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As I read Stephanie S. Tolan's article Giftedness as Asynchronous Development, the only thing I kept thinking over and over again was: "Yeah, I agree." The article describes the unique internal qualities that make up what we call giftedness, and what we actually measure by factors that are external of the child (or adult), eg. achievement at school or performance on standardised tests. We may get to assume that because those who achieve extraordinarily eventually are classed as gifted, giftedness is extraordinary achievement.
This however ain't true. Gifted folks may achieve just average in school. Sometimes we refer to this as underachievement, but some gifted individuals don't have the strategies to learn well (they may have learnt very easily in elementary school but as stuff gets more difficlut in middle and high school may not be able to learn it appropriately), and there are gifted individuals with serious learning disabilities.
Also, gifted children don't develop at the same level in all areas of development. A gifted 8-year-old ain't a typical 12-year-old or 15-year-old or whatever. As Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D. says, an intelligent 5-year-old may have the intelligence to imagine things a typical 8-year-old imagines, but he may not be able, with his 5-year-old body, to do what he imagines or he may not emotionally be able to handle it.
According to Tolan, a gifted child may have many ages at once, his chronological age being the least important. He may be above-average where it comes to thinking and/or academics, awareness of the world around him and involvement with global affairs. However, an 8-year-old may seem like a toddler when playing or asked to share his candy.
I myself have my share of this "asynchrony". I'm chronologically 17 1/2 years old, and I may be above-average intellectually and academically. However, when it comes to understanding social concepts, socialisation skills, and emotional issues I don't even resemble a typical 17-year-old. Often indeed my parents have told me to mirror my sister, who is two years younger than me.
"Recognizing and describing of emotions and social behaviour is present, but young compared to her age and certainly to the cognitive level she shows on the verbal intelligence test," a remedial educationalist reported about me in January, 1998. I wonder why she came up with my cognitive level to compare my ability to recognize emotions and social behaviour with. An intelligent person ain't above-average at everything. It appears that most people think that way (I don't know how many times people have come up with my intelligence to tell me how stupid I am socially or behaviourally), but it is simply a wrong idea.
It sometimes really frustrates me when people consider intelligence to be the measure for such things as achievement and success, or even expect intellectually gifted folks to be excellent at everything. "You aren't less clever than me, are you?" my Dad once shouted at me when I didn't understand his trial to explain a social situation. As if the ability to understand social concepts is defined by intelligence!
Tolan states that the issue of having many ages at once can be pretty difficult for the gifted individual and his family and friends. I agree to that: my acquaintances often don't understand certain things - why is this clever 17-year-old behaving so childish or doesn't understand this social situation? - and I have sometimes questioned my intelligence, because the stupid asynchrony simply COULDN'T exist. It has frustrated me to be stupid in some ways, while I should have the intellect to be ahead of my age peers. And even those recognizing giftedness as asynchronous development do not always understand it. I once sent a message to a TAG mailing list on the topic, and got replies asking if I'd ever heard of Asperger's Syndrome (a form of autism), while I didn't want to hear people stick labels on me (of course I'd heard of AS), but just to understand that an intelligent person ain't a genius at everything. And while articles on asynchronous development can be helpful in getting to know that not all gifted people are excellent at everything, it of course doesn't change the public attitude of gifted children being super kids.
