Understanding your High Potential child

A child is said to have high potential (HP) when he or she has a rate of intellectual development above that of his or her age. We speak of an overall IQ (Intelligence Quotient) of 130 or more obtained on an intellectual efficiency scale.

High-potential children are characterized by their way of thinking and their emotional functioning. This is why they need to be well understood in their dual intellectual and emotional functioning, so that their rich resources can be fully developed.

HP children also present particularities in their psychological construction. 

soutien scolaire hpi

Psychological manifestations

 

  • Overdeveloped sensory perception (Hyperesthesia)
  • High emotional reactivity
  • The will to control
  • Insistence on fending for oneself
  • Great empathy

Cognitive manifestations

  • Language precocity
  • Intellectual hypermaturity
  • Fast processing speed
  • Intellectual over-investment
  • Difficulty coping with effort
  • Intuitive, non-deductive processing
  • Lack of method
  • Global and simultaneous vision
  • Tree thinking 
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HP and learning disabilities

Revealing your child’s potential

Despite their extraordinary abilities, HP children can experience difficulties at school, and have to cope with learning disabilities. Traditional teaching is not always adapted to their way of thinking. As a result, many high-potential children fail at school.

HP children are generally two or more years ahead of other children in their intellectual development.

This precociousness causes what psychologists call internal dyssynchrony. This dyssynchrony stems, on the one hand, from a gap between the child’s emotional development and psychomotor maturation and, on the other, from his or her intellectual development. That’s why HPI’s verbal performance is better than their writing or drawing.

What’s more, this internal dyssynchrony is compounded by a so-called social dyssynchrony, when the children’s school and/or family environment logically expects them to behave in a way that corresponds to the norm for their age, which is not always the case for HP children.

At Benk, we’re learning specialists, helping HP children develop better techniques and tools for learning, combining cognitive and emotional intelligence. We work on organization, self-confidence, emotional management and progression.

Our success lies in helping HP children reveal and exploit their potential.

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