After violent events, children can be deeply affected by media and simulated violence, leading to fear, desensitization, and long-term health effects. Parents should manage their own anxiety, limit exposure, answer questions at the child’s level, reassure safety, and encourage constructive actions to help children cope.
This post explains why holidays can overwhelm gifted or twice-exceptional children—sensory overexcitability, asynchronous development, anxiety, introversion, allergies—and gives practical parental strategies: prepare favorite snacks and quiet spaces, warn hosts, maintain routines, limit triggers, allow exits, and prioritize calm to reduce meltdowns and preserve holiday enjoyment.
The SENG Professional Advisory Committee supports gifted and creative individuals by advising outreach to healthcare and education professionals, combating myths, and promoting understanding. It helps address issues like overexcitability, developmental asynchrony, twice-exceptionality, and medical misdiagnosis, aiming to build a world that supports gifted people.
This article discusses how stories—books, films, and television—support the social and emotional development of gifted children by providing identity, empathy, and coping skills. It emphasizes guided selection of age- and sensitivity-appropriate media, family engagement in shared viewing/reading, and links to resources for parents and educators.
Giftedness should be understood by what it is not: gifted children aren’t uniformly advanced, mature, or similar in interests, goals, or humor, nor confined by gender, race, or class. They are passionate, original, and inspiring, and require recognition and support to thrive.
The author urges attention to the needs of gifted elders in hospitals and nursing homes, outlining sensitivities such as medication reactions, overexcitabilities, and spiritual or intellectual needs. Families and clinicians can support mental stimulation, nutrition, cultural preferences, and advocacy to improve care and reduce stress.
An account of a mother whose gifted son struggled in kindergarten because school failed to meet his needs. After noticing changes in his drawings and behavior, she homeschooled him and advocates for recognizing giftedness and twice-exceptionalities, urging parents and clinicians to listen, assess placement, and support children’s learning needs.
SENG warns that intellectually gifted children can be misdiagnosed with ADHD, leading to unnecessary medication. The organization urged pediatricians and diagnostic manuals to consider giftedness in assessments, promoted awareness and education, and sought outreach to the American Academy of Pediatrics to prevent misdiagnosis.
Pediatricians can play a vital role supporting gifted children by recognizing how giftedness affects development and health, reducing misdiagnoses, and guiding families. Parents can foster better doctor partnerships by preparing concerns, sharing resources, requesting informational materials, and slowly building community supports.
