#his own language had lagged behind the changing vocabulary

[julijbee]

playing pathologic 2 as a disconnected ndn hitting harder than local man expected, more at 8

[hero-philia]

One out of Twenty

This is my present for @new-noveltea​, who was assigned to me as part of the BNHA Spring Time Event (@bnhaclaimedmysoul​) - Because she doesn’t ship herself with someone, I decided to go for a platonic story! I hope that you like it, Ash (^o^)

Summary: First days are hard, especially if you don't understand a word of what’s going on around you. But the enterity of class A is here to help you out! (English dialogue is written normally, Japanese dialogue in italic)

Words: 2856

On this particular morning you found yourself following a man that you had only heard of before. Completely dressed in black he didn’t seem like the most heroic guy, but people throughout the country called him such. Admittedly, it hadn’t been too easy for you to follow the news reports on TV, which featured a pretty fast spoken Japanese - A language that wasn’t yours in the first place.

The steps echoed through the empty hallway, where normally dozens of students were gathering. But the bell had sent them into their classrooms a few minutes ago when you had been waiting in the teachers’ lounge to make a fool of yourself in front of everyone. 

You gulped in order to suppress the memory how you had forgotten half of your introduction speech and had switched to English instead, even if you had known that most of your audience wasn’t able to understand you that way. At least you had earned quite some chuckles as you had changed the language in the middle of saying that your Japanese basically sucked, but that you were capable of speaking English.

For now you didn’t have to talk to anyone since the man in black didn’t seem to be interested in a conversation with you. He had simply advised you to follow him after the glorious embarrassment that many high ranked heroes had witnessed. What a good start.

Wherever the two of you were headed, you could just assume that it was your classroom. A room filled with strangers was waiting for you, maybe expecting you to come. Who knew what they had been told in advance. You didn’t know anything for sure at that point.

Nevertheless you hoped that you would be able to sit down again soon as sleep-deprivation was getting the best of you. The adrenaline in your body kept you awake and functioning, but your eyes started to feel heavy. Probably it hadn’t been the best idea to send you to school two days after your arrival in a completely different country with a new time zone. Last night the jet lag had robbed you of many hours of sleep, leaving you running on three - not consecutive - hours of rest. 

On a Monday. At eight in the morning. Definitely not the ideal combination.

Your teacher didn’t leave a lot of space for thinking when he stopped next to a gigantic door. For a second you fought the huge to look up in shock until it opened with ease. Once it had swung open, you caught the first glimpse of your new classmates. 

With the backpack on your shoulders you straightened your back and put on a smile before stepping in. Nineteen pairs of eyes followed the movements of their teacher, though many scanned you as soon as they had noticed your figure. Except for a pretty grumpy looking blonde in the second row and a another boy, whose red and white hair got your attention, with absolutely no expression on his face, everyone seemed like they wanted to ask questions about your presence.

Without caring about the reaction your teacher walked to his desk only to sigh loudly. He went on with a monologue that you didn’t understand at all. The words he mumbled didn’t match any of the vocabulary you had learnt as preparation for your stay. Your thumbs started to twist around each other while you tried to translate at least one sentence.

To absolutely no avail you listened to the short speech, focused to not show your struggles openly. Finally a word came up that you had heard before - ryuugakusei. You celebrated the achievement with a growing smile, which wanted to disappeared when it hit you what that meant. Ryuugakusei happened to be translated as exchange student. It was your turn to speak again.

„Introduction, please,“ the man in the front announced in English with a look in your direction. 

For some reason a boy with curly green hair gasped aloud to hurriedly open his notebook and stare at you with curious eyes. His hand practically ready to write in the speed of light. As no one said something about it, you tried to refocus on the task.

The words of your Japanese introduction, that you had carefully constructed with the help of four online translators last night, deleted themselves for the second time today. Failing at the teachers’ lounge was one thing, but not being able to introduce yourself in front of your own class was something you didn’t want to risk.

So screw the rules!

You pulled out your phone from the pocket in your skirt - god bless whoever made that decision - and opened the notes with your sentences. Before anyone would even have the time to stop you, you began to read them out loud. Saying your name, your age, where you were from and many details more.

„I will stay for the entirety of your second year. Let’s do our best together!“ You concluded in the end. 

Of course you took a short bow while your classmate gave you a round of applause for whatever motivation. Probably to praise your bravery, because your grammar and pronunciation must have been off completely. Then your teacher allowed you to sit down at the empty seat behind the green-haired boy. 

The following lesson progressed pretty much as you had expected it to. Not that you understood what it was about, though you could finally switch off your brain for a few minutes and silently take a breath. 

Shortly after, the bell sent you back into attention mode. You watched how everyone got up, went to the wall to your left, grabbed a box with a number and aimed for the door. While you were pretty much busy with trying to figure out what was going on, someone placed their hand on your shoulder. A girl with dark hair in a ponytail stepped into your sight.

„My name is Yaoyorozu Momo and I’m one of two class presidents. Our next lesson is quirk training at the gym, so just follow me. Your costume is waiting there as well,“ she said in a soft voice. 

„Your English is really good,“ you blurted out in surprise. „Thanks for telling me! I’ll be in your care, then.“

On your way to the gym the hallways were filled with students that were also changing their rooms right now. Even though the floor had looked kind of pretty in its empty state, seeing it being crowded gave it the impression of actually being in a school. No matter how many people you passed, most of them still stared at you. 

„They are excited to see a foreigner here. In Japan we aren’t used to being around people from Europe or America, that makes you really special,“ Momo explained with a giggle.

Her explanation made sense, yet you wondered why they were more excited to be faced with a foreigner than your classmates with quirks that affected their appearance. You literally had a boy with tentacles and a person with a bird head in your class. Having such a quirk was seemingly more common than being a foreigner, you thought. 

This whole center of attention thing went on in the locker room where you got reunited with your hero costume. A while ago you had handed it to an official of the exchange program at your home school and never saw it again. Until now. 

„You look really cool! I’m Ashido Mina. Call me Mina,“ a girl with pink skin commented. Her English pronunciation wasn’t the greatest, but it was easy to understand her name. Finally someone that you could actually call by name. 

Thanks to her a huge round of introductions started with the girls. At the end you knew like three names for sure, half of them to a certain extent and the rest was forgotten. 

Unfortunately the lesson itself asked even more of your brain since every student was asked to demonstrate his or her quirk. From what you could tell, some of them had arranged complete shows to present their abilities. Only you were attending without a certain plan, but the teacher hadn’t chosen the water area of the USJ for nothing. 

The blonde boy set off various explosions while yelling like crazy, a red-head didn’t even flinch when his hardened skin collided with the fire, another boy with black hair escaped the water last minute before a second blonde electrified the whole artificial lake. Last but not least Mina improvised a dance with elements of her acid simply consuming the ice that the boy with the scar and the resting bitch face had created.

„Okay, you are next,“ Momo made sure to let you know. 

When you stepped out of the group of students, you swore that the boy, who had been called ‚Deku‘ by the angry fire guy multiple times, intently wanted to pull out his notebook that obviously wasn’t there because he was wearing his hero costume. 

You bowed a little in front of your classmates to get their attention, „Please watch me!“

These very few Japanese words were certainly enough to do so, which made you feel their glances while you were walking up to the water. Your movements made the skirt part of your dress jump a little, but you didn’t have to worry about showing too much skin thanks to the pair of black shorts underneath.

„Our little exchange student knows what a lake is, doesn’t she? Can’t wait to see her face when she finds out that the water is not carrying her,“ Bakugou joked with crossed arms. For him and all the others it looked like you were headed for a dive. 

Instead of stopping at the sandy area, you continued to walk even after your shoes had touched the water. Like walking on normal ground you went on as if nothing had changed, causing the first mumbles of your classmates. 

In the middle of the lake you stood still, not moving at all. Everything you did was to focus on the water and the energy inside of your body as you took deep, yet calm breaths through your nose. Even your eyes were closed. From their perspective it looked like you had no idea what to do now that you had made it there. But then you opened your eyes, unknown to them.

Out of nowhere a huge wave surrounded you while it pushed itself towards the coast into all directions with your position being the center. Your classmates only gasped at the growing wall of water that was making its way into their direction. They lost sight of you when you disappeared behind the water. 

Preparing themselves to go into defensive mode, they didn’t know what was going on or what your intentions were. Soon enough you broke through the surface from behind, again using the water like normal ground and simply touching the monstrous wave with your index finger. 

As it had never existed, the wave got smaller within seconds. In the blink of an eye the lake returned to its not harmful state. 

„SHE DIDN’T EVEN GET WET!“ Mina cheered at the realisation that you had bursted through water, stopped a gigantic tsunami and walked on water without the tiniest sign of a water stain on your clothes or hair. 

An absolutely strange battle broke out when half of your class gathered around you during a heated conversation with each other. At some point you were sure that you understood the word quirk, but that was as much as you were able to translate again. So you tried to not look too confused once your mind wanted to convince you that you had heard ‚lunch‘ somewhere in between. Too many voices to keep track of asked you things that you didn’t even understand.

„Everyone! Back in line! This behaviour is inappropriate for future heroes. Just imagine how our new classmate must feel in a situation like this!“ The main class president interrupted the chaos, at least that was what you remembered from Momo. 

„But we want to talk to her!“ A third blonde boy exclaimed directly next to you, shooting a wink of glitter at you.

„Right, we need to talk to her!“ This time it was Mina that spoke, or rather yelled.

„You just want to have her all for yourself!“ Somehow this statement from the electricity dude shut up everyone, except for the class president that suddenly sounded like he was defending himself from accusations. 

Even after a few minutes had passed nothing really changed. You were still standing in the middle of people that were arguing with each other, especially since the teacher had ended the lesson. And you hadn’t gotten closer to finding out what the whole issue was about until Momo finally decided to help you out.

„They are fighting because all of them want you to join them at lunch. Welcome to the chaos that is called class 2-A.“

So they did what every aspiring hero with pride would do to solve such a problem - A representative of each squad had to participate in a battle of rock, paper, scissors. 

Several disappointed grumbles and screams of victory later Mina pointed her hand towards the ceiling: „I WON! SHE WILL EAT WITH US! THE ONE AND ONLY BAKUSQUAD!“

Everyone went back to their own squads, which made you realise that your translator wouldn’t be around during lunch. She had offered to come along, but Mina and three boys had told her that they would be fine. In the meantime you questioned at least Mina’s English skills when you got changed again.

In her excitement the pink girl practically dragged you back to the classroom where you grabbed your lunch and were then pulled to a place outside the building. Early in the morning it had been too cold to go out without a jacket, but now the warm sun of spring warmed your skin. 

It didn’t need any words to express your awe once you got to see the meeting place of the BakuSquad: A gigantic tree that blossomed in a corner of the yard. 

Wherever you looked at the ground, it was covered in white to pinkish petals from the tree and this way it wasn’t a big surprise that you had some of them on your head only a few moments after your arrival. The boys were already waving at the two of you arriving, except for the explosion boy as you had named him for now.

You sat down on one of the wooden benches that were standing around the tree, allowing you to sit close to the others but not too close to feel cramped. The first thing you did was to explain your quirk without words because your Japanese wasn’t good enough. 

Four of them widened their eyes at the sight of the water from your bottle hovering in the air above the ground. There you parted them into to two floating bubbles with only the movements of a finger to show what you could do. One bubble froze to ice, the other began to boil from the increasing heat you were providing, yet again with nothing more than a gesture. 

„But I can’t undo it, if I change their form. Now I’ll have to wait for the water to cool to drink it and I’ll use the frozen part as ice cubes to fasten the process,“ you admitted. 

You were met with questioning eyes that were exchanging glimpses with each other like they were trying to communicate. Just like that your smile turned into a rather insecure smirk.

„Idiots, she said she can’t undo it,“ a different voice grumbled. „And you definitely need to learn more Japanese to not fall behind in the future!“

It caught you quite off-guard that the explosion boy out of all people was able to speak English on such a high level. His scolding left you speechless for a moment and it stayed like this long enough for the others to regain their voice.

„Ooooh, Bakubro, what would we do without you?“ The boy with black hair said dramatically with the back of his hand touching his forehead as he leaned back a little. Not to be forgotten should be his very broken English and heavy accent, which he maybe did on purpose.

„We really love youuuuuuuu,“ the red-head followed suit.

All four of them launched themselves at the grumpy blonde at the same time, making him fall over in the process as he cussed words that no one would voluntarily translate. His friends didn’t get demotivated from his reaction and continued to hug him until he was about to use his quirk out of mere revolution purposes.

But they all turned around to look at you when you bent over laughing at the sight of them. Soon enough they giggled along, except for the explosion boy of course. Though even he had to admit that he had to suppress a chuckle. 

Welcome to the chaos that is called class 2-A!

-----

Posted: April 28th 2020 | Requests: Open | Match-ups: Closed

[chiefcupcakeavenue-blog]

Reading

Intelligence is a fascinating topic to me. 

Man distinguishes himself from animals by his superior working memory, logical-mathematical thinking, and abstract thought. Many are also aware that intelligence considers many other domains such as emotional intelligence, which all-together influences not just our capacity for achievement, but our very perceptions of self and others. It also affects our capacity for deep introspection, to develop the complex moral principles and nuances we call “our humanity”.  Man defines himself very much by his intelligence, albeit in different aspects of it at different times. For someone to be proclaimed as being more intelligent is to encounter someone who is seemingly inherently superior in many of the attributes by which we define ourselves. 

Despite knowing otherwise, we also naturally hold great expectations of these geniuses, expecting their potential to be fully realised as great achievement. In societies built on (and many times, saved by) achievement,we can’t help but be curious about precisely what intelligence is, and perhaps, how to obtain more of it.

While reading this book, I’d like to make sure I remember this quote I found online a few months ago.

“ It's easy to trick ourselves into thinking that "being smart" is what determines our performance. In so many ways, it's the easiest possible explanation because it demands so little of us and immediately explains away our failings. You are facing this tension without recognizing it. You are blaming your intelligence but you undermine yourself by saying you received good grades you didn't deserve. You recognize your lack of motivation as a factor in your lack of extracurricular activities but not in your SAT scores.

You got A's because you studied or because the classes were easy. You got a B probably because you were so used to understanding things that you didn't know how to deal with something that didn't come so easily. I'm guessing that early on you built the cognitive and intellectual tools to rapidly acquire and process new information, but that you've relied on those tools so much you never really developed a good set of tools for what to do when those failed. This is what happened to me, but I didn't figure it out until after I got crushed by my first semester of college. I need to ask you, has anyone ever taken the time to teach you how to study? And separately, have you learned how to study on your own in the absence of a teacher or curriculum? These are the most valuable tools you can acquire because they are the tools you will use to develop more powerful and more insightful tools.

MIT has an almost 97% graduation rate. That means that most of the people who get in, get through. Do you know what separates the 3% that didn't from the rest that do? I do. I've seen it so many times, and it almost happened to me. Very few people get through four years of MIT with such piss-poor performance that they don't graduate. In fact, I can't think of a single one off the top of my head. People fail to graduate from MIT because they come in, encounter problems that are harder than anything they've had to do before, and not knowing how to look for help or how to go about wrestling those problems, burn out. The students that are successful look at that challenge, wrestle with feelings of inadequacy and stupidity, and begin to take steps hiking that mountain, knowing that bruised pride is a small price to pay for getting to see the view from the top. They ask for help, they acknowledge their inadequacies. They don't blame their lack of intelligence, they blame their lack of motivation.

You're so young, way too young to be worried about not being smart enough. Until you're so old you start going senile, you have the opportunity to make yourself "smarter." And I put that in quotes because "smart" is really just a way of saying "has invested so much time and sweat that you make it look effortless." You feel like you are burnt out or that you are on the verge of burning out, but in reality you are on the verge of deciding whether or not you will burn out. It's scary to acknowledge that it's a decision because it puts the onus on you to to do something about it, but it's empowering because it means there is something you can do about it.”

Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults by Dr James T. Webb

Many independent thinkers are incorrectly diagnosed as having disorders. They are given stigmatising labels that result in unnecessary, harmful treatment, and they do not receive the unique education they need. Others are able to compensate for their disorders with their intelligence, letting others mistake them to be simply quirky or strange. These misdiagnoses stem from the ignorance amongst caregivers, peers, and healthcare professionals about the characteristics of gifted people. 

Characteristics of gifted individuals

Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding achievement or ability to learn in specific domains. There is great diversity in the abilities of gifted individuals. Generally, the characteristics listed should be present more frequently and intensely in a gifted child, at an earlier point in their lives. Moreover, we must remember that IQ scores should not be equated with either mental disability or giftedness.

Behavioral

Unusually large vocabularies and complex sentence structure

Greater comprehension of subtleties of language

Longer attention span and persistence

Wide range of interests

Curious

Divergent thinking and action

A few of these characteristics increase the probability of socioemotional difficulties:

Drive to challenge personal ability

Search for understanding and consistency

Perception of alternative possibilities

Emotional intensity

Concern with social and moral issues

Therefore, the talents of gifted individuals frequently become detrimental to their adjustment. Nonetheless, giftedness should not be used to excuse inappropriate behavior. Rather, it reframes preexisting problems for targeted solutions.

The gifted are also more likely to have heightened experiences of /responses to stimuli, perceived as overexcitability.

Intellectual

Enthusiasm towards problem solving, theoretical thinking and introspection.

Imaginative

Detailed imagination, dramatic perception, resulting in fantasy play and unusual use of metaphor.

Emotional

Strong emotional attachments to their surroundings.

Auditory sequential and visual spatial learning have replaced traditional left right brain models, but they continue to be overly simplistic metaphor to understand learning, with no legitimate neurological basis.

Idealism combined with the intensity of gifted individuals can lead to disillusionment, interpersonal tension and depression. They can envision how things ought to be, but also how far things fall below the established standard. They can be profoundly disappointed to discover how the people around them fall short of their ideals and the hypocrisy or inconsistencies in their actions, becoming cynical or depressed and choosing to live in private spheres within their means of control.

They experience frustration to know that their peers do not share their interests. They may respond by reading or seeking adults as interest peers rather than age peers.

Gifted children frequently have great variations in abilities within themselves, because they do not develop equally across various skills, to the point where they may have below average aptitudes in other domains. They are often keenly aware of this asymmetry. They are also likely to regard tasks that come easily to them as trivial and only value those they find challenging intensely due to their perfectionism, which makes them vulnerable to learned helplessness.

The development of judgement might lag behind intellectual development in gifted children, resulting in smart children who seem to lack common sense. The maturation of the frontal lobe responsible for complex mental processes is delayed in gifted children, yet it occurs at a faster rate once the process begins. One should not expect equivalent socioemotional maturity in gifted children. Their delayed maturity and the lack of exposure to interpersonal situations may instead lead to a below average interpretation and prioritisation of unwritten social rules. The intellectual curiosity or moral concerns of gifted individuals may also override their judgement of social scenarios, leading to inappropriate behavior.

The wide variety of interests they have may cause them to be fragmented as they are unable to commit to ambition. Their plans are difficult to perceive as they seem to be intensely interested in different areas at different times. They struggle with multipotentiality, where they see opportunity in diverse disciplines but struggle with scheduling the required training. This may manifest in the form of multiple career changes. When they do find interests, they pursue them with a focus bordering on obsessive. 

Their interests and behavior are  more androgynous than that of their peers, being widely distributed across genders, in turn causing peers to question sexual orientation.

While there is significant likelihood of misdiagnoses if there is educational misplacement or lack of peer understanding, gifted individuals seem to have lower risk of developing disorders when their needs are met.

Their emotional intensity and idealism makes them vulnerable to adverse childhood experiences and exploitation.

Misdiagnosis and dual diagnoses

The frequency of misdiagnoses are unknown but perceived as substantial, which imply terrible implications for those diagnosed with disorders medicated with behavior modifying drugs with unknown long term effects.

The tendency for professionals to overdiagnose is partly due to a great increase in the number of disorders documented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, with a parallel increase in prescriptions for psychotropic medications.

Besides the aforementioned professional ignorance, emphasis is placed on individuals who function slightly below average in ability during clinical training.

Gifted children may have a history of conflicting diagnoses where each captures some aspect of their behavior while reinforcing the perception that their behaviors are symptoms of pathological disorders, especially ADHD, ASD and OCD 

ADHD

The report of gifted behaviors overlapping with ADHD may prompt a medication trial. Medication may change problem behaviors, resulting in the assumption that the diagnosis was correct, even though ADHD medication improves the attention span of anyone. One should also beware the reliability of checklist driven assessment instead of neuropsychological evaluations.

Hyperfocus is an anomaly in ADHD sufferers where they show unusually high concentration. Hyperfocus is more likely to occur during events that are inherently engaging. Preservation is the inability of one to be sensitive to relevant environmental feedback, leading to difficulty in changing between states of mind and tasks. This may manifest in the pursuit of failing strategies. ADHD is thus defined by the inability to regulate attention to tasks not inherently rewarding or those which require conscientious effort, and the inability to prioritize. 

A point that distinguishes the gifted from those with ADHD is that ADHD sufferers are highly inconsistent in the quality or efficiency of their performance in a task at multiple sittings. They are usually unaware of when they are inattentive or impulsive, preventing self remediation based on consequences. 

Anger

Gifted children have a strong sense of self and expect to be treated as adults. Their independent will makes them more likely to be judgmental, oppose adult instruction or argue, and to have strong beliefs about morality. They can be black and white in thought and rude and dismissive in style to stay faithful to their beliefs.

Protracted conformity requires great expenditure of mental and emotional energy for the gifted that hurts all who are involved, known as deviance fatigue. There are many gifted children whose selfishness, manipulation, rebelliousness, etc are a result of boredom and humiliation.

They often respond well to appeals to empathy. Caregivers should sidestep the oppositional behavior of gifted children, allowing them the freedom to integrate their experiences with their knowledge, so as to develop maturity independently.

Narcissism

Narcissism can be benign or malignant. Some degree of benign narcissism is a normal developmental characteristic amongst teenagers. To develop one's abilities to make a difference takes substantial time and effort and an intense self belief that imply self-centered introspection and selectively ignoring the duties and people around them, leading to a loss of intimacy and perceptions of narcissism. To the narcissist, how things appear are more important than the reality, while gifted individuals are concerned with far reaching implications of real world actions. The gifted tend to develop their abilities without regard for others' opinion, with an idealistic drive towards self actualisation

OCD

A gifted person may not see certain peculiar rituals as excessive or unreasonable, instead being able to describe elaborately how her actions rationally contribute to established goals. These rituals tend to be engineered rather than unproductive or therapeutic.

ASD

When with others who share their interests, ASD people will continue to exhibit social ineptitude with a wide range of peers. The gifted are more likely to be socially sensitive, with peers and some satisfying social interaction. They also have great insight into the perception of others, manifested  perhaps in the struggle of making choices toward achievement which affect their need for affiliations, therefore showing Theory of Mind. Even gifted introverts who is socially satisfied with 1 friend will be aware of and possibly distressed by her differences. They can talk about their interests with evident excitement instead of monotone, elaborate on the cause of their interests and react to peer response. Introverts can demonstrate insight instead of trivia when asked, and good social skills when with interest peers or good friends.

Schizoid personality disorder

A sufferer is unable to prefer companionship over isolation, while the gifted actively make choices which best fit the situation. The choice of isolation may be frequent and seem pathological when the child has no interest peers. The desire for solitude seems to not only be a frequent characteristic of the gifted, but an essential aspect of adult achievement. The gifted also show a distinguishing sensitivity to praise and criticism not shown by those with schizoid disorder.

Bipolar

Bipolar disorder is generally recognised as affecting adults, with average age of onset being 18-25 years. With relatively little research and no diagnostic criteria for children, diagnoses of BD in children are questionable.

The mood swings of the gifted occur as responses to external stimuli instead of being due to a pervading mood, hence changing rapidly in a single day or on a regular basis, similiar to that of borderline personality disorder. Behaviors such as outbursts, depressive moods, or anxiety can be caused by exhaustion when gifted children suffer burnout, since their perfectionism makes them vulnerable to pushing themselves beyond their abilities.

Learning disabilities

The gifted can be learning disabled as well, which should not be dismissed as an effect of asynchronous development. Those able to compensate learning disability with giftedness in early to secondary education have both their giftedness and disabilities overlooked, even when they struggle with increasingly challenging work. 

The effect of disabilities on later performance prompts others to question their giftedness instead of supporting their disabilities. Their tendency for introspection make them vulnerable to imposter syndrome from the irony of being gifted, yet having great difficulty with seemingly easy tasks. 

The key diagnostic criteria for these twice exceptional people is achievement much lower than measured potential, even when the "low" achievement is average amongst peers. 

Comprehensive testing is needed to determine appropriate interventions. Standard IQ tests alone will not effectively differentiate giftednedness or learning disabilities.

If ability and achievement within specific domains are substantially different instead of differing between domains indicating asynchrony, there may be learning disability.

Early evaluation and identification of the twice exceptional child saves years of frustration and prevents plummeting self esteem.

Relationships

On the whole, the gifted are generally mentally and emotionally healthy, with wholesome relationships. However, gifted individuals may exhaust their family members with their unique mental and emotional needs, annoy them by questioning and challenging them, or simply intimidate them.

When parents first recognise the giftedness of their child, they do not know the typical characteristics to expect. Their deviant interests and strong willed pursuit of them make it difficult for parents when they fail to influence their child with their personal hopes or when they do not want their child to pay the price for deviancy. Nonetheless, discipline is needed to develop talent. Major parental involvement is important for the development of exceptional talent. In discipline, gifted children respond best to consistent intellectual argument. They must not be more a friend than a parent, or manipulated by the admiration of their child's abilities. Being gifted does not excuse socially inappropriate behavior.

The expectations of gifted children about friendships tend to be different from their peers, some of them forming unique concepts of or requirements for friendship.

Many misdiagnoses occur when only symptoms are used to make them without considering origin or context. A pediatric neuropsychologist looks at different functional areas instead of focussing on issues within their area of expertise. Management of symptoms without understanding origin of behavior must be avoided.

Seeking an appropriate specialist is difficult, but they can be an enduring resource well worth the cost when intervention prevents potentially prolonged frustration faced by the patient and her peers. When seeking treatment, clear questions and goals should be established.

[rileybailey732-blog]

How Good Taxonomy Can Drive Your SEO Strategy

Welcome to HuffPost's Keeping It 100. From infusing our culture with data to figuring out how to reach Gen Z and cultivate niche distributed communities, we'll give you an inside look at the hits and misses of HuffPost's biggest bets. http://www.gaiaonline.com/journal/?mode=view&post_id=40103641&u=37844953 Eleven years on the internet has an upside and a downside when it comes to SEO. The upside: brand recognition, brand authority and a sea of great content from talented writers and editors. The downside: the internet moves quickly, and best practices change. So when we discovered a lagging search presence, we weren't sure what was causing it. A little housekeeping was in order. We looked at over a billion pages on the HuffPost domain as part of a full audit. We examined the site architecture, poked around the sitemaps, and looked at server issues. We made sure all of our technical t's were crossed. Next, we investigated our search profile. We ranked for lots of keywords. But they weren't always priority keywords. The keywords drove lots of organic traffic. But it wasn't always quality organic traffic. Finally, we turned to our content. Everything looked normal at the article level. Sure, a few things needed tweaking, but overall there were no five-alarm fires. So what was the problem? While article-level traffic was prominent, category-level traffic was suspiciously low. Even though we consistently covered important subjects, organic traffic didn't reflect that coverage. That's when we realized the problem that had been ballooning for years: our tags. What Are Tags? Tags are values used to classify and organize content. In our content management system, editors assign tags to each post. These tags speak to the entities in the story - things like a person, a place, a country or any broader concept. Once a post is published, the assigned tags are displayed on the front end. Here is an example of tags on our site:

Each tag points to a corresponding tag page. These tag pages can either house a few related articles or a large inventory of articles. Here is one version of a tag page on our site:

The tag page for actor Chris Pratt houses every single piece of content that's tagged with his name. How Do Tags Impact A Site? Tag pages act as the connective tissue of a site. They're great for users, because they help users discover more related content. But they're also great for search engine spiders. Spiders rely on links to find, decipher and catalog content on the web. Tag pages - pages that naturally house numerous links - create pathways for the spiders to locate content that might be buried deep within a website. Even better, tags pages use common keywords that piggyback off popular search queries. This setup is ideal for search, and extremely valuable when it comes to ranking for individual actors, musicians, politicians and companies. We thought our tag pages looked peachy. Until we came upon pages that looked like this:

Hmmm.

Ugh. Awkward collar tug. Editors were adding their own tags, often pairing topics and descriptors that were one-offs and only applicable to a handful of stories. And those tags were creating new tag pages. The number of uncontrolled vocabularies were playing a clear role in our search visibility. How Did Tags Impact Search? It might sound counterintuitive to say we wanted to avoid these kinds of tag pages: Shouldn't more pages in the search index mean more pathways we have to capture our reader? Nope. Not since Google introduced its Panda algorithm update. That change actually penalizes low-quality, thin content pages. Our redundant tag pages fit the bill. We were at risk. Using a site operator in search, we exposed the effect that tags were having on the search and user experience. For example, a search for "Chris Pratt Anna Faris" produced mixed results:

We're sure you're just as confused as we were. Eleven years of this free-form tagging had made things difficult in search. There was a tag page for every keyword variation. An antiquated search approach that once worked well was hurting our site authority. By creating so many entrances to HuffPost, we were bloating the site with similar content pages and sending the Google crawler mixed signals. Link equity wasn't being concentrated in one powerful topic page. Instead, we were splitting the value across multiple pages. That hurt our ability to rank favorably for big topics (like "Jurassic World" movie stars). It also meant competing search results, user confusion and traffic cannibalization. This isn't uncommon. Digital publishers born in the same era as HuffPost are also victims of the same free-form tagging issues. Take a look at some familiar faces:

Sorry to call you out, Vice and Buzzfeed. The Solution There seemed to be no end in sight. Our tagging library continued to grow and get out of control. We had to put a solution in place before things ballooned even more. The ideal solution was actually pretty simple. We needed a fix that would organize our content and lift some of the manual work from our editors. That's when Relegence came into the picture. Relegence is a semantic technology combining the power of natural language processing with machine learning and a standardized taxonomy to understand and structure content. The technology identifies the most appropriate categories and entities to automatically append to the scanned content - putting an end to our erroneous and wild tags! With controlled vocabularies in place, we had to tackle the other elephant in the room: the number of orphan tags with no associations. (For example, a tag like "Chris Pratt Anna Faris" that wasn't linked to the "Chris Pratt" tag.) The logic was straightforward. Add a step in our CMS's import process to assign all unique tags (children) to related tag groups (parents). The new setup would pull in all associated content around a parent topic, creating robust topic pages with semantic ranking power. These are the types of pages Google loves to crawl and surface to users. Good from a user perspective, good from a crawler perspective, good from a back end perspective. A win-win-win. We were finally making a dent in the billion-page grooming process. The Results Today, our tag pages are working for us rather than against us. We see low-quality tag pages scrubbed from the search index and high-quality tag pages rise to the top. We rank for relevant topics and themes core to our business. Most importantly, we drive new traffic to tag pages we once brushed off - including our Donald Trump tag page. As recently as last year, the Donald Trump tag page was underutilized and underperforming. After consolidating all Trump-related tags into one page and including link-building efforts, we were able to see the fruits of our labor. We went from being nonexistent in Google search results for Trump to ranking on page one. It's a major achievement for such a competitive keyword. Our success doesn't end there. Our other big wins include: More useful, authoritative tag/topic pages; Improved page crawling and rankings; Better content analysis and content retrieval. The cleanup is still awork in progress, but we're making strides. Oursite taxonomy will continue to evolve over time, and so will its influence on our site's search performance. These are changes everyone can get behind. Even Chris Pratt. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/good-taxonomy-seo-strategy_us_5925e15ae4b0265790f49d15?utm_hp_ref=search-engine-optimization