A (surprisingly) high number of the children we see are gifted (or near enough) in one or more key areas of cognitive functioning. That is, they can solve certain sorts of problems at a much higher level of complexity than the average child their age. They may or may not be quicker at doing so: they can generally just solve the more difficult ones.
But the reason they are coming is not generally for an assessment of giftedness as such: they are coming because one or more problems are presenting them with real difficulty. They are either just not performing in school or are having behavioural or emotional difficulties - or some combination of any of these.
The reasons for this relationship are complex but there are some common underlying themes. The core issue is often that there is a considerable mismatch between their intelligence and their executive functioning (the systems that regulate and co-ordinate information processing and responses). The best way this is has been explained to me is when one kid said, 'So, it's like I've got a Ferrari engine and a Fiat gearbox'. Clever kid!
The question that then arises is perhaps, Do these gifted children just happen to have relatively weaker executive functioning - or is there some sort of real connection between the two? The answer increasingly seems to be the latter.
There are some different lines of thought here that are important to distinguish. One is that gifted children will sometimes seem like they have ADHD (in any combination, i.e. attention deficit and/or hyperactivity) precisely because they are gifted and it's not really ADHD at all: they might be bored, over-focused on their specific interests, just excited by learning and 'overly inquisitive' or whatever. Whilst there certainly will be gifted children who switch off due to boredom, we are perhaps talking about a rather different group here.
The children I am thinking of are both gifted and have genuine underlying problems with some aspect of executive functioning (that then gives rise to an ADHD-type set of issues). And what we do know is that this has been enough of a concern generally for some research to be done on the issue.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the research shows that, generally, gifted children are better on many specific tests of executive functioning (EF) than non-gifted children. It would be strange if this wasn't the case as we would expect average development in the two areas to be somewhat in line with one another.
But that's average development - and it could still be the case that, within the population of gifted children, there is a higher than normal rate of specific executive problems. That is, most gifted children have good executive functioning but more than you would expect have problems in this area. There is, indeed, evidence to support this from research - with up to about 10% of gifted children being identified as having ADHD.
So, what might be going on here? We don't really know for sure but one reasonable idea is that giftedness necessarily means atypical brain development (because by definition they aren't in the mid-range) and, where there is atypical development, the most likely other implication will be some sort of issue with EF. This might seem descriptive rather than explanatory as such but the specifics might be something like: Where there is something unusual going on in terms of brain development, such that certain functions are working at an above-average level, the control and regulation systems (i.e. EF) can struggle to develop at a commensurate rate. That is, when certain parts of the brain are wired like a Ferrari engine, the gearbox might just not be able to keep up.
