Emotional Intensity and Sensitivity in Gifted Children

Lesley Sword
Friday evening, 8:40

The intensity with which emotionally gifted children experience their world can be unsettling and often disturbing for their parents, teachers and peers. Because of their sensitivity to their environment and to other people, they are often over-protected from the world. However, if understood, emotional intensity can become emotional intelligence which can then be used as a strength. Children can be given a positive framework for emotional intensity and be helped to understand and value this gift. In this way emotionally intense children will be empowered to express their unique selves in the world and use their gifts and talents with confidence and joy.

From her personal experience and using examples from working with gifted children and adults, Lesley Sword will discuss with parents:

This discussion will be interactive and parents are encouraged to bring their own stories of living with emotionally intense gifted children.

 

Biography

Lesley Sword is a registered psychologist in private practice and a trained teacher who has worked with gifted children, their parents and teachers for many years. She has particular interest and expertise in the area of the emotional intensity and sensitivity of gifted children and adults.

Lesley is an accredited service provider with the Victorian Education Department Gifted Unit. She has studied with Professor Barbara Kerr from Arizona State University and Professor Nicholas Colangelo from the University of Iowa. In 1998 Lesley studied and worked in the USA with Dr Linda Silverman at the Gifted Development Center and completed the Certificate of Emotional Development and Emotional Giftedness with Dr Michael Piechowski at the University of Denver. In 1999 she again visited the USA to work and study with Dr Annemarie Roeper in Oakland, California and with the Roeper School for the Gifted in Detroit.

 

Seminar: Sunday 10:05

Understanding the Emotional, Intellectual and Social Uniqueness of Growing Up Gifted

Lesley Sword

Gifted children not only think differently to other children, they also feel differently. It is the combination of complex and deep thinking and rich and intense emotion that produces gifted children’s greater potential for high achievement. The gifted intellect provides a myriad of possibilities and sees ideals and the gifted emotion provides the intense drive towards achieving the ideals. In addition, personality characteristics such as idealism, expanded moral awareness and introversion combine to give gifted children a qualitatively different way of experiencing the world. For gifted children’s social and emotional wellbeing, it is imperative that these differences are understood as "normal for gifted" by teachers and parents and that they be helped express their unique selves in the world.

 

Workshop: Sunday 1:45

You Teach In Words; I Think In Pictures: The Gifted Visual Spatial Learner

Lesley Sword

Many gifted children have a specific learning difficulty that depresses both their IQ and achievement test scores so that they appear to be "average" students. This means that they are frequently not identified as gifted and so do not have access to educational programming that would meet their academic needs. In addition their high intelligence enables them to compensate for their weaknesses so that their learning difficulty goes undetected. These children are Visual Spatial learners with an auditory sequential learning difficulty. Visual -spatial learners think in images and they must visualise in order to learn. There is a mismatch between their learning style and the auditory logical sequential way in which school material is usually presented to them. These children struggle through school often being labelled as "lazy" students who won’t do the work, when in reality, they can’t do the work. Many drop out before finishing secondary schooling. This workshop will provide information on identifying gifted Visual Spatial learners, their strengths and weaknesses and strategies for teaching them

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