Parenting gifted children with AD/HD Page 1 of 3

Parenting gifted children with AD/HD

Moon, S. M.
Parenting for High Potential
National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)
June 2001

This article by Sidney Moon presents the view that gifted students with multiple exceptionalities are one of the
most neglected subpopulations. The author's own son was diagnosed when he was in middle school. She shares
her experiences and what leads her to believe there is neglect.

One of the most neglected subpopulations of gifted students with multiple exceptionalities is gifted children with
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). I first became interested in gifted children with AD/HD when one
of my sons was diagnosed with AD/HD in middle school. The diagnosis transformed my son's life. Behaviors,
habits, and frustrations that had been inexplicable suddenly made sense to both my son and me. For example, we
understood for the first time why he had so much difficulty staying in his seat at meal times and why he was
underachieving in school. Perhaps more importantly, we had a direction for the development of coping strategies.
Once my son understood the nature of his disorder, he was able to use his intelligence to develop strategies to
overcome it. Over the next six years, he transformed himself into a well-adjusted, well-disciplined, and high-
achieving college student with a large circle of friends.

My experience with my son was further reinforced in my family counseling practice where I specialized in working
with families of gifted children. I found that most of the families who came to me for help had children with
multiple exceptionalities and that the most frequent additional exceptionality was AD/HD. As I worked with these
families over a period of ten years, I experienced firsthand their frustrations with both the behavioral effects of the
disorder and the inability of schools to meet their child's needs.

To learn more about the characteristics of gifted children with AD/HD, I worked with a colleague with expertise in
AD/HD to design a comparative case study. The purpose of our study was to compare the characteristics of three
boys with both giftedness and AD/HD to boys who had only one of the two exceptionalities. In other words, were
compared our gifted boys with AD/HD to three gifted boys without AD/HD and three boys with AD/HD whose
intelligence was in the average range. We focused our study on the learning characteristics of the students and
their emotional, social, and family characteristics. We found that the gifted children in our study with AD/HD were
quite vulnerable to social/emotional adjustment problems. Their emotional difficulties included immaturity,
emotionality, and struggles coping with the large gap between their delayed social/emotional development and
their advanced cognitive development. Social problems included annoying and/or aggressive social behavior and
difficulties handling peer rejection.

The social/emotional difficulties experienced by the boys with AD/HD and giftedness in our study were judged by
our research team to be more severe than those experienced by all three boys with AD/HD alone and much more
severe than those experienced by the other two boys with giftedness alone. The remaining gifted boy was
experiencing social/emotional difficulties we attributed to a recent divorce and remarriage. To put it simply, the
boys with giftedness and AD/HD in our study were experiencing a lot of stress, as were their families.

Parenting strategies that seemed to help buffer the stress were different for participants who were intellectually
gifted than for other participants. Parents of the gifted boys reported that their child was helped by one-on-one
conversations about rules and the reasons for them, nurturing the child's creativity, and encouraging
independence. Parents of the boys with average intelligence, on the other hand, reported that their children were
helped by shared family activities such as fishing, wrestling, playing games, going for drives, or attending car
shows. These differences may have been due to differences in stimulation preferences in the two groups. All the
boys with AD/HD also needed higher than normal levels of stimulation for optimal functioning, which is typical of
children with AD/HD. However, the boys with AD/HD and average intelligence preferred concrete, sensory, and
social stimulation (e.g., sports, building things, computers, group learning), whereas the intellectually gifted boys
with AD/HD preferred cognitive, language-based, and imaginative stimulation (e.g., learning, reading, creative
dramatics).

Unfortunately, intellectual giftedness did not protect our participants from the problems associated with AD/HD.
Indeed, all six boys with AD/HD had similar difficulties getting on track (organizing, attending to and following
directions, starting the day, starting text-based assignments), staying on track (failing to sustain attention or work
production, underachievement), and managing group work and homework. Such difficulties are typical in children
with attention deficits and often appear to adults to represent lack of motivation when they really result from
impairments in the brain circuits responsible for self-regulation. The boys with giftedness alone, on the other hand,
liked school and had excellent attentional profiles, with the exception of one boy who was experiencing
considerable family stress. In summary, boys with giftedness and AD/HD in our study had difficulty succeeding
academically and socially in classrooms designed for gifted students where most of their gifted peers had strong
self-regulatory and social abilities.

The National Research Center on the Gifted/Talented commissioned Felice Kaufmann, Layne Kalbfleisch, and
Xavier Castellanos to write a monograph answering the question "What do we really know about attention deficit
disorders and gifted students?" Their monograph stresses that researchers have neglected this population of
students so we don't yet know as much as we need to know to help them. What we do know is that it is vital to
identify gifted children with AD/HD early and accurately in order to maximize their potential and prevent them
from being misunderstood by adults and themselves. They conclude their monograph with ten recommendations
for working with intellectually gifted children who have been identified by a comprehensive assessment as having
AD/HD. The following five of their recommendations are particularly relevant to parents.

1. Explore multiple perspectives in your pursuit of information about AD/HD. Because there is currently little in
print on gifted children with AD/HD and very few school personnel are trained to work with them, parents
need to inform themselves. The best way to do this is to learn about the characteristics of giftedness and the
characteristics of AD/HD, noting which characteristics from each exceptionality seem relevant to your child
(see resources at the end of this article).

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2. Become familiar with a variety of educational and behavioral strategies to determine which combinations
might be effective for the individual child. My own experience in working with gifted children with AD/HD
suggests that "what works" is very individualized. Therefore, parents and children need to be creative in
thinking of possible coping strategies. This requires both knowledge of the workings of AD/HD and a lot of
experimentation to determine the strategies that will be successful for a particular child. For example, the
need of the AD/HD child for additional stimulation when working on routine tasks might be met by listening to
music and/or watching television while working, taking frequent activity breaks, or trying to accomplish a
certain amount of work before a 3-minute egg timer goes off. Parents can suggest some of these strategies
and then encourage their child to try them on an experimental basis. Since all strategies tend to have a short
shelf-life with this population (i.e., they stop working when the novelty wears off), the process may need to
be repeated frequently.

3. Be cautious about promises of "quick fixes" whether behavioral, educational, or medical. AD/HD is a real
disorder that cannot be "cured," only managed. There are no quick fixes. It takes time, persistence, and
patience to help a child with AD/HD overcome his or her disability.

4. Be aware that individuals with AD/HD have their greatest difficulties in the "output" stage of cognitive
processing. This recommendation points to one of the greatest frustrations experienced by these children and
those who care about them. They can plan but they can't implement. They have the will but not the way.
They set goals but can't achieve them. Their disorder affects their ability to self-regulate and to output what
they know. Parents need to understand that gifted children with AD/HD may lag 2-4 years behind gifted
children without the disorder in their ability to self-monitor, handle long-term projects, and keep track of their
belongings. Parents can help by working with their child to identify "small steps" they can take to improve
these abilities and by being patient with slow progress.

5. Model and support the process of "knowing thyself." This may be the most important recommendation for
parents of gifted children with AD/HD. To be successful in life, these children must come to know themselves
very well. They must recognize and celebrate their strengths while finding ways to compensate for their
weaknesses. Yet gaining self-knowledge is difficult for them due to the nature of their disorder. They need
emotional support, accurate feedback, and positive modeling to understand and accept themselves. In my
experience, parents are absolutely crucial to the development of gifted children with AD/HD. Parents know
the whole child. They have observed their child's development and characteristics firsthand over many years.
They are in the best position to provide the unconditional love and patient support that are so essential to
these children. If you suspect that your child demonstrates both high ability and AD/HD, don't assume that
you have to proceed entirely on your own, or that the school will recognize the challenge easily. Do not
hesitate to express your concerns to your child's teacher, principal, or counselor, or to make an appointment
to discuss your child's behavior with the gifted education coordinator or special education director. Share with
them the behavior that you are observing in your child, and ask for their assistance and support. The
recommended resources below provide a starting point for parents who want to learn more about AD/HD in
order to better understand and nurture their child, or who want to share information with concerned
educators.

Dr. Sidney M. Moon is Professor and Director, Gifted Education Resource Institute, Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN.

Recommended Resources
Books
Barkely, R. A. (1995). Taking Charge of ADHD: The Complete, Authoritative Guide for Parents. New York: Guilford.

Cohen, M. W. (1998). The Attention Zone: A Parents' Guide to Attention Deficit/hyperactivity Disorder.
Washington, D.C.: Brunner/Mazel.

Fowler, M. (1992). Attention Deficit Disorders: Educator's Manual. Fairfax, VA: Children and Adults with Attention
Deficit Disorders (CH.A.D.D.).

Garber, S. W., Garber, M. D., & Spizman, R. F. (1996). Beyond Ritalin: Facts About Medication and Other
Strategies for Helping Children, Adolescents, and Adults With Attention Deficit Disorders. New York: Harper
Perennial.

Kaufmann, F., Kalbfleisch, M. L., & Castellanos, F. X. (2000). Attention Deficit Disorders and Gifted Students:
What Do We Really Know? (RM00146). Storrs, CT: The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented,
University of Connecticut.

Reif, S. F. (1993). How To Reach and Teach ADD/ADHD Children: Practical Strategies, and Interventions for
Helping Children With Attention Problems and Hyperactivity. West Nyack, NY: The Center for Applied Research in
Education.

Websites
The National Attention Deficit Disorder Association:www.add.org

CHADD: Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: www.chadd.org

Mental Health Net: www.mentalhelp.net

The National Institute for Mental Health: www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-

disorder-adhd/index.shtml

Permission Statement

Copyrighted material from Parenting for High Potential, a publication of the National Association for Gifted Children
(NAGC), www.nagc.org. This material may not be reproduced without permission from NAGC.

This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit
dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people under 18. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s
programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.

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Comments

Contributed by: Parent on 1/25/2008

We have struggled for so long to help our 11-year old gifted son to self-regulate and develop positive social
interactions. He has finally just been diagnosed as highly gifted with AD/HD (milder hyperactivity). This article and
the references are fantastic. I've read up a lot on each aspect and knew there were differences between my son
and others with only one of the qualities listed but never knew concretely what they were. What a relief to have
such helpful research information. I know it will help my son also. Thank so much. It's such a long road - we need
all the support we can get.

The appearance of any information in the Davidson Institute's Database does not imply an endorsement by, or any affiliation with,
the Davidson Institute. All information presented is for informational purposes only and is solely the opinion of and the
responsibility of the author. Although reasonable effort is made to present accurate information, the Davidson Institute makes no
guarantees of any kind, including as to accuracy or completeness. Use of such information is at the sole risk of the reader.

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