ABSTRACT
In certain respects, children endowed with unusual constitutional capacities necessarily behave differently from their peers, if only because of the sheer pleasure of exercising their talent. Such satisfaction will pull them into frequent spells of certain repetitive activities that do not occur with the ordinary child. In many cases, their constitutional assets appear, simultaneously, to entail relative handicaps in terms of some other functional capacities, so that any particular child may be misidentified as having a deficit, rather than potential talent. In any case, it is likely that a child who has the potential to grow up to be a creative person may be atypical in his or her development. Such a circumstance presents caretakers with a more difficult task than does raising an “ordinary” youngster. Performing well as a parent is, at best, a challenge seldom met with unqualified success; any condition that makes it more difficult will defeat most families. It stands to reason that rearing talented children has turned out to be quite problematic.
