Social and Emotional Issues - Advice Sheets
Potential Plus UK has a wide selection of advice sheets covering many of the issues likely to face parents and carers of a child with high learning potential.
Family members can access all of our family and children’s advice sheets and download them free of charge by logging into the members area and visiting the Family Member Resources page. Non-members can download a selection of General Advice Sheets for free and other advice sheets are available to purchase and download at £3.60 each.
See our Parent Advice Sheets Page for more advice sheets on subjects such as: assessments, education and developing skills. For a quick way to identify our parent advice sheets visit the Parent Advice Sheets – Alphabetical Index
PA601 – Social and Emotional Development of High Learning Potential Children
Raising happy, successful children is the goal of every parent. As social and emotional problems appear often among high learning potential children, this advice sheet looks at the cause of these and offers some advice on dealing with them.
PA602 – Helping to Raise Self-Esteem in High Learning Potential Children
Building self-esteem increases a person’s belief in themselves, as well as their sense of self worth. It therefore affects their whole well being, which in turn is reflected in their behaviours. This advice sheet is aimed at parents and gives tips to increase self-esteem in high learning potential children and gives some useful books and websites.
PA603 – Friendships and High Learning Potential Children
Children with high learning potential often feel different to other children in their peer group and can have a very small circle of friends. Frequently, high learning potential children are more comfortable relating to older children and adults and sometimes they get on very well with younger children as well. This advice sheet explores friendships in the context of high learning potential.
Purchase and Download PA603 Friendships and High Learning Potential Children Advice Sheet »
PA604 – Perfectionism and High Learning Potential Children
Perfectionism and the fear of failure are common traits among high learning potential children that can impact negatively on their lives and prevent them from reaching their potential. This advice sheet focuses on how to help children overcome perfectionism, the fear of failure and how to encourage them to attempt difficult tasks.
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PA605 – Sleep and High Learning Potential Children
Parents of children with high learning potential often notice that their children’s sleep pattern differ from the norm during infancy. Therefore, they often worry that a lack of sufficient hours of sleep may impair the child’s development, memory, attention span and reasoning skills There are several coping strategies that may be beneficial for high learning potential children to try if their sleep pattern is having an adverse effect on their behaviour during the day or if parents/carers are exhausted from lack of sleep due to being disturbed by their child during the night.
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PA606 – Worry and Anxiety in High Learning Potential Children
High learning potential children worry about many different things for many different reasons. This advice sheet contains strategies that can be adopted to help alleviate the child’s anxieties before they become unmanageable.
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PA607 – Late Speech and High Learning Potential Children
Children with high learning potential are often identified at a young age when they begin to talk much earlier than their peers (among other indicators). However, there is a lesser known group of high learning potential children who display their ability in every other way apart from speech. These children are high learning potential late talkers. This advice sheet covers the characteristics that these children share and offers support and advice to parents of high learning potential late talkers.
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PA608 – Helping High Learning Potential Children Deal with Emotional Regulation
High learning potential children worry about many different things for many different reasons. This advice sheet contains strategies that can be adopted to help alleviate the child’s anxieties before they become unmanageable.
PA609 – Sensory Food Aversion and High Learning Potential Children
Sensory food aversion is a condition whereby certain food appearances, textures or odours cause a child to refuse to eat that particular food. Extreme sensory food aversion that causes anxiety, upset, nauseous feelings or even vomiting is a serious condition which can affect a person’s life-long relationship with food. This advice sheet offers guidance on how to increase the variety and volume of food consumption for your child, and offers useful strategies to help reduce anxiety, aversion and negative behaviours associated with food and meal times.
Purchase and Download PA609 Sensory Food Aversion in High Learning Potential Children Advice Sheet »
PA610 – Hypersensitivity (Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities)
In the 1960’s, Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski observed various kinds of intensities and hypersensitivity in high learning potential (HLP) people. He researched and studied these and developed his Theory of Positive Disintegration to explain them. Part of this theory was about the five kinds of overexcitabilities, or hypersensitivities, that high learning potential people often have. This advice sheet gives an overview of psychomotor, intellectual, sensual, emotional and imaginational overexcitabilities, or hypersensitivities.
Purchase and Download PA610 Hypersensitivity (Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities) Advice Sheet »
PA611 – High Learning Potential and Active (Psychomotor Overexcitability)
High learning potential children, especially those who display Psychomotor Overexcitability, are highly energetic, always on the go and want to be constantly engaged in an activity. Many parents of high learning potential children, who are very active, despair that their child won’t sit still at the dinner table, eagerly rush into things before they’ve heard all the instructions and never seem to get tired. Teachers often complain that these children fidget a lot, shout out in class and don’t seem to be listening (their minds tend to wander when not fully engaged). This advice sheet explores the topic and suggests ways of dealing with this high level of activity.
PA612 – Enthused About Learning (Intellectual Overexcitability)
High learning potential children, especially those who display Intellectual Overexcitability, are intensely curious and voracious in their pursuit of knowledge in their areas of interest. Whilst in many ways a wonderfully positive trait, it can sometimes lead to difficulties. It is not always easy to know how best to support a child with such an overexcitability. Difficulties in “switching off” are common. Misunderstandings can also abound and affect the relationship of a child with intellectual overexcitability with their teachers, peers or even family; this, in turn, can affect their own wellbeing. This advice sheet explores the topic and suggests ways of supporting children with intellectual overexcitability.
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PA614 – Emotional Hypersensitivity (Emotional Overexcitability)
High learning potential children, and especially those who display Emotional Overexcitability, tend to experience the world, and their emotions, with particularly great intensity. Whilst this can lead to many positive experiences, for instance, where the beauty in the world is encountered with intense joy, and where it can also lead to admirable empathy and kindness towards others’ and their emotions or problems, it is not without its issues. Children with emotional overexcitability are often at risk of being charged with overreacting; at having their intensity dismissed or criticised, when what this intensity requires is acknowledgement, understanding, and support. This advice sheet explores the topic and suggests ways of supporting children with emotional overexcitability.
Purchase and Download PA614 Emotional Hypersensitivity Advice Sheet»
PA615 – Overactive Imagination (Imaginational Overexcitability)
High learning potential children, especially those with imaginational overexcitability, can experience a wild imagination and show astonishing creativity. These traits, (commonly referred to as ‘having an overactive imagination’), can be immensely positive, both in childhood and beyond. However, they can also bring challenges. This advice sheet explores imaginational overexcitability and suggests ways of supporting children by providing opportunities to express their creativity and also by using tools to cope with any downsides to their vivid imaginations.
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PA616 – Describing Feelings
Children with high learning potential sometimes have very strong feelings and struggle to deal with them. This advice sheet is aimed at parents and carers of high learning potential children and comprises a list of feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant, in order that parents can help their children to name and understand their emotions.
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