11.4 Children with Special Needs

Developmental psychopathology links the study of usual development with the study of disorders (Cicchetti, 2013). Every topic already described, including “genetics, neuroscience, developmental psychology,…must be combined to understand how psychopathology develops and can be prevented” (Dodge, 2009, p. 413).

At the outset, four general principles of developmental psychopathology should be emphasized.

1. Abnormality is normal. Most children sometimes act oddly. At the same time, children with serious disorders are, in many respects, like everyone else.

2. comorbid Refers to the presence of two or more unrelated disease conditions at the same time in the same person.

   Disability changes year by year. Most disorders are comorbid, which means that more than one problem is evident in the same person. Which particular disorder is most disabling at a particular time changes, as does the degree of impairment.
3. Life may be better or worse in adulthood. Prognosis is difficult. Many children with severe disabilities (e.g., blindness) become productive adults. Conversely, some conditions (e.g., conduct disorder) may become more disabling.
4. Diagnosis and treatment reflect the social context. In dynamic systems, each individual interacts with the surrounding setting—including family, school, community, and culture—to modify, worsen, or even create psychopathology.

Causes and Consequences

Developmental psychopathology is a topic to be studied at every point of the life span because “[e]ach period of life, from the prenatal period through senescence, ushers in new biological and psychological challenges, strengths, and vulnerabilities” (Cicchetti, 2013, p. 458). Turning points, opportunities, and the influence of prior burdens appear at every age, as already noted in our discussion of epigenetics, of three forms of prevention, of environmental toxins, and of much else.

However, it is in middle childhood that children are first grouped by age and expected to start learning on schedule. For some parents and children, it suddenly becomes obvious that a particular child differs markedly from others the same age. Fortunately, most abnormalities can be mitigated if treatment is early and properly targeted.

Therein lies a problem: Although early treatment is more successful, early and accurate diagnosis is difficult, not only because many disorders are comorbid but also because symptoms differ by age. As you learned in Chapter 7, infants have temperamental differences that might or might not become problems, and Chapter 10 explained that some aggression is normal. When does unusual behavior signify a serious problem? Difference is not necessarily deficit—but not all differences are benign.

Two basic principles of developmental psychopathology lead to caution in diagnosis and treatment (Cicchetti & Toth, 2009; Cicchetti, 2013). First is multifinality, which means that one cause can have many (multiple) final manifestations. For example, an infant who has been flooded with stress hormones may become a hyper-vigilant or unusually calm kindergartener, may be easily angered or quick to cry, or may not be affected at all.

The second principle is equifinality (equal in final form), which means that one symptom can have many causes. For instance, a nonverbal child may be autistic, hard of hearing, not comfortable in the dominant language, or pathologically shy.

The complexity of diagnosis is evident in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), often referred to as DSM-5. We focus now on only three disorders (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, learning disability, and autism spectrum disorder) to illustrate the general principles just set forth. Appendix A lists the DSM-5 criteria for these three.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Someone with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) consistently demonstrates a pattern of inattentiveness and may be unusually active and impulsive to the point of compromising their functioning or development. Compared with earlier criteria, the description of ADHD in DSM-5 allows more people to be diagnosed as having this disorder. For such a diagnosis, symptoms once had to start before age 7; now they must start before age 12. Earlier, ADHD had to impair daily life; now daily life simply needs to be impacted.

A River Is Better Than a School People must be quick and active to avoid capsizing in white-water rafting, but these children are up to the task. They have been diagnosed with ADHD, but they are quite able to respond to fast-changing currents.

SUSAN LEAVINES/SCIENCE SOURCE

Essentially a child with ADHD is more easily distracted and more often in motion than the average child. For instance, when sitting down to do schoolwork, the child might look up, ask questions, get a drink, fidget, squirm, tap the table, jiggle his or her legs, and go to the bathroom—and then start the whole sequence again. This may be tolerated by parents but not by teachers in a crowded classroom. Not surprisingly, such children tend to have academic difficulties; they are less likely to graduate from high school and college, and as adults they are likely to suffer when employment demands sitting at a desk.

A major problem in diagnosing ADHD is that there is no biological marker for it (such as a substance in the blood or an abnormality in the brain), yet some children find it almost impossible to sit quietly and concentrate. Those children might be punished and excluded because they are not like other children.

Moreover, ADHD is comorbid with many other conditions, including biological problems such as sleep deprivation or allergic reactions, and psychological disorders, including those soon to be discussed (Miklowitz & Cicchetti, 2010). This is an example of equifinality in that explosive rages and, later, deep regret are typical for children with many disorders, including ADHD.

Although the U.S. rates were about 5 percent in 1980, recent data find that 7 percent of all 4- to 9-year-olds, 13 percent of all 10- to 13-year-olds, and 15 percent of all 14- to 17-year-olds have been diagnosed with ADHD (Schwartz & Cohen, 2013). These numbers, called “astronomical” by a pediatric neurologist who is a professor at the Yale School of Medicine (Graf, quoted in Schwarz & Cohen, 2013), do not include children who are not yet diagnosed or whose primary diagnosis is something other than ADHD.

Rates of ADHD in most other nations are lower than in the United States, but they are rising everywhere (e.g., Al-Yagon et al., 2013; Hsia & Maclennan, 2009; van den Ban et al., 2010). Increases in ADHD diagnosis are worrisome for at least three reasons.

• Misdiagnosis. If ADHD is diagnosed when another disorder is the problem, treatment might make the problem worse, not better (Miklowitz & Cicchetti, 2010). Many psychoactive drugs alter moods, so a child with bipolar disorder (formerly called manic-depressive disorder) might be harmed by drugs that help children with ADHD.
• Drug abuse. Although alleviating the symptoms of ADHD with drugs actually reduces the incidence of later drug abuse, some adolescents may seek a diagnosis of ADHD in order to legally obtain amphetamines, which are often abused.
• Normal behavior considered pathological. In young children, high activity, impulsiveness, and curiosity are normal but may be disruptive to parents or teachers. Some normal children, who will become more mature in time, may be convinced that they are abnormal. ADHD is at least twice as common among boys than among girls—might some unconscious sexism affect the diagnosis?

Treatment for ADHD involves (1) counseling and training for the family and the child, (2) showing teachers how to help the children learn, and (3) medication. But, as equifinality suggests, most disorders vary in causes so that treatment that helps one child does not necessarily work for another (Mulligan et al., 2013). Because many adults are upset by what young children normally do and because any physician can write a prescription to quiet a child, developmentalists fear that thousands of children are overmedicated.

The most common and also the most controversial treatment for many childhood disorders is medication. In the United States, more than 2 million people younger than 18 take prescription drugs to regulate their emotions and behavior. The rate is about 14 percent for teenagers (Merikangas et al., 2013), about 10 percent for 6- to 11-year-olds, and less than 1 percent for 2- to 5-year-olds (Olfson et al., 2010).

The most commonly prescribed drug for ADHD is Ritalin, but at least 20 other psychoactive drugs treat depression, anxiety, developmental delay, autism, bipolar disorder, and many other conditions in middle childhood. Because few psychoactive drugs have been adequately tested for children, many drugs are prescribed “off label”—that is, they are not approved for patients of a particular age or condition. Much of the American public is suspicious of any childhood psychiatric medicine (Moldavsky & Sayal, 2013; Rose, 2008), as are people worldwide. In China, for instance, parents rarely use psychoactive medication for children: A Chinese child with ADHD symptoms is thought to need correction rather than medication (Rongwang et al., 2013).

Many child psychologists believe that drugs can be helpful, and they worry that the public is oblivious to the devastation and lost learning that occur when a child’s serious disorder is not recognized or treated. But they also raise concerns (Mayes et al., 2009). Finding the best drug at the right strength is difficult, in part because each child’s genes and personality are unique.

Moreover, since weight and metabolism change every year, the right dose at one time is wrong at another. Only half of all children who take psychoactive drugs are evaluated and monitored by a mental health professional (Olfson et al., 2010).

Most developmentalists accept the research showing that medication helps children with emotional problems, particularly ADHD (Epstein et al., 2010). Many also believe that contextual interventions (instructing parents and teachers on child management) should be tried first (Daley et al., 2009; Leventhal, 2013; Pelham & Fabiano, 2008). Careful, individualized treatment is needed to find the right medication for each child.

By contrast, parents tend to be either pro-drug or antidrug and not in between. One study of parents whose children were diagnosed with ADHD found that about 20 percent believed drugs should never be used for children and that about 29 percent believed that drugs were necessary to treat illnesses (dosReis et al., 2009). Another study found that only about half (56 percent) of the parents of U.S. children who are diagnosed with ADHD give them medication every day (Scheffler et al., 2009).

African American and Hispanic children are less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, especially when they do not have health insurance. When they are diagnosed, their parents are less likely to give them medication (Morgan et al., 2013). The reasons include fragmented medical care and distrust of doctors (Miller et al., 2009).

As a result of the discrepancy between public attitudes and research data, some children who would benefit from drugs are never medicated, and other children take medication without the necessary monitoring. Even with medication, problems may continue.

For example, a group of children with ADHD from many cities in the United States and Canada were given appropriate medication, carefully calibrated, and their symptoms improved. However, eight years later, many had stopped taking their medicine. At this follow-up, both those on medication and those who had stopped taking it often had learning difficulties (Molina et al., 2009).

When appropriately used, drugs for ADHD may help children make friends, learn in school, feel happier, and behave better. These drugs also seem to help adolescents and adults with ADHD (Surman et al., 2013). However, as the just cited longitudinal study of ADHD children found, problems do not disappear: adolescents and adults who were diagnosed with ADHD as children are less successful academically and personally, whether or not they were medicated (Brooke et al., 2013). Drugs may help, but they are not the solution. The following A Case to Study makes this clear.

Specific Learning Disorders

The DSM-5 diagnosis of specific learning disorder now includes deficits in both perception and processing of information, which leads to lower achievement than expected in any of several academic areas. Learning disorders make it difficult for someone to master a particular skill that most other people acquire easily. According to Gardner’s view of multiple intelligences, almost everyone has a specific inadequacy or two. Perhaps one person is clumsy (low in kinesthetic intelligence), while another sings loudly but off key (low in musical intelligence).

Most learning disorders are not debilitating (e.g., the off-key singer learns to be quiet in chorus), but every schoolchild is expected to learn reading and math. Disabilities in either of these two subjects undercut academic achievement and make a child feel inadequate, ashamed, and stupid. Hopefully, such children find (or are taught) ways to compensate: They learn coping strategies, and in adulthood their other abilities shine. Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, and Hans Christian Andersen are all said to have had learning disabilities as children.

The most commonly diagnosed learning disability is dyslexia—unusual difficulty with reading. No single test accurately diagnoses dyslexia (or any learning disability) because every academic achievement involves many distinct factors (Riccio & Rodriguez, 2007). One child with a reading disability might have trouble sounding out words but might excel in comprehension and memory of printed text; another child might have the opposite problem. Dozens of types and causes of dyslexia have been identified.

Happy Reading Those large prism glasses keep the letters from jumping around on the page, a boon for this 8-year-old French boy. Unfortunately, each child with dyslexia needs individualized treatment: These glasses help some, but not most, children who find reading difficult.

BSIP/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Early theories hypothesized that visual difficulties—for example, reversals of letters (reading was instead of saw) and mirror writing (b instead of d)—were the cause of dyslexia, but we now know that dyslexia often originates with speech and hearing difficulties (Gabrieli, 2009). An early warning occurs if a 3-year-old does not talk clearly or has not exhibited a naming explosion. [Lifespan Link: The naming explosion and the sequence of language acquisition are explained in Chapter 6.] Not only might early speech therapy improve talking, but it might also reduce or prevent later dyslexia.

Traditionally, dyslexia was diagnosed only if a child had difficulty reading despite normal IQ, normal hearing and sight, and normal behavior. However, DSM-5 allows comorbid diagnosis, and many children with ADHD are diagnosed with a learning disability (DuPaul et al., 2013). Indeed, in the United States, children with ADHD are not granted special education but children with speech or learning disabilities are, so a comorbid diagnosis is often sought.

Similar suggestions apply to learning disabilities in math, called dyscalculia. Dyslexia and dyscalculia are often comorbid, although each originates from a distinct part of the brain. Early help with counting and math concepts (long before first grade) can help prevent the emotional anxiety that occurs if a child is made to feel stupid (Butterworth et al., 2011).

Remember that in early childhood most children can look at a series of dots and estimate how many there are. Perhaps even in infancy, a child with dyscalculia cannot estimate how many dots are present. Basic number sense is deficient in children with dyscalculia, which provides a clue for early remediation (Piazza et al., 2010).

When a young child has trouble performing math tasks that other children can do easily, dyscalculia is suspected. For example, a second-grader, when asked to estimate the height of a normal room, might answer “200 feet” or, when asked whether the 5 or the 8 of Hearts is higher, might correctly answer 8—but only after counting the number of hearts on each card (Butterworth et al., 2011). Some children with dyscalculia improve when computer programs are designed to improve their number understanding, but—remember equifinality—this does not help every child.

Every person, learning disabled or not, has strengths and interests, and almost everyone can learn basic skills if they have extensive and specific help, encouragement, and practice. The problem with learning disabilities is that most children are not diagnosed early enough, with sufficient detail, or given individualized education.

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Of all the children with special needs, those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are probably the most troubling. Their problems are severe and the causes of and treatments for autism are hotly disputed.

Most children with autism can be spotted in the first year of life, but some seem normal and only later does autism become evident. Many children with symptoms of autism but who learned to talk on time were formerly considered to have Asperger syndrome. Now the diagnosis would be “autism spectrum disorder without language or intellectual impairment” (DSM-5, p. 32).

Autism is characterized by woefully inadequate social understanding. Almost a century ago, it was considered a single, rare disorder affecting fewer than 1 in 1,000 children with “an extreme aloneness that, whenever possible, disregards, ignores, shuts out anything…from the outside” (Kanner, 1943). Children who developed slowly but were not so withdrawn were diagnosed as being mentally retarded or as having a “pervasive developmental disorder.” (Note that the term “mental retardation,” which was used in DSM-4, has been replaced with “intellectual disability” in DSM-5.)

Much has changed in the past decades. Now many children who would have been considered intellectually disabled are said to have an autism spectrum disorder, which characterizes as many as 1 in every 88 children (almost five times as many boys as girls and about a third more European Americans than Hispanic, Asian, or African Americans) (Lord & Bishop, 2010). Some children “on the spectrum” do not seem to be intellectually delayed.

Precious Gifts Many children with autism are gifted artists. This boy attends a school in Montmoreau, France, that features workshops in which children with autism develop social, play, and learning skills.

PHANIE/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.

The two main signs of an autism spectrum disorder are: (1) problems in social interaction and the social use of language, and (2) restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. Children with any form of ASD find it difficult to understand the emotions of others, which makes them feel alien, like “an anthropologist on Mars,” as Temple Grandin, an educator and writer with autism, expressed it (quoted in Sacks, 1995). Consequently, they are less likely to talk, play, or otherwise interact with anyone, and they usually are delayed in developing a theory of mind (Senju et al., 2010).

Autism spectrum disorders include many symptoms of varied severity. Some children never speak, rarely smile, and often play for hours with one object (such as a spinning top or a toy train). Others are called “high functioning”; they are often extremely talented in some specialized area, such as drawing or geometry. Many are brilliant in unusual ways (Dawson et al., 2007), including Grandin, a well-respected expert on animal care (Grandin & Johnson, 2009). However, social interaction is always impaired. Grandin was bewildered by romantic love.

Most children with autism spectrum disorder show signs in early infancy (no social smile, for example, or less gazing at faces). Some improve by age 3, whereas others deteriorate. Amazingly, 40 percent of parents who were told their child has autism said later that their child no longer had it (Kogan et al., 2009). On the other hand, late onset of autism spectrum disorder occurs with Rett syndrome, in which a newborn girl (never a boy; they do not survive if they have the X-linked Rett gene) has “apparently normal psychomotor development through the first 5 months after birth,” but then her brain develops much more slowly than normal, severely limiting movement and language (Bienvenu, 2005).

Many children with autism have an opposite problem—too much neurological activity, not too little. Their heads are slightly larger than average, and parts of their brain (especially the limbic system) are unusually sensitive to noise, light, and other sensations (Schumann et al., 2004).

Far more children have autism spectrum disorders now than in 1990, either because the incidence of this disorder has increased or because more children receive that diagnosis. The new criteria in DSM-5 will probably decrease the number of children who fit the category, especially those who function well in most situations (Bauminger-Zviely, 2013).

Underlying that estimate is the reality that no definitive measure diagnoses autistic spectrum disorder: Many adults are socially inept, insensitive to other people’s emotions, and poor at communication—are they all on the spectrum?

When a child is diagnosed with ASD, parents’ responses vary from irrational hope to deep despair, from blaming doctors and chemical additives to feeling guilty for what they did wrong. Developmentalists generally believe that genes are one factor in autism but that parents are not at fault. Parents and teachers can be very helpful, however, if they cooperate with one another while the child is young. Even when all the adults work in harmony, treatment is complicated.

Equifinality certainly applies to autism: A child can have autistic symptoms for many reasons, which makes treatment difficult, as an intervention that seems to help one child proves worthless for another. It is known, however, that biology is crucial (genes, birth complications, prenatal injury, or perhaps chemicals) and that family nurture is not the cause (G. Dawson, 2010). One family factor may be influential, however: having one baby soon after another. Children born less than a year after a previous birth are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed as autistic compared with children born three or more years later (Cheslack-Postava et al., 2011).

A vast number of treatments have been used to help children with autism spectrum disorders, but none of them has been completely successful. Some parents are convinced that a particular treatment helped their child, whereas other parents say that the same treatment failed.

Scientists disagree as well. For instance, one popular treatment is putting the child in a hyperbaric chamber to breathe more concentrated oxygen than is found in everyday air. Two studies of hyperbaric treatments—both randomized in participant selection and both with control groups—reported contradictory results, either benefits (Rossignol et al., 2009) or no effect (Granpeesheh et al., 2010).

All Together Now Kiemel Lamb (top center) leads autistic children in song, a major accomplishment. For many autistic children, music is soothing, words are difficult, and handholding in a group is almost impossible.

THE TUSCALOOSA NEWS, DUSTY COMPTON/AP PHOTO

Treatment is further complicated when parents and medical professionals disagree, as illustrated by the controversy about thimerosal, an antiseptic containing mercury that was formerly used in childhood immunizations. Many parents of children with the symptoms of autism first noticed their infants’ impairments after their vaccinations and believed thimerosal was the cause. No scientist who examines the evidence agrees: Extensive research has disproven the immunization hypothesis many times (Offit, 2008).

More than a decade ago thimerosal was removed from vaccines given to infants, but the rates of autism are still rising. Many doctors fear that parents who cling to this hypothesis are not only wrong but are also harming millions of children who suffer needless illnesses because their parents refuse to immunize them.

Some children with autism are treated biologically, with special diets, vitamin supplements, hormones (oxytocin), or psychoactive drugs. Each of these strategies is used by some advocates who find symptoms improving, but none has proven successful at relieving the basic condition.

Many behavioral methods to improve talking and socialization have also been tried, again with mixed results (Granpeesheh et al., 2009; Hayward et al., 2009; Howlin et al., 2009). Early and individualized education of both the child and the parents has had some success.

Special Education

The overlap of the biosocial, cognitive, and psychosocial domains is evident to developmentalists, who envision each child’s growth in every area as affected by the other areas. However, whether or not a child is designated as needing special education is not straightforward, nor is it closely related to specific special needs.

In the United States, recognition that the distinction between normal and abnormal is not clear-cut (the first principle of developmental psychopathology) led to a series of reforms in the treatment and education of children with special needs. According to the 1975 Education of All Handicapped Children Act, children with special needs must be educated in the least restrictive environment (LRE).

LRE has usually meant educating children with special needs in a regular class, a practice once called mainstreaming, rather than in a special classroom or school. Sometimes a child is sent to a resource room, with a teacher who provides targeted tutoring. Sometimes a class is an inclusion class, which means that children with special needs are “included” in the general classroom, with “appropriate aids and services” (ideally from a trained teacher who works with the regular teacher) (Kalambouka et al., 2007).

The latest educational strategy in the United States is called response to intervention (RTI) (Fletcher & Vaughn, 2009; Shapiro et al., 2011; Ikeda, 2012). All children in the early grades who are below average in achievement (which may be half the class) are given some special intervention. Most of them respond by improving their achievement, but for those who do not, more intervention occurs. If there is no response to repeated intervention, the child is referred for testing and observation to diagnose the problem.

Professionals use a battery of tests (not just IQ or achievement tests) to reach their diagnosis and develop recommendations. If they find that a child has special needs, they discuss an individual education plan (IEP) with the parents, to specify educational goals for the child.

Developmentalists consider a child’s biological and brain development as the starting point for whatever special assistance will allow the child to reach his or her full potential. Thus home and school practices are crucial.

Among all the children in the United States who are recognized by educators as having special needs, historical shifts are notable. As Figure 11.5 shows, the proportion of children designated with special needs rose in the United States from 10 percent in 1980 to 13 percent in 2011, primarily because more children are considered learning disabled (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). In 1975 the number was only 8 percent.

Percent of 3- to 21-Year Old Children with Special Educational Needs (Compared to Total Public School Enrollment) Nature or Nurture Communities have always has some children with special needs, with physical, emotional, and neurological disorders of many kinds. In some eras, and even today in some nations, the education of such children was neglected. Indeed, many children were excluded from normal life even before they quit trying. Now in the United States every child is entitled to school. As you see, the specific label for such children has changed over the past decades, probably because of nurture, not nature. Thus teratogens before and after birth, coupled with changing parental and community practice, probably caused the rise in autism and developmental delay, the decrease in intellectual disability, and the fluctuation in learning disabilities apparent here.

Source: U.S. Department of Education.

In 1980 almost one in 5 of the children that the school system categorized as having special needs was intellectually disabled. That category continues to shrink: in 2011 only one child in 14 was so designated. Autism and developmental delay were not recognized in 1980, but these diagnoses have increased notably since they were first introduced. Children with these disorders in 1980 were probably categorized as intellectually disabled (then called mentally retarded).

It is possible that contemporary children have a markedly different mix of special needs, but it is more likely that some rates have changed because the labels have changed. Note that there is still no separate category for ADHD. To receive special services, children with ADHD usually have to prove they are learning disabled.

In the international arena, the connection between special needs and education varies for cultural reasons, not child-related ones. In many African and Latin American nations, no children are given special education; in many Asian nations, diagnosis refers primarily to physically disability. As a result, in Taiwan, for example, less than 1 percent of the students receive special education of any kind (Tzeng, 2007).

Gifted and Talented

Children who are unusually gifted are often thought to have special needs as well, but they are not covered by the federal laws. Instead, each state of the United States selects and educates gifted and talented children in a particular way, a variation that leads to controversy.

A scholar writes: “The term gifted…has never been more problematic than it is today” (Dai, 2011, p. 8). Educators, political leaders, scientists, and everyone else argue about who is gifted and what should be done about them. Are gifted children unusually intelligent, or talented, or creative? Should they be skipped, segregated, enriched, or left alone?

A hundred years ago, the definition of gifted was simple: high IQ. A famous longitudinal study followed a thousand “genius” children, all of whom scored about 140 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test (Terman, 1925). Even today, some school systems define gifted as having an IQ of 130 or above (attained by 1 child in 50), or sometimes as 145 and above (1 child in 1,000).

A hundred years ago, school placement was simple, too: The gifted were taught with children who were their mental age, not their chronological age. This practice was called acceleration. Today that is rarely done because many accelerated children were bullied, unhappy, and never learned how to get along with others. As one woman remembers:

Weeds grow no matter where they are planted, and research on thousands of children has found that while the gifted learn differently from other children, they are neither more nor less likely to need emotional and social education. Educating the whole child, not just the mind, is required (Winner, 1996).

Another type of special child is designated precocious in one of Gardner’s nine intelligences. Such children are often called talented instead of gifted. Mozart was one, composing music at age 3; so was Pablo Picasso, creating works of art at age 4.

Gifted. Then What? Mercan Türkoglu holds her Bambi, the German equivalent of an Oscar, awarded for her star performance in the film Three Quarter Moon. She is German of Turkish ancestry, Muslim, and a talented actress. What education will best prepare her for adulthood?

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES

Historically, many famous musicians, artists, and scientists were child prodigies whose fathers recognized their talent (often because the father was talented) and taught them. Mozart’s father transcribed his earliest pieces and toured Europe with his gifted son. Picasso’s father removed him from school in second grade so he could create all day (Pablo said he never learned to read or write).

Although such intense early education nourished talent, neither Mozart nor Picasso had happy adult lives. Similar patterns are still apparent, as exemplified by gifted athletes (e.g., Tiger Woods and Steffi Graf) as well as those in more erudite specialties. Here is one example:

A third kind of child who might need special education is the unusually creative one (Sternberg et al., 2011). They are divergent thinkers, finding many solutions and even more questions for every problem. Such students joke in class, resist drudgery, ignore homework, and bedevil their teachers. They may become innovators, inventors, and creative forces of the future.

Creative children do not conform to social standards. They are not convergent thinkers, who choose the correct answer on school exams. One such person was Charles Darwin, whose “school reports complained unendingly that he wasn’t interested in studying, only shooting, riding, and beetle-collecting” (Freeman, 2010, p. 283). Other creative geniuses who were poor students are Einstein, Freud, Newton, and almost every contemporary innovator. What should be done about them in school?

Since both acceleration and intense parental tutoring have led to later problems, a third education strategy has become popular, at least in the United States. Children who are bright, talented, and/or creative—all the same age but each with special abilities—are taught as a special group in their own classroom. “Ideally, such children are neither bored nor lonely; each is challenged and appreciated by their classmates.

Neuroscience has recently discovered another advantage to gifted classes: brain development. Children who practice musical talents in early childhood develop specialized brain structures, as do child athletes and mathematicians. This suggests that neurological specialization occurs for every form of giftedness. Since plasticity means that all children learn whatever their context teaches, talents may be developed, not wasted, with special education.

Classes for gifted students require unusual teachers, bright and creative, able to appreciate divergent thinking and challenge the very bright. They must be flexible: providing a 7-year-old artist freedom, guidance, and inspiration for magnificent art and simultaneously providing patient, step-by-step reading instruction if that same child is a typical new reader. Similarly, a 7-year-old who reads at the twelfth-grade level might have immature social skills, needing a teacher who finds another child to befriend him or her, and who then helps both of them share, compromise, and take turns.

Flexible teachers must be carefully selected and chosen for gifted and talented children. However, every child may need such teachers, no matter what the child’s abilities or disabilities may be.

Some nations educate all children together, assuming that intelligence is not a matter of some children being unusually gifted as much as some children putting more effort into learning. Thus the teacher’s job is to motivate and challenge every child. Some gifted children benefit from special recognition in school, and some would be much better off if they were left alone, without teachers or parents expecting them to excel (Freeman, 2010).

As the Education of All Handicapped Children law states, all children can learn. But not all schools and teachers successfully teach them. Every special and ordinary form of education can benefit from what we know about children’s minds and how they learn (De Corte, 2013). That is the topic of the next chapter.