r/Gifted

How did it go?

I call myself "formerly gifted" semi facetiously. Basically I was identified as a child, placed into an accelerated program and all that. It's been years since I've been tested and I'm not trying to trample on anybody's definition of gifted.

Either way, my son tests well beyond where I ever was. I joke that he's the OP Universal Threat in a comic book, and at best I'm that same character when they're rolled into regular continuity and have to tone them down.

He's on the spectrum. Not trying to self diagnose but I wouldn't be surprised if I was, I just never was tested as back in the 80s they weren't testing people like me (verbal, *some* social else etc).

You'd think it would be easier, but I'm finding it having it's own hurdles. While I understand plenty his POV, I find myself thinking about how I handled similar scenarios. Being similar but not all the way alike. I have to catch myself. I feel like I do a decent job at it, but parenting with or without anybody being gifted is going to make you doubt yourself.

So my question, anybody here gifted with children who are gifted, but not gifted the same way? Anything you do to keep yourself for assuming you know *exactly* what they're dealing with?

My whole life felt like I was going crazy. It was a constant questioning of my sanity. It was an eternal, pointless struggle. I couldn't be understood. No matter how didactic I where, how many facts I presented, how much I studied something, people kept saying that the things I saw didn't exist (not in the schizophrenic sense, but things like social situations and nuances), and that I was creating a fuss with completely mundane and normal things.

For years I isolated myself, unable to maintain social relationships because it always reached the point where people considered me crazy and ostracized me. This led me to try to kill myself three times in the past 5 years. I was even hospitalized and life had no meaning anymore. I was certain I was crazy.

That's when I started treatment last year. I began by reporting mental noise, a racing of intrusive thoughts that were initially mistaken for ADHD. I started treatment with bupropion (because Ritalin could make me kill myself) and it didn't work. There were many back-and-forth visits to the psychiatrist that never led anywhere. It was my psychologist who, taking the time to listen to my anxieties, began to identify what he called "intellectualization."

Finally, today, after years of mental decline, I received this diagnosis. My psychologist and my psychiatrist spent 3 hours talking to me, explaining in more technical terms everything I was feeling. That this madness I was seeing was real, and that most people didn't have the necessary cognitive ability to understand me, and that I needed to work this out.

My relationships never worked out, my friendships never worked out, I never managed to establish myself in a job because people would start attacking me, as if they harbored a secret resentment towards me. I lived in eternal cycles of humiliation in my personal relationships, which I internalized thinking I was crazy, that I wasn't good enough for society.

In practice, nothing changes, I will continue being who I am, with my very few friends (who are mostly autistic or have ADHD), but now I'm starting behavioral treatment to relearn how to live, like a rescue animal, learning not to absorb the craziness of the world and not to think that I'm the crazy one, learning not to place so many expectations on people, and etc.

I just wanted to share this, in case someone felt the same way. I would love to hear your experiences, so I can feel less gaslighted by the world.

Ps.: If this text feels wonky, is because I translated it from my language and didn't had the time, or energy, to patch it up, so please, excuse the confuse writing 😄

I was speaking with my (genius level) mentor colleague the other day. He was showing and explaining stuff to me and although I understand generally, it's not until I see how it is done and the final product that I fully understand. Often, to understand fully, I have to start from the end and go backwards to the start, like reverse-engineering. He's good at building things from the ground up (he's a software developer/engineer/architect) while I'm good at understanding how stuff works from the final product. My (gifted) wife confirmed she's also better at buildings things from he ground up.

tldr: Most (or some) people are good at building things from the ground up while I'm better at reverse-engineering.

What's your take on this?

Another post with a similar title is on here, though it is archived, and of course it doesn’t answer questions from *my* perspective.

I was generally regarded as a really smart child growing up. Even though I was daydreamy as hell (because of my ADHD), I generally aced quizzes and tests. Read and watched a whole lot about space and the world, plus the designs and technical specifications of objects.

In middle school I started facing problems. I couldn’t keep up at all. Somehow, I scraped through.

High school, I joined this SubReddit, after my IQ scores came back (affected somewhat because I was being wrongly treated for my ADHD). Earlier I used to chat in ‘genz-talk’ (bruh, lol), but after careful observation here, I started to write properly. My vocab also improved slightly.

I got properly medicated and all. I see patterns in STEM subjects that most others don’t. My teachers always say that I have a good brain acquired through genetics (from my father who is an overachiever in his own right). I started to trust in my thinking and use logic more and more. It resulted in the creation of literary work in mere minutes, and I could very well see the problems in systems and my own thinking too. Ego is the enemy of me, and somehow I haven’t been able to get rid of it. Sorry friends, I don’t mean it when I say something to you.

I have varied interests, from computing and literature to music production, vocaloid, fountain pens, psychology (I especially got this one after hyper-fixating on my ADHD diagnosis, I need the DSM-V just to read! 😛)

Not that giftedness matters anyway, but should I consider myself highly intelligent or ‘gifted’? The stereotypically ‘gifted’ people generally achieve a whole lot in their early years, however this can be influenced by my ADHD. I have determined that IQ tests can’t really benchmark me properly, as I get a whole lot of issues in IQ tests.

I work with supplementary education in STEM. I teach mostly Math, but I also teach Chemistry, Engineering and Physics. I serve mostly the Sino-Canadian community.

In the beginning of June, I'll be teaching a 10 years old child that is some sort of a Math prodigy. I don't think the topics will be a problem, neither the age group, as I've taught them before. But I'm worried about the overall experience of the child, I don't want her to feel pressured but I also want her to feel chalenged and engaged.

When I was that age, the overall anxiety and inadequacy I felt made me not engage wit my full potential (as I see now). I don't want my students to feel that and try my best to not put them under unnecessary pressure.

As long as I deliver the curriculum and send homework, I have a lot of freedom. So based on your experiences, how would you suggest me to address this class?

My whole childhood I've kept on hearing about me being very smart or intelligent and got high potential.

But never, I've been good in academics.

Right now I'm in college and make content which gives me a lot of applause but in my commerce studies I face a hard time in understanding stuff. Honestly I can't be attentive even for 1minute when the teacher is teaching.

But idk why I've started to gain too much of interest in computer science, mathematics and neuroscience which is making me give a lot of time understanding these rather than study for my exams which are in just 9 days.

I feel very stupid after seeing the people here, and every post related to this community or the same kind.

I can't understand when the learning is structurised rather its just learning myself, figuring out stuff myself and trying to fit it in accordance with my processing of things.

But seeing every other person makes me feel very stupid

From cool stuff like fighter pilot or espionage to mundane stuff.

What about high paying jobs without degrees but as merit based as possible?

And yes of course G and IQ isn't everything.

I’m discovering one of my “abilities” that I’ve been practicing for the past 6 months.

I ask questions and “receive” answers.

Only operational questions. I use this ability on financial markets while trading.

When I have a problem, I try to formulate my question as clearly as possible, and then I “receive” the answer.

All my life, I’ve had TOO many ideas, and I realized that I needed to WRITE THEM DOWN because they are very important.

Over the past 6 months, I realized that I could influence the subject of my ideas, and I started directing them partly toward trading (and it works!).

As a result, I now have a kind of protocol that allows me to ask a question and receive the answer, which appears in my mind while walking or doing completely unrelated things.

Of course, I also receive answers to questions that I hadn’t yet properly formulated.

The problem is this: I’m trying to understand the origin of these thoughts.

Is it possible that this is spiritual (as the Vedanta says that we receive our thoughts and that they exist independently from our own will) ?

Or is the explanation more simply material or cognitive ?

Do other people have a similar skill or way of functioning ?

I'm curious to see if anyone else has this ability or have noticed themselves doing that, or if it's even something common with specifically gifted people in general or not.

I have this mode where i am able to actively force myself into a position where i understand something i don't understand. It's quite literally shifting modes from a mode of chaotic spaghetti of thoughts into a more organized, linear track of thoughts that would allow me to put myself in the shoes of this concept to allow me to completely get a "feel" of how exactly i am supposed to comprehend this concept.

I am not really able to explain it, it's like changing clothes, it's like i'm literally forcing myself to understand something out of frustration or out of me being sick of a certain version of understanding that i already have on that topic and me realizing that i need to change my understanding of it into a different version of understanding if i wanted to further understand the topic on a deeper more nuanced level, i feel like this whole rambling of mine is gonna have a really silly definition in the end like " hey, OP, this is just called critical thinking lol " but it doesn't matter i'm still sharing it anyways haha, the key feature here is that i'm forcing myself into it not spontaneously or normally allowing usual critical thinking to happen

My daughter is artistically gifted. A painting she did at 12 that was being shown at her school district’s headquarters was just bought for 250.00. Great! But, here’s where things get freaky. A teacher begged her to make a hand lettered sign for the principal’s baby shower and no compensation was mentioned THEN her art portfolio with an entire years of work in it was stolen from a classroom. I’m angry because I’m feeling that she’s being exploited by the adults around her AND bullied by her peers because of her gifts.

I don't know, am I being anxious or is it really problematic?

Some people seem to think this is being an alcoholic...

How do you perceive people who, when asked a question, especially one of a personal nature, respond with long, uninterrupted monologues that leave little to no space for follow-up questions, dialogue, or differing perspectives? What I find particularly interesting is how seamlessly they move from one topic to another without seeming to notice that the interaction has stopped being a conversation and has instead become a kind of extended self-narration.

I often wonder whether they genuinely perceive this as mutual exchange, or whether many people simply experience conversation less as a shared exploration and more as a space for uninterrupted expression.

At the same time, this dynamic occasionally makes me question myself as well. Because I tend to answer shortly and straight to the point, I sometimes wonder whether that restraint could unintentionally come across as disinterest or emotional distance.

your opinion?

It’s just a thought… but are their certain skills that some people just don’t “need” and other people need more of but we as a society universally consider useful?

This will be weird… I’m bored.

I have a coworker that is self described as addicted to Mountain Dew, which is weird to me because this person is very educated and to me surely knows the health consequences of consuming the amount of Mountain Dew she does. In addition, she’s has a clinical health education that I assume affords her the ability to make high level connections and judgements. I just don’t understand how she flaunts the addiction with the position and education she holds in our business. Although she’s educated, I have never personally picked up that she is gifted in our interactions. She leads several teams I’m part of, but h struggle sitting through her meetings. Like she communicates with the majority decent enough, but the line of thinking she pushes is so basic and linear it’s challenging for me not to let the complexity breathe while I sit through another of her meetings….

Idk how that all connects to Mountain Dew addiction, I digress, but overall I just wonder if she has some skill that I just never needed as a gifted person and therefore I don’t have?

As my mind wanders and she tries to explain some graph I don’t think she even understands…. I wonder if in society we have these expectations of skills we need to teach our (probably gifted) kids that they really don’t actually need because of their level of cognitive ability?

Is it normal for states to not have a protocol in place for administering gifted evaluations?

My oldest child’s teacher highly recommended and pushed for us to have evaluations done. She completed the SAT folder and we signed a request to test the end of May 2024. The district never contacted me. I called them in February 2025 and they told me they were really backed up and it was first come first served, even with the SPED students.

In June of 2025 (15 months later) we were finally scheduled for testing. I was asked to sign the consent to test when I arrived at the district the day of the evaluation.

I contacted our state department only to be told the protocols for evaluations don't apply to gifted. The guy in charge of gifted for the state said he'd look into it and never responded again.

Fast forward to now, and I have another child needing gifted evaluations. The district called me to say they didn't have a timeframe and they hoped it didn't take as long as last time. 🙄

I've been calling and emailing several employees at the state level trying to get an answer about what holds the districts accountable. The SPED liason finally said there is no mandate from the federal or state level, so that means they leave it up to the district. We'll, my district doesn't have a set time allotted either.

The packet I received from our district for our rights said they should immediately seek consent after giving prior written notice, and then they have 60 days to complete evaluations. Today I was told that doesn't apply to gifted. (So why did they bother giving it to me?)

Basically, there is nothing at the state or district level to hold them accountable to giving gifted evaluations in a timely manner. I was told today they were going to put they have until October 6th on my child's paperwork as if they were doing me a favor by giving me this date.

Anyway, is this normal? Am I fighting for something that doesn't exist? It just feels egregious to have any type of students waiting 15 months for evaluations. They don't seem to think there is an issue.

Hello guys! Hope you are doing fine.

Since "being diagnosed" with giftedness and ADHD, I've been feeling in some identity crisis. I am still trying to find the best medicine for ADHD, but I am wondering about the gifted part.

I started to think a lot about how the others see the world or understand things. I easily notice patterns on things (which makes me bored and bothered, specially with social media haha), have creative ideas and sometimes learn things "quickly".

Suddenly, I start thinking if others do it as well, or when someone has issues learning/understanding something is "normal/takes time" (I tell myself "I know this because I studied it before" rather than "I memorized quickly because I am gifted"). I also wonder if my ideias would be seen as interesting, and not weird.

It is important to say I don't feel I am better than anyone by having this. I actually wish I could feel "normal". But, if this is who I am I wish to learn how to control and make the most of it.

Any tips or others feeling similar?

Thank you!

What strategies do you use for feeling like the class is slow, the content rote, and actually retaining content from term to term? How do you manage the social situation on campus? What worked for support from your instructors? What could the university have done to better support you? What did you need to do in order to engage in your studies more? How much of your academic challenges were caused by adhd/asd/family or living situation rather than giftedness?

Thanks!

Asking for 1) comparison to self and 2) wondering if there's anything I've not yet thought of that'd support me in understanding my students.

Hello Cognitive Testing,

I'm looking for honest perspectives about which online IQ test is the most accurate. The debate has been going on for a long time, but I want the current opinions of the experts, aficionados, and the general community.

I know there are a lot of tests floating around from all corners of the internet (and in the wiki!), but I would like to hear your personal takes on which ones hold the most weight and why.

Question was asked on r/askreddit, wanted to hear from this sub. Looking forward to your interesting answers!