Dear Dr. Ruf

… in which I answer questions about gifted issues

Over the years I have done many different things to stay connected with gifted children and their families. I was the Gifted Children Program Coordinator for American Mensa for five years and answered letters from parents of gifted children, and sometimes about the gifted adults themselves. If you like seeing these ideas, let me know and I can share more with you. And, you can ask me questions now, as well! Here are a couple to get us started.

Dear Dr. Ruf,

Do you have any suggestions on how to explicitly teach social skills to the highly and profoundly gifted? It seems they don’t just naturally pick it up but can handle the theoretical approach.

-Sharon, mother of 7 year old very highly gifted son

Dear Sharon,

I believe that very smart people sometimes need special help developing social skills because the very highly gifted are not around others like themselves often enough to give them appropriate practice at reading social cues.

If a highly intelligent child approaches a fellow first grader on the soccer field by saying, “I don’t believe we’ve met; my name is Colin,” his age-mate is very likely to mock him, roll his eyes, or otherwise react strangely. The conclusion Colin will draw is that he did something wrong. He…