Image: Podcast Episode 431: Advanced Minds, Unique Challenges – Exploring therapeutic strategies for gifted children. A Continuing Education Podcourse. Visit mtsgpodcast.com.
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Advanced Minds, Unique Challenges: Therapeutic Approaches for Gifted Children

Curt and Katie chat about therapy for gifted children, including what makes this population unique, how asynchronous development affects emotional and behavioral presentation, and the therapist traits most helpful in working with gifted clients. They look at research-informed approaches, common misdiagnoses, and how to build strong therapeutic alliances with this often misunderstood population. This is a continuing education podcourse.

Transcript

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(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)

In this podcast episode, we talk about therapy for gifted children

Therapists may not feel prepared to work with gifted children, whose needs don’t always align with neurotypical developmental models. Giftedness is often associated with high achievement, but Curt and Katie discuss the real complexity of working with these clients—especially when it comes to emotional regulation, social skills, and therapeutic alliance. They discuss therapist characteristics that support successful outcomes and offer clinical considerations to avoid pathologizing or dismissing the lived experiences of gifted kids. The episode also addresses how masking, perfectionism, and twice-exceptionality (2e) may complicate the picture.

How do Modern Therapists support gifted children in therapy?

  • What asynchronous development actually looks like
  • When gifted traits are misdiagnosed or misunderstood
  • Common clinical concerns: perfectionism, masking, identity confusion
  • How therapist intelligence, intensity, and flexibility impact the alliance
  • Why countertransference and personal bias may interfere
  • Therapist strategies for adjusting pace, language, and collaboration
  • Key research findings that inform best practices
  • The role of parents and caregiver education in clinical work
  • Brief discussion of twice-exceptionality and overlapping diagnoses

“When the adults around you don’t get you, it is excruciating.” – Katie Vernoy, LMFT

Key Takeaways for Therapists Working with Gifted Children

“Many of these kids know they’re different. What they hope to get out of therapy—whether it’s an explicit goal or not—is how to navigate those differences, not how to make everyone the same.” – Curt Widhalm, LMFT

  • Giftedness includes uneven development across cognitive, emotional, and social domains
  • Strong therapeutic relationships are more effective than any single technique
  • Therapist characteristics—such as intelligence, emotional intensity, fast thinking, and sensitivity—can help establish alliance
  • Gifted children may resist therapy if they perceive the therapist as inauthentic, condescending, or uncurious
  • Collaboration and flexibility are crucial, especially when children challenge norms or expectations
  • Masking, perfectionism, and “problem” behavior may reflect unmet emotional or developmental needs
  • Affirming the gifted child’s lived experience builds trust and improves outcomes
  • Parents often need education and support to fully understand giftedness
  • Consider 2e presentations (e.g., ADHD, autism) while avoiding a pathologizing lens

Resources on Giftedness in Therapy

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!

Continuing Education Information

Hey modern therapists, we’re so excited to offer the opportunity for 1 unit of continuing education for this podcast episode – Therapy Reimagined is bringing you the Modern Therapist Learning Community!

Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit you just need to go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, register for your free profile, purchase this course, pass the post-test, and complete the evaluation! Once that’s all completed, you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile or you can download it for your records.

You can find this full course (including handouts and resources) here: https://learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/courses/advanced-minds-unique-challenges-therapeutic-approaches-for-gifted-children

 

Continuing Education Approvals:

When we are airing this podcast episode, we have the following CE approval:

Therapy Reimagined is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LPCCs, LCSWs, and LEPs (CAMFT CEPA provider #132270). Therapy Reimagined maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Courses meet the qualifications for the listed hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Please check with your licensing board to confirm eligibility.

Please check back as we add other approval bodies: Continuing Education Information including grievance and refund policies.

 

References Mentioned in this Continuing Education Podcast

Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:

Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

A Quick Note:

Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.

Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.

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Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:

Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/

Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/

 

Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:15
Hey, modern therapists, we’re so excited to offer the opportunity for one unit of continuing education for this podcast episode. Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit, you just need to go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, register for your free profile, purchase this course, pass the post test and complete the evaluation. Once that’s all completed, you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile, or you can download it for your records. For a current list of our CE approvals, check out moderntherapistcommunity.com

Katie Vernoy 0:47
Once again, hop over to moderntherapistcommunity.com for one CE, once you’ve listened,

Curt Widhalm 0:53
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the modern therapist Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our practices, things go on in our field, this being one of our continuing education eligible episodes. Listen at the beginning and the end of the episode, or go to our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com to find out how you can get some of your continuing educations just by listening to your favorite podcast hosts. We are spending this episode talking about working with gifted children, and we’ll talk about gifted and high achieving kind of overlapping a little bit here in this. There are some nuances that might be subtle differences between the two populations, but overall, for this episode, we’re going to use this kind of interchangeably as it pertains to the ideas of working with children who are either identified or not identified as gifted. But a lot of the research is going to point out to children who are identified as gifted. The research itself also points out that there’s a lot of controversy just around the idea of what gifted, in fact, actually is. Does it pertain only to the idea of children who are academically gifted? Does it pertain to children who are gifted in other areas, such as sports, artistic, music, those kinds of areas. Based on the experience that I have working with this population in my practice, I’m going with the more liberal interpretation that this does not pertain solely to the ideas of just academic giftedness. I’m going to spread this out. But a lot of the research, I will admit, from the top of the episode does, in fact, point to mostly academic stuff. We’ll get through that mostly through the episode here. Katie looks like she is raring to comment on something before I bring in my usual question that I posit to her. So Katie, go ahead.

Katie Vernoy 2:57
All right. All right. I think the thing that I wanted to just point out before we jump in, is, I assume, and you’ll probably get into this, that children who are identified as gifted at this point, potentially it looks a little bit different than when I was a kid. I was dragged out of some classes and had an IQ test done to identify me as gifted, and I think that looks different at this point. I think there’s different things that maybe it’s, it’s more developmental, or there’s, there’s other things like that, but I just want to note that, because we also are aware of the problematic differences and the ways that IQ tests have been problematic. And so I just want to acknowledge that there’s going to be cultural differences in how things are identified and potentially treated. I think hopefully we’ll, we’ll have a little bit of that conversation in this episode as well. When I think about children being identified as gifted, it seems like there’s probably a lot of different ways that happens. And so I think we just honor that sometimes those tests and those different types of identifications may miss gifted kids of color or other types of cultural differences that potentially creates different problems.

Curt Widhalm 4:13
So speaking to the point that you’re bringing up, my children are residents of the very wonderful LA Unified School District system that does actually test all students for giftedness at a couple of points during their elementary school years. And it is kind of more of a standardized test. It doesn’t go into IQ testing that has all kinds of biases that it does in the past. I will also admit that both of my children have been identified as gifted, and so not only is this a area of my practice that I work in, but the very few things that I admit on this podcast about my personal life, there is also a parent component that we’re going to get to in this episode as well about some of the unique challenges that parents of gifted children face. We are focusing on children in this episode, Katie, in all of her wisdom, is going to have another continuing education episode coming up in the future that talks a little bit more about adults. And this episode, we’re focusing more on kids. I think that any conversation that starts about working with gifted children needs to start with a Hungarian psychologist named László Polgár. He decided that he was going to dedicate his work to studying what makes children gifted, and a lot of his theories largely went to children who are identified very early with the right environment, the right structure can be trained in order to be masters at anything. And not only did he end up doing this work, and largely a lot of his theories ended up proving to be true, but Dr. Polgár also ended up raising three very gifted, talented children of his own, Judith, Susan and Sophia. All ended up becoming various levels of grandmasters, world champions, and often were some of the first women that were attaining some of these levels. Amongst Dr. Polgár’s work set off kind of a 40 year period of what makes children gifted. How do we help identify children? How do we put them into the right environments? How do we see this as a specialized population that we can really help foster the best out of the best and we can meet the specific needs of these kinds of children. And for about 40 years, there was a lot of research that really pointed out into how to make gifted kids into even more gifted kids and high achieving. And then around the 1980s or so, a lot of the research on gifted children just stopped, and there was a period of about 20 to 25 years that really left a gap in identifying what children are doing. They were kind of pushed into the background, at least for some of the mental health side of things, this seem to coincide a lot with the timing around research should focus on clinical applications for actual mental illness kinds of aspects, especially as a lot of managed care started taking over in the 80s. And it wasn’t until around 2005 to 2008 when research kind of renewed around gifted children, and specifically, a lot of that started being geared around, hey, the No Child Left Behind Act from the I don’t know if we can call it a crowning jewel of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act seems to be leaving behind gifted children. And a lot of the research that we’ll put in our show notes, kind of from around 2005 to 2008 ends up pointing out that, due to No Child Left Behind, a lot of funding for gifted programs, GATE programs ended up kind of being pushed aside. A lot of children who are being identified as gifted, and we’re talking about, kind of like the 99th percentile of students here, are being folded back into regular education classrooms where, surprise, they’re not getting the academic stimulation that they were getting in those higher achieved classes that Katie was mentioning at the top of the episode, and that they were starting to perform less well than they had done prior to the No Child Left Behind Act. And there’s a lot of policy suggestions and stuff. But Katie as a former student, who was used to getting pulled out of classes, I was also, as a child, pulled out for classes, both for behavioral reasons, but also for some of these gifted reasons as well. Just speaking a little bit from living experience or lived experience, what was it that you really felt that those classes were as a student. Can you remember kind of what you were feeling those classes were really doing for you?

Katie Vernoy 9:26
Sure, I can start with that, but I also want to reflect on some of the research and the things that you were talking about. But let’s start with the classes. It was just kind of fun. I we went out and we learned how to I mean, this was in the 80s, so not researched, apparently, but we would learn how to code or make robots or different things like that. So it’s just interesting. And it was with other kids who oftentimes were bored in, in the regular classes as well. But I think the thing that comes to mind just kind of starting from the beginning of the research, and reflecting through, is that it is interesting that the research on gifted kids started in the 40s, and I think about all of the things that were happening in the 40s in Germany and testing humans and all of these things. And so I just want to caution on some of this, because there are a lot of human differences that I think need to be accommodated and need to be taken care of. And I also think that there are things that can be very exclusionary. It can be very impactful, both to the kid that’s being pulled out and/or, you know, constantly getting in trouble with teachers because you’re bored or you’re challenging them or whatever. And then there’s also the kids who are quote, unquote left behind, who are wondering what’s going on with these other students. And so I think it’s, I don’t know what the right answer is. I think that there’s been a lot of things that have been well intentioned and oftentimes have unexpected results, both good and bad. But looking at how I was treated as a kid, I think that there was a lot of conflict with the quote, unquote, regular teachers, the other students and the gifted classes were a place where I could just kind of be. But I know that there’s some problematic things to to that as well. So what was your experience being pulled out for the for the classes, not for the behavioral stuff? I was also pulled out for the behavioral stuff, so that sitting outside because I was talking too much, that kind of thing.

Curt Widhalm 11:33
For me, it was oftentimes a lot of faster paced classes. We would often end up doing more projects, more curriculum more quickly. And I don’t think that the school district that I was in growing up had as robust of a program as it sounds like you did. Ours was really more kind of subject specific. So my memory, a lot of it is the kids who could read really, really well and were academically further ahead as far as reading, they all got put into a different classroom that combined everybody from the grades, and then some of the other kids kind of went through whatever the regular state curriculum was. So I do remember that we ended up having to read a lot more books, a lot more projects that ended up going with it. It was going with it, it just seemed to be a lot more faster and a lot more in depth curriculum. Kind of the way that I hear some of my clients now talk about the differences that they experience, maybe not to the level, because I’m thinking more like fourth grade, fifth grade, but kind of the way that I hear AP students talk about how their curriculum is just a lot faster pace than what their peers were in, kind of the regular curriculum classes.

Katie Vernoy 12:45
And just to clarify, so, yeah, I had the subject specific stuff too. And then this we would randomly get pulled out to do stuff that was the projects. And also the AP, for those who are not in the United States, that’s advanced placement. There’s also, I think IB was one of the ones like, there’s different things where there’s, I think, ways throughout school that they’re kind of assessing readiness, level of knowledge within a specific thing, and also the ability to learn at whatever pace. And I think that does, it seems to happen in larger schools. I don’t, it would be interesting to hear from folks who grew up in more rural areas and or are living in rural areas, how that is taken care of. Because I think it’s it’s a challenge for any any school to try to meet, meet the learning level of each student and help them to actually learn the stuff, versus sit bored or trail behind and feel really lost. So I think it’s, it’s something where I think there’s some positive there, but I think it also, if people attach status to it, either pro or con, it can, it can become problematic because of what it’s suggesting for different students.

Curt Widhalm 13:57
And we’re going to get into some of the identity aspects of this as we go through the episode. And there’s a couple of researchers that have kind of picked things up in the last 15-20, years. One of the ones that I’m going to be referring to a couple of his articles is Stephen Pfeiffer in so a lot of his writings, what he talks about is that part of not only are the children and youth who are identified in this way are a misunderstood population, but part of it is just the very definitional idea. And Pfeiffer says in the USA, the federal definition states that the gifted demonstrate outstanding ability or potential and require differentiated educational programs, and includes exceptional intellectual, academic and leadership ability, creativity and artistic talent. He goes on to say, in clinical practice, however high IQ remains the predominant definitional criterion, and so most psychologists in schools across the globe use a criterion of an IQ cut score of 121, 125 or 130, so even a lot of the research ends up still muddying things up, and it still makes it a very IQ dependent thing. And we’ve already acknowledged some of the problems with IQ tests a little bit here, and we’re not going to make the episode entirely just about problems with IQ testing, but acknowledging that there are some.

Katie Vernoy 15:27
Well, and I think there’s also problems with looking for exceptional achievement to find giftedness, because, as I’m thinking of Dr. Joy DeGruy’s work on post traumatic slave syndrome, that can be a very dangerous thing and may be culturally inappropriate to stand out for the amazing things that you can do. And so, and I can think of other cultural parallels in different cultures as well. So I think identifying gifted kids may be really hard, and as you’re describing, it may be important to be able to to meet the needs of those kids.

Curt Widhalm 16:08
The first thing that we’re really going to talk about here as some of the aspects that happen with giftedness is what is referred to as atypical development. And oftentimes in the global growth of students, we’re looking for a healthy balance of socio, emotional and behavioral balances. Might be being able to have friends, not being overly reliant in one particular skill area. But what happens when those children who are gifted and are very cognitively advanced compared to their peers, and this is one of the issues that we’re going to talk about, as far as how it also shows up into therapy in just a little bit. But when a child is in a classroom where many of their peers are several standard deviations behind them in academic abilities, a lot of times that this puts them into a very precarious situation where they might not have the emotional capabilities or the social capabilities that matches that distance. So they might be super, super smart. Imagine a third grader who has the academic capabilities of an eighth grader or a freshman in high school surrounded by peers who are the 50th percentile of academic achievement. There is a very, very large academic gap between them that can create further social distances between them. And this is pointed out in some of that research that happens post No Child Left Behind that said that while we would guess and theorize that being around a classroom that provides a higher variety of students, that if you don’t actually fit in with the students who are around you, some of those social gaps are still not going to be able to be bridged very well.

Katie Vernoy 18:00
Well, and I think this was something where I remember my mom talking to me about the decision making around do you skip a grade or not. And looking at the social development as well, because that potentially aligns you more with your peers academically, but widens the social gap. And so there’s, there’s so much here where there’s not a there’s not one right fit answer, and there’s going to be some, some gap somewhere that is hard to bridge.

Curt Widhalm 18:32
This also creates some frustration for those people who are around a child like this, so talking about teachers or parents or therapists and people who listen to this podcast where recognizing that if the academic abilities or the cognitive abilities are very, very high, that not all of the socio emotional skills are going to be as high as what their academic and cognitive capabilities are. And so this third grader might have the cognitive capabilities of a high school student, but might still very much socially or emotionally be first, second grade level, and might actually be further behind their peers. And so it takes really being able to understand what that atypical development is on a case by case basis. Because for a lot of students like this, there are going to be ways that they relate very, very easily to adults and to much older people. But as you’re pointing out, and some of these questions around skipping a grade, does the social difference of skipping a grade and being behind some of the social developments of the kids a year older, are they really that much more detrimental than being at the same chronological age as the peers around them, but having a similar size, but differentially equivalent social gap from those who are chronological, chronologically, the same age.

Katie Vernoy 20:07
Well, and even just talking about the adults around you, there’s this other element of just finding the right teacher. Because I know that I was constantly, maybe more as I got a little bit older, but I was constantly at odds with teachers, not all teachers, but the teachers who were boring, who didn’t add a lot to the conversation, like it was, it was something where I know that there were teachers that thought that I was like this evil mastermind or something, or even just an irritating kid that wouldn’t stop talking. And so I think that there’s this element of becoming a problem child because of how bored I was, or because of how interested I was on a topic, and I wanted to start talking about it, even though the teacher was still talking about it, because, yeah, I already figured out what you’re saying, Teacher. I’m talking like three, three lessons down the road in my head, and now I’m going to tell the kid next to me and the kid next to me is starting to get confused, and so and so then the teacher kicks me out and puts me outside to think about what I’ve done. But I think there’s this element of figuring out how to support these kids, because, you know, we talked about this before we hit record. There’s also the 2E issue, which is, I think there’s, there’s some overlap with neurodivergence that can oftentimes also play into some of these developmental differences and brains working differently, all of those things. And so it becomes even more challenging to sit with your neurotypical peers who are also not totally understanding what you’re talking about.

Curt Widhalm 21:42
So I’m going to talk about the twice exceptional stuff a little bit later in the episode, and I’m going to frame some of the challenges that happen for gifted students through just kind of some categorical stuff, through some research over the last several years. Talking about sometimes the developmental milestones can occur quite early, which can kind of create some unique problems. There’s some articles on this by Piechowski and Robinson and Rice, some gifted are vulnerable to emotional problems because of the very characteristics that are the hallmark of giftedness. That asynchronous development that you’re talking about can generate feelings of being out of sync with their peers, and Rinn, Majority and Wiley have some articles on that. We can’t skip over, that gifted children get bullied, and that there are effects of this. And Peterson and Peterson and Ray have articles on this. Some gifted view their gift as a burden and might mask their abilities. The there might be difficulty with affect regulation or negative perfectionism that increases vulnerability to psychological problems such as anxiety and depression, and that’s written about Neumeister, Rice and Tabor and Silverman. Those are three separate articles, and there’s an appreciable number of gifted experiences that are a mismatch with the educational environment, which can create boredom, inattentiveness, underachievement and even conduct problems, as written about by Plucker, Dilley 2016, Siegel 2018 and Katie Vernoy on this very podcast.

Katie Vernoy 23:30
Yeah, I really resonated with a lot of those things. I think the thing that was coming to my mind when you were talking about some of the emotional difficulties. I had a clinical supervisor at one point that basically was saying that smart people are oftentimes depressed because they understand what’s actually going on in the world. And I think that’s, that’s that’s obviously pretty condescending of him to say, because I think he was claiming himself as a grumpy, smart person. But I think it is interesting to think about what giftedness, and I don’t know that I see it as a burden, necessarily, but it is a weird word. But seeing what that actually what havoc it can wreak on someone’s life. And also there’s, there’s also joyful things about it, too. So I don’t want to make it sound like, Oh, it’s so hard. I feel like sometimes saying that it’s really hard to be gifted is kind of like, it’s really hard to be rich, you know, like it’s, it’s a, it’s a hard thing to talk about in that humility or, you know, kind of masking abilities. I definitely, and I’ll talk about this in the episode that I’m going to do about with adults. But I can definitely see that deep breath that comes when I push back against the humility of some of my gifted adults, and they can actually claim their quote, unquote gifts, because it’s you’re rewarded for hiding them.

… 24:54
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Curt Widhalm 24:55
So some of the other issues that gifted children face in addition to anxiety, depression is social isolation, feelings of alienation, anger management, neurotic perfectionism, traumatic events and suicide ideation.

Katie Vernoy 25:12
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 25:15
Now you had brought up about twice exceptional and that this brings into it a whole another thing that we’re probably not going to do any kind of justice to really being able to talk a lot about these kinds of issues in this podcast, because we’re talking about coexisting diagnostics such as ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and some of the research also includes such things as eating disorders, as being a twice exceptional piece of this. Some of the research around this is by Peterson in 2009, Pfeiffer and Foley-Nicpon in 2018, some research also points out that twice exceptional gifted or disabled students can, in addition, have specific learning disabilities, which creates almost kind of a thrice exceptionality, and this becomes even more of a problematic match when It comes to school environments, teachers, parents and even the mental health professionals who will be working with these kinds of kids, because each one of these things, in and of themselves, can be its very own specialty, but the more and more that it becomes compounding, the more and more individualized the treatment and the environment needs to be made for these kinds of children.

Katie Vernoy 26:43
Yeah, I think it’s it’s important to acknowledge the complexity, but so we don’t get overwhelmed with it I think it makes sense to to maybe limit the conversation. But I definitely know those kids that are thrice exceptional and need accommodations that are both to support learning disabilities as well as to support giftedness and ADHD or whatever it is.

Curt Widhalm 27:07
One of the people that I mentioned, Steven Pfeiffer, one of the articles that I found to be very enlightening for this podcast, is entitled, Optimizing favorable outcomes when counseling the gifted: A best practices approach. This is from 2020 in Gifted Education International. And being able to look at some of the principles to optimize some of the favorable outcomes is looking at what some of the best empirically supported treatment protocols are in conjunction with establishing and maintaining a strong therapeutic relationship and clinical expertise on working with giftedness. The first thing that Pfeiffer does is really be able to say the first principle is, is that no one theory explains all of the ways that things can go awry. So her best empirical evidence is that…

Katie Vernoy 28:09
Things can get messed up a lot of different ways

Curt Widhalm 28:11
…can get messed up in a lot of different ways, which I’m laughing about, but it’s also so true. Because, because of the complexity that we’re talking about here, it really takes the patience to be able to sit down and pull apart that there’s not kind of a global one size fits all answer or explanation for this. He goes on to say there are useful counseling theories that can help guide, design, implement and evaluate the different treatment interventions that need to go to specific problems, and the most useful counseling theories are those that explain the process of change. That helps the therapist and ultimately the child gain focus on specific targets and objectives and insights into why the child might or might not be responding favorably, not only to the intervention, but also more globally. We’re going to talk a little bit about Pfeiffer specifically here, but the real bulk of this episode is going to focus on the specific aspects of the therapeutic alliance in working with gifted children. This is Pfeiffer’s second point, but I’m also going to be referencing an article by Hannah David. This is from 2021 in the Journal of Gifted Education and Creativity, and this article is titled The conditions for establishing a therapeutic alliance between the counselor and the gifted client. It’s amazing when we go into the research and we find articles that are specifically made for the episodes that we try to make.

Katie Vernoy 29:48
It’s so good.

Curt Widhalm 29:50
So, thank you, Hannah David, for having thoughts that we get to reference here. Hannah David talks about a lot of just even trying to identify how to go about counseling gifted children. There’s a lot of statistics that she puts as far as trying to identify a number of things here, but one of the things that she points out very early on in this article is that the APA has a Handbook of Giftedness and Talent, and reading directly from her, this 700 page, double column book consists of six parts, history and global perspectives, theories and conceptions of giftedness and talent, gifted identification and assessment, gifted education curriculum and instruction, psychological considerations and special issues, and only one chapter is about counseling.

Katie Vernoy 30:49
Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Okay,

Curt Widhalm 30:54
So even as recent as 2018 when the APA put this out there is not a lot of direction that is out there for therapists on actually counseling the gifted.

Katie Vernoy 31:10
Well, that’s awesome. So we have better advice then?

Curt Widhalm 31:16
We do, and that’s why the rest of her article and a lot of Pfeiffer’s work talk about this. So going back to David’s article here, she concentrates on the main necessary conditions for establishing an alliance between the therapist and the gifted patient. And she breaks these down into four categories, cognitive characteristics, personality traits, techniques and attitudes towards giftedness. And I think in some ways, some of the ways that I’ve even heard you in this episode talking about giftedness, and some of the hedging around some of the language does speak to there is an attitude about giftedness that is totally going to affect the way that therapy ends up happening. Some of it, especially for those with lived experience that have gone through some of these issues, this is going to become really important as far as this part of our discussion here. In cognitive characteristics, the first thing that Hannah David points out is high intelligence of the therapist.

Katie Vernoy 32:24
So the first thing is, if you’re gonna work with gifted kids, you gotta be a smarty pants.

Curt Widhalm 32:30
That is what Hannah David says.

Katie Vernoy 32:34
I mean, I can see that, I can see that having similar mental acuity, or whatever it is, or even in other types of giftedness, right? That the client that you’re saying is a truly gifted artist, and you are a gifted singer or whatever, something where there’s at least some understanding of what that means, what that feels like. I could see how that lived experience would be important. It also feels kind of weird to say.

Curt Widhalm 33:00
David points to some research by Yermish in 2010 that speaks to some of this theoretical question of whether a non gifted therapist can establish a therapeutic alliance with a gifted patient. Yermish ends up saying that gifted therapist has better prospects to succeed in counseling gifted clients than a less intelligent one. I am reading from the research folks. Now, there doesn’t seem to be research that directly challenges the giftedness of a therapist and in some kind of randomized control study sort of way, along with working with gifted children that has any kind of outcome studies that go to it. So a lot of the research that is discussed here talks about therapist testimonies, as well as the disappointment of families whose children had complained about previous unsuccessful treatments, with children saying things such as, the therapist didn’t understand me. Unfortunately, when children complain about the intelligence of their therapists, their teachers, the other people in their lives, a lot of times, gifted children are given socially nice construction, such as, it’s not nice to speak about professionals as if they’re stupid.

Katie Vernoy 34:26
Oh no, I’m thinking about things that I did to my teachers and how I got that same feedback.

Curt Widhalm 34:32
Or that your problem is that you think that you’re smarter than others. So admonishing children who are telling the truth from A their experience and B, with some of this atypical development, is not creating an environment that actually makes learning or therapy actually that effective.

Katie Vernoy 34:56
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 34:57
In this article, it also talks about a student and a brief little anecdote here, the student could not receive valid judgment from his parents at all. After all, unconditional love and validation is what parents are supposed to do. With his teachers, Zachary believed, rightly or wrongly, that they lacked the intellectual capacity to be valid judgments of what his experience is, and based on joint meetings with middle school staff, Zachary’s perceptions seemed accurate, although very well intentioned, the teachers were largely not themselves capable of being valid role models for what it means to be a gifted adult. So this is really where being able to identify with some of the lived experiences is very paramount to being able to relate to children. Not that Reddit is the absolute best example of places that we should be citing, but there is a subreddit for it’s called r/gifted. And if you type therapy into the search on that, a lot of the results that come up talk about people’s experiences growing up with having non gifted therapists and how it didn’t feel like they’re able to relate to the therapists in any way. And occasionally you’ll you’ll come across posts that do point out I found a therapist who actually gets me, and it turns out, hey, they were gifted too. And unsurprising to some of the theories that you’ve posited here in the podcast, many of the people also identified that they’re going through ADHD testing process.

Katie Vernoy 36:37
Speaking of Reddit and social media, I’m just thinking about as a kid being told that you’re not nice, that you’re wrong. You just think you’re smarter than everyone. I’m going to use a popular, overused term. I mean, oftentimes we’re gaslighting gifted kids.

Curt Widhalm 36:55
Yeah, and they can see it.

Katie Vernoy 36:57
And they can see it, and so you disengage. I think that there’s probably definitely attachment wounds or different things that are going to lead to trying to mimic other kids, trying to be good, lots of masking. I mean, I think that there’s a lot that can go into that, but when the adults around you don’t get you, it is excruciating.

Curt Widhalm 37:23
I get that, and I think that this leads nicely into the next thing, which is its own separate category. So we’ve talked about the high intelligence of the therapist, but this is also the knowledge about giftedness.

Katie Vernoy 37:37
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 37:37
And because there’s not a lot of research out there about the lived experience of giftedness, many therapists are left to talk about what their own experiences are in order to be able to relate to clients, including some of the things that you and I are talking about, as far as being mismatched with the system and what that actually feels like on a day to day basis. And instead of having this concept about giftedness, one of the things that gifted children can point out is when non gifted people who portray having a knowledge of giftedness don’t accurately be able to speak about what that lived experience is. One of the anecdotes in the David article talks about in the Israeli education system, a high ranking official in the Israeli department of gifted education said that all gifted children are introverted, I know because my daughter is gifted. And so this speaks to that, that lived experience is again, kind of a crucial aspect, because if there is labeling or discussing aspects of here’s what all gifted children are. Gifted children who don’t fit that might not feel validated. That’s its first problem. But second, are going to say you don’t actually understand me at all. This is an area of expertise that does require a special experience, and not to say that non gifted therapists can’t work with this population, but it does take a special set of intentional ways of approaching, for the purposes of this episode, of approaching gifted children and treating them as individuals so that way, it ends up becoming not just kind of an academic knowledge that’s being thrown at these kids, but an environment that creates a very good therapeutic space that says I can understand and I get it. I get what you’re going through.

Katie Vernoy 39:48
And I believe you, and I’m going to really try to understand your perspective, even if it’s not the same as mine.

Curt Widhalm 39:55
Yes.

Katie Vernoy 39:56
Because I think oftentimes, and this is just good. Child therapy, but I think oftentimes society looks at children as problems to solve, as objects to mold, you know, little little beings to discipline or train. And I think when we actually start thinking about how to treat them with kind of an individual lens, it opens up different things. And I think that can also be of help to gifted kids who can be thrown into the, you know, manipulative, bad kid pot too easily.

… 40:36
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Curt Widhalm 40:37
And David, in the next category of this talks about the the the next skills that a therapist needs to have is that early development requires adjusting the treatment to the child’s mental age. And so even for therapists who work with kids that you have to be able to adjust and know the differences of what certain developmental markers are between a typical child and a gifted child. For example, typical children engaging in therapy, imagine a seven year old. A seven year old is going to come into the office and they’re going to do seven year old things. But young gifted children might attempt to manipulate counselors in ways that are typical of older children. David uses the example of a seven year old might test a counselor by asking intrusive personal questions such as, why have you been married three times? What kind of an expert are you?

Katie Vernoy 41:34
I’m picturing little Curt saying that.

Curt Widhalm 41:41
Yermish also refers to the age factor, to take into consideration that it’s crucial to accept that these individuals have great needs for autonomy and collaboration within the relationship, even at a very young age. My experience a lot of children who see many of the adults around them who are supposed to be the ones leading the way, but when the kids know better ways to get things done, are thrust into a space of autonomy at a lot younger age, not in a way that is kind of a that they’re left behind, but it’s because they just rush ahead to go and do things themselves, and so being able to respect, especially working with kids, respect that rush for autonomy, and giving some of that space of autonomy, is one of the ways to building therapeutic alliance.

Katie Vernoy 42:32
The ability to weather the questions of why and how does that work, and pull it all apart and put it back together. I think if I had ever heard this is just how we do it from a therapist as a kid, I would, that would be I’d be done. I need to understand, I need to know how these choices were made, because oftentimes I’m going to think of a better way to do it, or those types of things. And so being able to have a deep understanding of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and being able to collaborate and think outside the box and let go of some rigidity, I think, is also very, very important in the conversations you might have with gifted kids.

Curt Widhalm 43:17
Many gifted children have exceptional abilities, and higher than a lot of adults even. And therapists who are working with this population have to be aware of those abilities and being able to put it into the context of the child’s overall presentation. And so when we’re thinking about the ways that gifted children act out, it might be in ways that are very much beyond what their chronicle age is, but when we were talking earlier about that atypical development, if their social or emotional is much further behind than that, we may see gifted students acting out in ways that are hacking into computer systems to change grades, and ways that are capabilities that are far beyond what their chronological age is, but are socially and emotionally very equivalent to being much younger. So being able to really, as a therapist, work with kids in this population is being able to hold a lot of those different aspects together. And in the last category of the cognitive characteristics that David suggests is that therapists perceiving reality as black or white, therapists really have to take a step back. And she cites Trujillo in 2018, children might ascribe very assertive tendencies. This is the right and wrong way of living, positive versus negatives, goods versus bads, beautiful versus ugly. That is, this is my interpretation of the article. it’s going to come across as very judgmental, because some of those social and emotional capabilities might not be matched as thoughtfully as where some of the cognitive assertations are being made. David goes on to talk about some of the personality traits that therapists need to have, in addition to a lot of the cognitive traits. I’m not going to go through all of these in depth, but the I’m going to highlight a couple of them. Therapists need to have emotional or affect intensity, and this is really being able to match some of the excitement and the vigor that kids at this age have. You can’t really sit with kids like this and not get amped up and being able to model how to handle some of the excitement in a way that matches a kid’s enthusiasm for things.

Katie Vernoy 45:59
That’s an interesting one. I hadn’t thought about it, but I definitely know that that is such a great mirroring, as well as modeling of ways to address the intensity. And I think it’s also something where it becomes the ability to share excitement and join around different types of topics or insights or those types of things. So I definitely have used that. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. That’s interesting.

Curt Widhalm 46:30
One of the things for the David article, who says is a counselor who is not intense will probably find it hard to deal with very intense patients, and especially to respond to them in need, even potentially beyond session times. It’s not a recommendation to always be accessible or always be there, but rather to be equipped with what is seemingly an innate trait that makes this possible when needed. And some research that David cites from Bouchet and Falk 2001, and Mendaglio and Tillier in 2006 suggests that this might actually be tied to the therapist’s temperament and cannot be taught.

Katie Vernoy 46:56
Hmm. So the ability to navigate intensity is is a untrainable thing?

Curt Widhalm 47:21
It seems that you have to go into it and you have to be able to model and be able to match some of that affect, and if it’s not something that comes naturally to you, you would have to spend a lot of time working on changing your personality.

Katie Vernoy 47:40
Okay, well, good thing we’re intense.

Curt Widhalm 47:44
Some of the other things that David points out is therapists have to be fast thinking. And sitting and contemplating and trying to remain calm during sessions, during ongoing debates about contributions to any number of aspects of topics that might come up, that you have to be fast thinking in order to work with this, whether it be about the subject matters itself that is being discussed or about the very process of therapy and interventions, because gifted children might be moving very much ahead of where you are at in the conversation.

Katie Vernoy 48:23
I like that, and I think that there is benefit to modeling your brain moving a little slower. Being able to have your brain move really quickly, I think is a really important one. I know that I may talk about, like, you know, in the adult one that the ability to kind of model, how do you slow down your brain, because I think my brain moving quickly can be burdensome at times, but I know when I’m talking to somebody and they’re not keeping up and/or aren’t moving quickly enough, they’re not able to keep saying the same pace with me, I feel like I’m just like, I’m sitting and waiting and like, you can’t see me, but I’m like, like, rocking, just like, Okay, I feel like I’m like, revving and just waiting for the turn to to speak, versus having the conversation, have it go and have it be the thing, right?

Curt Widhalm 49:12
Right.

Katie Vernoy 49:13
And so I do think that that’s important to be able to have that quick mind. I think that there may be other things to think about, and I’ll do some research on that before the gifted adults episode, but I think that there’s this element of something that can’t be trained either.

Curt Widhalm 49:27
And again, David’s talking about this is just in establishing the therapeutic alliance. So what you’re talking about as far as being able to model slowing down and thinking things that might be more long term therapy goals, but we’re talking about, potentially the first three or less sessions. This might even be something in the first session that you’ve got to be able to demonstrate being able to keep up, otherwise this kid’s going to say the therapist didn’t keep up with me, right? Therapy sucks.

Katie Vernoy 49:56
Yeah.

Curt Widhalm 49:57
The next thing that David talks about is having flexibility. It’s a necessary component for any good counselor, but being able to really connect with the child’s world. If the therapist isn’t flexible enough, the child might not decide to give the therapist a second chance and won’t return for another session.

Katie Vernoy 50:18
Well, and I think disclosure also can be problematic if the therapist isn’t flexible enough.

Curt Widhalm 50:25
And so that’s being able to kind of accommodate a child coming into the room, being able to jump from subject to subject, while not enabling the child to just kind of take over, you know, the therapy room. But if there are odd issues or out of the blue questions that tend to appear, the therapist needs to be able to be flexible enough to switch to whatever the child is bothered about or wishes to discuss without trying to keep too many guardrails on the conversation. The last thing here is sensitivity. So in addition to all of this stuff, you need to be sensitive to the gifted child about more than the awareness of their emotional needs, the moods or state of mind, but also paying attention to any number of extra sensory issues that might be showing up that might also indicate one of those other diagnostics that we talk about that often co-occur with these.

Katie Vernoy 51:27
That’s a lot to just create the initial relationship, but it all, it all, it all tracks.

Curt Widhalm 51:34
Then we get into actual techniques. And these are some of the things to do. I have a DBT person. A lot of what we’ve talked about so far is kind of the how you do it. Now we’re getting more into the what to dos. And if everything so far seems not difficult enough, this is also being able to really just work with the child in order to for a lot of children, it’s being able to play. It’s being able to engage them in playing together. However, a lot of children coming from this are going to want to do other things rather than always play. So it’s going to need to have some kind of intention that addresses some of the issue that the child is there for. So this is a population that is going to respond to there kind of needs a point to something that we’re doing here. I might come in and I might fiddle with some of the toys on the shelf, and I might be playing with a variety of things, but hey lady, what’s the point? Or, hey therapist, what are you actually doing here? I’ve got better things to do. Being able to get in and engage. Also having well thought out rules and being able to explain what they are and the reasoning behind them.

Katie Vernoy 52:53
I think co creating rules is even better. But continue.

Curt Widhalm 52:57
One of the things that David talks about it here, even more specifically, is eating during session. And she points out that there’s common agreement that a hungry child is not able to fully participate in a therapeutic session. However, there has to be strict rules, including parent input into if the child is allowed to eat in the session, and that to make issues non negotiable. Now, I agree with you that co-creating some rules is necessary as part of any good child therapy, and it is also very good here, but when we’re talking about gifted children and their ability to out think and move well past you Well, why is this rule here? Why is this rule here? For me, I haven’t done anything to break this rule. That are all very reasonable and logical questions that a therapist needs to be prepared to explain a lot of what the rules and the reasoning behind things are, and be prepared that these kinds of questions are going to come up, and that they’re non negotiable, because I hear a lot of parents say, my child is going to become an attorney when they grow up. They’re already on their way. They just need the law degree. And it’s because of this ability to turn anything into a philosophical, quizzical argument that at the very least, they will win just by grinding you down.

Katie Vernoy 54:28
Unless that is where you live. I’m sure that’s how you win, Curt.

Curt Widhalm 54:33
We had also talked about and circling back on this conversation, I’m going to open this up for a little bit more, rather than just kind of a little bit more discussion, rather than kind of just telling you what’s in some of these articles. Attitudes about giftedness. Now David and Pfeiffer both talk about that there is a perception about the possible failure of establishing trust or conveying unconditional positive regards in creating a therapeutic alliance. But part of what we have to look at in working with kids in this aspect, is what is our own ideas about what giftedness means? Not just what is the technical definition of who qualifies or not. That’s a philosophical argument that needs to get someplace else. But what are some of the hesitations that we bring in, in being able to talk about giftedness? What are some of the aspects that we have as far as saying, Well, you do need to relate to normies as well. That might become something that, in its own way, threatens the therapeutic alliance, because it becomes invalidating to the gifted child’s world.

Katie Vernoy 55:48
What is your strategy? Is there a presenting issue that this is a gifted kid? Is it an assessment you’re making in the first session, and then you have a way to talk about it? It seems like to me that you might have a parent say, my kid’s really smart, I need to have somebody that can keep up with them, whatever, whatever. And it could be that they’re gifted. It could be that they’re just, you know, reasonably smart kid, right? So I think there’s this element of assessment that needs to happen. But then how do you actually talk about giftedness with kids?

Curt Widhalm 56:19
In my practice is called Real Honest Therapy. I do this because I at least attempt to be very real and honest about things. When it comes to the gifted question, the way that people perceive things, I align myself with the child in talking about the kinds of messages that they receive. And so in this particular example, the way that that might sound is, I bet you get told a lot that you need to be nicer to kids that don’t seem as smart as you, and so it’s creating kind of an alliance by triangulating against the messages that they’re receiving.

Katie Vernoy 56:56
And also against normies. But that’s a whole other thing.

Curt Widhalm 56:59
Hey, what goes on in my therapy rooms is tailored to each individual client, and in no ways there’s these global beliefs that I hold okay. But by aligning in this way, what it does is allows to create kind of a co opted ability to meet the DBT both and. Hey, I get you. I also don’t disagree with that message.

Katie Vernoy 57:25
Hmm.

Curt Widhalm 57:27
And it does challenge some of that black and white thinking that we had mentioned earlier in the episode, as far as ways that things might show up for children who are showing up in your office this way. But being able to validate, hey, here’s something that you hear a lot without necessarily making a judgment that that is correct or that is incorrect does help to address this very problem.

Katie Vernoy 57:51
Yeah, but I want to go back to your point around understanding your own impressions or philosophical stance on giftedness and potentially any bias that is present. Because I can see, you know, the all gifted people are introverts, because I have a daughter that’s an introvert and gifted. I think there’s a lot of there are a lot of differences between an adult therapist who was gifted, was identified as gifted as a kid and went through things, and kids who are potentially gifted now. There are some things that are different. So I think it does make sense to understand what hang ups you have and also what you can bring to the table. So I don’t know that I’m saying anything revolutionary there, but just that it does make sense to both show and claim to lived experience, but also recognize that there might be bias or differential experiences that you need to pay attention to.

Curt Widhalm 58:52
And it’s very important to address your own countertransference around this very idea. And I know that there are a lot of people who mask giftedness, and it might be some of you who are listening to this now that have your own lived experiences, as far as, hey, this pushed me really outside of being able to fit in with the kids around me. This was a survival tactic that I ended up using, but we really have to address what our own countertransference is if we’re going to be working with a population like this. If we’re afraid of being able to talk about gifted children, if we’re afraid to talk about high achieving children, because we don’t want to push them into an area where they feel that they are going to be pushed or identified for outstanding talents or capabilities or potential, we have to look at, is that based on our own experiences? Is it based in what is actually the needs of this child here? Or potentially even more toxic to the therapeutic alliance, if we’re afraid to venture into this because of anxiety or feelings of our own inferiority, of not being good enough in working with children who have very large capabilities. We can end up undermining a lot of the therapeutic alliance by trying to make everybody feel good or get kids who are identified as gifted to be nicer to the typical kids that they go to school with, with such social niceties as well everybody has the potential to be gifted. And these kinds of things can become very, very invalidating to the therapeutic alliance, because a lot of these kids know that they’re different. A lot of these kids struggle with what those differences are and what they’re going to hope to get out of therapy, whether it’s an explicit goal or not, is how to navigate those differences, not how to make everyone the same.

Katie Vernoy 1:01:00
I like that point. I don’t know if it reflects my experience exactly, but it does, it does resonate some. And I think being able to acknowledge the difference and have the difference just be that it’s a difference, it’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just a difference, while also being able to claim the joy and the benefit of this difference, and acknowledging the challenge and the trauma that can come from this difference. Having that space would have been really helpful for me. But you said something that I want to talk about just really briefly. I think it may be more we keep referencing this other episode, but I think it may be more there, but not all gifted kids are high achieving, and not all high achieving kids are gifted. And I think part of that is the expectations that can be put on gifted kids and the lack of awareness or understanding that some gifted kids do not want to be high achieving, or do not feel worthy to be high achieving, or whatever it is that there’s something there. And gifted kids can be reduced to their talents, to their potential and not seen as a whole human and so I think that there’s this element of not putting your relationship to achievement into the therapeutic relationship with a gifted kid.

Curt Widhalm 1:02:36
And a lot of the success that I have in working with kids and teenagers with this is it’s about achieving therapeutic goals. And one of the things that I hear from some of the clients that I have that have worked with other therapists is that the therapists get tied into the external world goals that a gifted student might have, and it might come from parental pressures. Hey, you need to get a five on your AP test, or you need to win this academic challenge sort of thing, or any number of other achievement oriented things that I work with some really cool kids that are doing very, very fascinating things out in the world. And it’s not just academically, but it’s a lot of spaces where achievement can end up happening. But the thing that makes therapy work is making the therapy about achieving the therapeutic goals, and it’s being able to do a lot of the things that David and Pfeiffer are talking about in these research articles. It’s the how you are with them, while keeping it towards the All right, let’s get this phase of your life done by doing X, Y and Z. And it might be, hey, I’m having a hard time relating to people, or I’m wanting a more normal child experience. And some of it is being able to work through some of the realities and the differences as far as addressing some of those social or emotional gaps. But keeping a reminder to here’s the therapeutic goals that we’re working on is what best aligns therapists to be successful with these kinds of kids.

Katie Vernoy 1:04:22
I can see that taking a lot of navigation from parents who see their kids as high achievers and gifted, and that is what they need to be doing. They need to have a bazillion activities. They need to do all these things. And I think I talked about this in another episode, so I’ll try to figure out which one it is and put it is, and put it over in our show notes, over at mtsgpodcast.com, but the work that I’ve done, I think, especially with teens, high achieving teens, is really based in this idea that if we can tap into their intelligence, their their thoughtfulness, those types of things, to make decisions in their life, and actually opt in and think, think their own thoughts, and all of that, versus kind of being drawn along the path of achievement and drawn along on this path to, you know, club sports and this school and these goals and all of those things to actually get to a place of self determination that feels more successful in the long term for me, and potentially is even a process that needs to happen to be able to set treatment goals that are the kids versus society’s desire to efficiently use these talents for the greater good.

Curt Widhalm 1:05:50
I have just one last point that I want to make in working with gifted kids, and I had mentioned this earlier in the episode, it’s also the work that goes alongside working with the parents, and some of this is you could not have set this up better for me. So thank you for bringing us to the end of the episode here, Katie. Bozoglan has a 2021 article, a system mat, A systemic intervention model for the parents of gifted children. This is from Current Psychology, and this ends up being involved in something that I don’t think a lot of therapists are going to do, which is running groups of for parents of gifted kids. A lot of schools that have gifted programs, I am seeing more there are opportunities for parents of gifted kids to have either seminars or spaces to be able to learn more about giftedness, which is the Paramount aspect of working with the parents. Some of the biggest aspects of doing family based applications is being able to meet some of the goals for parents, as far as or the meaning of giftedness for parents about their kids, navigating how teachers and children can work together, advantages and drawbacks of giftedness, signs of hiding the giftedness from others, involvement in group work on regular school days, comparing even some of the gender differences that happen between those identified as boys and girls, and challenging and comfortable times as a gifted child. And these are all things that should be kind of the parallel work with parents, in addition to working with the child in order to help parents understand some of this giftedness as well, especially for parents who don’t have their own lived experiences of being gifted growing up as well, because some of the biggest aspects that create problems is when parents don’t understand giftedness and therefore either minimize it or diminish it or encourage some of these hiding behaviors themselves.

Katie Vernoy 1:08:02
Or shame it, or there’s so much harm that can happen when a child is not seen or validated. And in this experience of being a gifted child and having some folks in my life, my parents were actually really good with it, but my teachers were not, and it definitely was something that led to a lot of different behaviors that I’ll talk about in the adult episode.

Curt Widhalm 1:08:33
You can find our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. Listen at the beginning of the episode, or check out those very show notes for how you can getCEs for listening to this episode. Follow us on our social media to continue on with the conversations, including in our Facebook group the Modern Therapist Group. My practice, I do work with gifted children, and Katie works with people who used to be children who are also gifted. My practice can be found at realhonesttherapy.com, your practice at katievernoy.com and until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy.

… 1:09:07
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Katie Vernoy 1:09:08
Just a quick reminder, if you’d like one unit of continuing education for listening to this episode, go to moderntherapistcommunity.com, purchase this course and pass the post test. A CE certificate will appear in your profile once you’ve successfully completed the steps.

Curt Widhalm 1:09:23
Once again, that’s moderntherapistcommunity.com.

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