Gifted Children's Friendships (continued)

Because of these factors, the play of highly gifted children tends to be an uneasy compromise between their own interests and abilities and their desire to be accepted into a social group. Children who are less willing or less able to make such a compromise often become 'loners', preferring to invent solitary intellectual games which often center on fantasy and imagined adventure.

Teachers need to be aware that they may not observe the true play preferences of gifted children if they are not provided with companions who share their play interests. Solitary play in gifted children, rather than indicating social maladjustment or peer rejection, can simply signal the unavailability of children who share their interests.

• It can be perplexing and indeed infuriating to gifted children that their age-peers don’t become excited by the types of games that they find fascinating. It may be necessary to remind them that a few months (or years) ago they didn’t find these games fascinating either! People’s play interests develop and change at different rates.
• Hobby and interest clubs can be a great way of finding, for your gifted children, other children who share their interests. This can often lead to the development of friendships; after all, friendships begin through having something of interest to talk about. Do you have a local gifted children's association which has weekend activities? That can often help to bring a shy gifted student out of her shell as the children who attend these programs are more likely to have the sort of interests your daughter shares.
• It can sometimes be useful to ask your gifted child to describe her "ideal friend" - and then privately ask his or her teacher whether there is anyone in the class who bears some resemblences. Is there anyone in her class that your child likes better than s/he likes the other children? Could the teacher facilitate the development of a "beginning friendship" by getting the two kids to work together on a class project, a book report or something?
• Some gifted children very much prefer the companionship of children a couple of years older - children who are closer to their level of intellectual and emotional maturity. Could that be the case with your child - and does s/he have access to older children?
• The intellectual and emotional maturity of exceptionally and profoundly gifted children makes them ideal candidates for acceleration. Placing these children with older children who are closer to their mental and and emotional age can facilitate the development and maintainance of friendships.
• In some cases this may be the first time the gifted child has ever truly realised both the extent of her ability and the extent of her difference. Parents may find that their EG and PG children may become a little less satisfied with the more surface level games, conversations and friendships that they have had before. They have now had the opportunity to experience both the "more" that is in them and the "more" that can be in friendships.
• On the other hand, however, some gifted students who do have a close friend with whom they have a happy and fulfilling relationship seem to adapt quite happily to the needs and level of the other kids in their class or district. It's a kind of "social generousity". Because the gifted student is getting the intellectual stimulation and loving companionship he or she needs from the close friendship, he subconsciously feels he has "time left over" to drop down for a while to the level of the other children whose needs are different. (If the gifted child *wasn't* having his intellectual needs fulfilled, and was consequently intellectually frustrated, it might be a very different picture!

Something else we should think about a little more carefully than we currently do is the importance, in friendship development, of a shared sense of humor. There is quite a lot of research that shows that gifted students tend to have a more mature sense of humor than their age-peers.

Gifted kids tend to be "a stage ahead" in their perceptions of humor. Some humor theorists hold that humor derives from an appreciation of incongruity. In the early years of school, humor derives from visual incongruity - a clown is funny, a man walking under a ladder and a paint pot falling on his head is funny. Later - often about age 8-10 - they are more into verbal incongruities - dreadful puns, knock-knock jokes, etc. Finally, in adolescence, humor ends up as derived from inconguity of ideas. The Monty Python series is an example of this, as is Seinfeld and the Gary Larrson "Far Side" cartoons. Gifted kids *tend to* (it's not always so) go through these stages earlier and faster. That can lead to problems. If you are 5 and into puns and your classmates have no idea what you are talking about or finding funny, this can lead to loneliness.!