![]() What we must do is pivot from an achievement-centric model of child-rearing to a child-centered model. Perhaps we fear that we are inadequate parents of these exceptional children. Perhaps we fear that our children will be unsuccessful. We relegate their sense of Self to a bit part in a theater of achievement. In so doing, we squander their internal motivation. We pressure children to perform and achieve on our terms and we access their worth in the currency of accomplishments. We send signals that their emerging sense of Self must act in the service of externally constructed notions of well-being. When we push conventional success and achievement (e.g., good grades, high status, high paying jobs, stability), we push children away from who they are. For the exceptionally or profoundly gifted person, this sense of self is a not-to-be-ignored imperative, an internal directive demanding attention and forcing one's compliance or participation to its dictates as if ones very life depended on it. This Self, or core essence, is central to what makes us individuals, different from others. In so doing, we come face-to-face with the dynamic Self of the EPG person: a world of the unconscious as well as conscious feeling and thought. In order to determine how profoundly gifted children or adults make sense of the world and make sense of their experiences, we must enter the inner world of that exceptional human being. ![]() We'll start with consideration of the Self of the exceptionally or profoundly gifted child or adult.Ī DISTINCTIVE AND DIRECTIVE SENSE OF SELF In fact, the EPG child reaches higher levels of cognitive functioning far earlier than their age peers, and earlier than more mildly gifted chidlren. The uncommon meaning-making of the exceptionally and profoundly gifted springs from a distinctive and directive Self which is fed by and contoured by higher cognitive capacity levels. ![]() The Integrated Practice for the Gifted™ (IPG) model, which is the bedrock of the research and the practice here at the Daimon Institute, reaches beyond this statement of Morelocks to address how meaning-making occurs for the exceptionally gifted human being. American profound giftedness expert Martha Morelock wisely stated that: The tendency to define giftedness as behaviors achievement, products, or school placements external to the individual, necessarily misses the essence of giftedness - how it alters the meaning of the life experience for the gifted individual. ![]()
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