You think you’re so smart. Different from an early age

Video: You think you’re so smart.

A number of movies include gifted and talented characters, and depict a variety of characteristics that are positive and relate to exceptional abilities, but also can generate not so positive reactions – such as “You think you’re so smart,” or, “You’re too verbal… too bossy… too nerdy… too sensitive.”

And, of course, we may still experience some of those reactions as adults.

Movie clips in this video include Matilda (1996, with Mara Wilson, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman); Phoebe in Wonderland (2008, Elle Fanning, Patricia Clarkson); Little Man Tate (1991, directed by and starring Jodie Foster, with Dianne Wiest, Adam Hann-Byrd);  Akeelah and the Bee (2006, Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne); Bridge to Terabithia (2007, Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb, Zooey Deschanel).

Photo: Elle Fanning in Phoebe in Wonderland, from post: Our high sensitivity personality: normalcy, wholeness, acceptance. [She is also outstanding in the newer movie Somewhere, directed by Sofia Coppola.]

Short list of gifted characteristics in video from article What is giftedness all about? – by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., Gifted Development Center.

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Video: Gifted adults are different from an early age

One clip here is from the movie Nancy Drew, based on the books about the talented girl detective.

Gifted children like Nancy are different and divergent in their thinking, interests, values and behavior.

And many gifted adults still feel wrong or anxious about not fitting in even though being different can be a strength.

In Nancy Drew, the heroine (played with style and grace by Emma Roberts) uses and celebrates her intuitive and intellectual abilities as a teen sleuth, and accepts the fact she is exceptional, and does not fit in with her high school peers mainly concerned with cliques, clothes and boys.

Many gifted children and gifted adults are considered “eccentric.”

[Another clip: Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch (in glasses) in Ghost World” (2001). The director Terry Zwigoff commented that when he met Johansson, he thought, “OK, she’s 15, but she could easily pass for 30. She’s a very attractive girl, but she’s sort of a weirdo. I like that about her.”

In her article Counseling Gifted Adults A Case Study, counselor Paula Prober writes about Susan, who had known that she was different since she was seven. Her thoughts and feelings had never fit into the box that was comfortable and reassuring for most children.

Her appetite for learning was insatiable. Reading was more nourishing than food. Thinking, analyzing, and synthesizing were better than Barbie. And she worried about everything: poverty, world peace, the loss of the rain forests. It kept her awake at night. To her classmates, she just seemed weird certainly not birthday party material.

The article continues, All of these reactions confused and saddened Susan but no one was explaining to her that she was different because she was gifted: She had a mind running deeper and faster than most.

Like many gifted adults, she rediscovered herself as gifted later in life, but also felt a strong need for emotional help, as Prober writes: “At age 52, Susan came to therapy. Raising her teenaged son, John, had forced her to confront herself. John had been identified as gifted in preschool. Susan started reading about gifted children and was quite surprised to find that she was reading about herself.”

The image (in video) is from the book Gifted Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential, which can help people understand some of the emotional and social aspects of being gifted.

Short list of gifted characteristics from video: Dr. Linda Karges-Bone about gifted children.

Also see Self-tests : giftedness / high ability

List of other films: Hoagies’ Gifted: Movies Featuring Gifted Kids (and Adults!)

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