There is a group of children in New Zealand who have a condition which severely impacts on their learning but which is very difficult to diagnose. It is so difficult, in fact, that some researchers believe that over 50% of children with this condition are never diagnosed and never receive appropriate help. Misdiagnosis is not uncommon, with children being given other labels and inappropriate and sometimes harmful treatments. Furthermore, researchers say, a number of children are said to have this condition, when in reality they do not, again sometimes with harmful outcomes.

This condition is giftedness.

In almost any other situation - if, say, these statistics applied to children with hearing problems - we would surely be expressing considerable professional concern.

But giftedness? Given all the other traumatic problems that children can face, does it really matter if some very bright children who are surely going to succeed anyway are not immediately picked up by their schools?

These are the opening paragraghs of an interesting and informative article.  It can be found at  http://www.georgeparkyncentre.org/documents/articlemystery.html