keen and intuitive perception of their surroundings. Talented kids perceive the subtler aspects of the circumstances they come across, so everything they experience in life appears to be filtered through a lens that enhances their comprehension of these circumstances. They have greater intuition, sensitivity, and perception of the people, places, and situations. Gifted children develop the intricate connections between the knowledge they are exposed to that most of their classmates their age are still unable to understand through these deeper and more intense interactions with their environment. Because of their keen awareness of their life experiences and the deeper connections they form through those interactions, talented youngsters may worry about a variety of unsettling situations in the future—worrisome situations that ultimately create anxiety.
Intelligent, logical, intuitive, perceptive, sensitive, and empathic children possess enhanced cognitive talents that enable them to understand and absorb information at deeper levels than youngsters of similar age. Their emotional growth could not have given them the coping mechanisms needed to deal with such traumatic events in a healthy way, though. Anxiety is frequently caused by the disconnect between a brilliant child's cognitive prowess and comprehension of the world around them and their lack of emotional growth, which is necessary to handle such comprehension. The developmental discrepancy between a gifted child's advanced abilities and their age-appropriate abilities and inabilities is known as asynchronous development.
It is usual for gifted youngsters to develop asynchronously. It is the potential discrepancy in their development—intellectual, physical, and emotional. When compared to their emotional growth, a gifted child's cerebral development can be significantly advanced. A lot of parents of brilliant children have mentioned how confused they are about their child's asynchronous growth. If a ten-year-old is having a temper tantrum because their parents aren't following the local recycling program, they could be wondering if they are dealing with a toddler or a teenager.
Children that are gifted have a greater awareness of the world than their classmates of the same age, which gives them a lot of cause for concern. Focusing on this deluge of information makes individuals anxious because it makes them think through, anticipate, and see all the potential problems in the future. Gifted kids have more reasons to be nervous the more they comprehend and know. If a seven-year-old child has the emotional coping mechanisms of a child, but comprehends the extent of global warming as well as an eighteen-year-old teenager, she may be able to predict the end of life as we know it and suffer from all the terrible scenarios that await her and the planet's population as global warming takes its toll. She lacks the emotional capacity to calm herself and dispel her anxieties, nor is she able to use reason and more sophisticated coping mechanisms to moderate her worry.
Children with exceptional intelligence are aware of the possibilities. They might not be able to handle those possibilities on an emotional level.
How Can We Help?
My four-year-old son saw the dead deer strapped onto the seat of the four-wheeler and, in the brief moments that followed, he processed the physical and mental suffering the animal must have gone through and imagined all the negative effects that this disregard for human life may have on society. His extreme nervousness about this circumstance sent him into a complete collapse.
We had just been at the birthday party for a minute, yet I pulled into the closest gas station right away. We discussed his anxieties while we sat there. I hugged and held my son's hand in an attempt to gently try to physically soothe him down. In an emotional sense, I understood his worries. I told him that I recognized his point of view that the hunter had shown disregard for the deer's life. In addition, I tried not to give in to my urge to reassure him of all the reasons he shouldn't worry, but I did respect his feelings and future worries about what he perceived to be a horrible scenario. I knew from my previous experiences with the anxiety of my brilliant children that it would be harmful and unproductive to just tell him not to worry. And it wasn't a possibility to encourage him to go to the birthday party in spite of his emotional state—I knew we were heading home the instant he started crying as he described the deer's reaction to the bullet piercing its body. When my son calmed down and became less agitated, we left for home.
Gifted children can experience excessive anxiety that affects both the child and the parent. It can be difficult for you as a parent to stay calm in the face of all the worries your child has—worries that, as an adult, you realize may not be valid or logical. It's time to get your child help from a qualified mental health expert who has dealt with anxious gifted children in the past if you are unable to reduce their worry.
