The Therapy Needs of Gifted Children (and Adults)

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Many discussions of "gifted" children begin with the author's disclosure of his or her history of being gifted, or of being so labelled. My own experience with this label is fairly mild. My Connecticut elementary school offered enrichment classes for a slice of the student population deemed to be "gifted," according to some metric. The classes were generally enjoyable, though I believe I learned even more from a voluntary enrichment program that was open to all: Connecticut Odyssey of the Mind — which, I am delighted to learn, still exists. Nonetheless, I benefited from these resources and am grateful for them.

Others have had more complicated experiences with the label. Many "gifted" children feel that they have been held to a standard all their lives that they can never quite reach. And this is to say nothing of those who were denied this label, presumably because they lacked some gift in question. It is trite but entirely accurate to say that, strictly speaking, every child is gifted. It may be that "gifted" is one of those diagnostic labels—like "addict," or "bipolar"—that itself can cause some of the challenges that it purports to describe.

That said, there is a descriptive phenomenon that underlies the language of giftedness, namely that some individuals score relatively high in intelligence—whether measured in terms of IQ or in some more holistic way—and that these individuals may confront particular challenges in addition to particular opportunities. The empirical literature on this topic is variable and often inconclusive, but anyone familiar with children who are labelled as gifted will be familiar, if only anecdotally, with the challenges they may face.

Accordingly, there are psychotherapists who specialize in working with gifted children. There are in fact two subclasses of such therapists: those who focus on so-called "twice-exceptional" children and those who work with giftedness more broadly.

"Twice-exceptional" or simply "2e" children are those who are identified as gifted and who also meet criteria for a learning or developmental disability such as ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or autism spectrum disorder. The thought animating work on "twice-exceptional" children is like that animating work with intersectional groups more broadly: They are supposed to face challenges that are not simply the sum or product of the individual challenges faced by gifted students or by students with a disability. I think, again, that there are reasons to be hesitant about the label—anyone who has spent time with children will recognize that all children are multiply-exceptional—but it is plausible that there is a real clinical phenomenon underlying it, one that "2e" therapists are specially equipped to address.

The area of gifted therapy in general can feel under-resourced; online discussions of the topic are replete with people seeking therapists for their children (or for themselves) and unable to find them. This is perhaps the nature of the category. Giftedness does not correspond to any particular psychiatric diagnosis, and the term itself may be a problematic one, for the reasons sketched above. Yet there is clearly a need here, and perhaps we would all benefit from attending more carefully to the needs of "gifted" people, be they children or adults, and considering more deeply how they might be better met.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.