Stephanie Tolan on the Gifted Ex-Child

J.K. Rowling has described herself as a girl as “short, squat, very thick glasses — that’s why Harry wears glasses.

“I was shy. I was a mixture of insecurities and very bossy to my sister, but quite quiet with strangers. Very bookish. Terrible at school. That whole thing about Harry being able to fly so well is probably total wish fulfillment.”

In her article Counseling Gifted Adults – A Case Study, counselor Paula Prober writes about Susan, who “had known that she was different since she was seven. Her thoughts and feelings had never fit into the box that was comfortable and reassuring for most children.

“Her appetite for learning was insatiable. Reading was more nourishing than food. Thinking, analyzing, and synthesizing were better than Barbie.”

From my post Gifted adults are different from an early age.

In her article Discovering the Gifted Ex-Child, Stephanie S. Tolan notes, “The experience of the gifted adult is the experience of an unusual consciousness, an extraordinary mind whose perceptions and judgments may be different enough to require an extraordinary courage.

“Large numbers of gifted adults, aware not only of their mental capacities but of the degree to which those capacities set them apart, understand this.

“For many, however, a complete honoring of the self must begin with discovering what sort of consciousness, what sort of mind they possess.

“That their own perceptions and judgments are unusual may have been obvious since childhood, but they may have spent their lives assuming that this difference was a deficit, a fault, even a defect of character or a sign of mental illness.

“Thinking independently may seem foolhardy or antisocial.”

“Who am I? is a question they may need to ask themselves all over again because the answers devised in childhood and adolescence were inaccurate or incomplete.” ///

“Meanwhile, generations of gifted children have come and gone, moving through and beyond the educational institutions where they have or have not been identified, have or have not been appropriately served.

“Does the gifted child, grown up, become an ex-gifted child? Having left childhood and school behind, has she also left behind the differences that were recognized in the ‘gifted’ label?

“Or could she more accurately be described as a gifted ex-child?”

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