What If Your Child's Hardest Trait Is Also Their Gift?

I want to tell you something I had to learn the hard way.

Early on with my daughter Gabbi, the label I put on her was defiant. She was always set on doing things her way and getting her way, and I had a word for that. I even went looking for evidence and found studies linking autism and oppositional defiance. There. Confirmed.

The problem is that the label kept me in the Red Zone. My belief about her, and about autism, fed on itself. The more I watched for defiance, the more I saw it.

When I finally let myself ask a different question, what had been true the whole time came into focus.

Gabbi was not defiant. Gabbi is persistent. She knows what she wants. And that very trait, the one I had labeled the heaviest, is the one that has served her most as she has continued her journey.

What if my child's hardest trait is also their gift?

Not eventually. Not someday. Right now. Hidden inside the very thing that has felt the heaviest to carry, there is something no one else can do the way they do it.

Four reframes worth sitting with

These are the traits I hear named most often by parents in my community. Each one carries a common label, and each one carries a gift the world urgently needs.

Deep focus

We have been told to call this rigidity. It is also the foundation of mastery. Engineers, researchers, composers, and writers all live here. Your child is already practicing the thing brilliance requires.

Detail oriented

We have been told to call this anxious or overly particular. It is also the foundation of insight. The people who see what others miss change companies, communities, even the world.

Sensitivity

We have been told to call this fragility. It is also the foundation of empathy. The most caring humans you know carry this exact gift.

A rich inner world

We have been told to call this 'living in their own world.' It is also the foundation of imagination. Artists, inventors, storytellers, dreamers all started here.

The Pygmalion Effect in your own home

There is a famous study in psychology called the Pygmalion Effect. In 1968, researchers Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson told a group of elementary school teachers that certain children in their classrooms were on the verge of an intellectual bloom that year. The children were chosen at random. By the end of the school year, those children had grown more academically than their peers. The only thing that had changed was how the adults saw them.

The takeaway has held up for nearly six decades.

The child who is seen as gifted grows more into who they are. The child who is seen as a problem learns to fold themselves smaller.

I lived this with Gabbi, twice, in two different schools.

There was a season when she was at our local high school in what was supposed to be a wonderful ESE program. The teachers labeled her hard to manage, and that label became her experience. I was getting calls several times a week to come pick her up because she was dysregulated. It was catastrophic.

Then we found a school that saw her as a gift. They loved being around her, and that changed everything. Not because Gabbi changed. Because they did.

The little girl I once called defiant

Here is what I want you to know about the child whose first label in my own home was 'defiant.'

Gabbi connects with people on a deep, almost spiritual level. She asks them their name. She remembers it. They remember her. On cruise ships, in restaurants, at the annual weekend camp she spelled out herself for her friends and their families, where over 200 family members showed up this year and she touched every single one of them.

So many of those people have told me they cannot quite explain it, but being around Gabbi makes them feel good. She has a light. The people who get to see it never forget.

That is the gift that was hiding inside the trait I once called defiant.

Now I want to turn this back to you

Look at your child today and ask one quieter question.

What is right that I have been missing?

The trait you have been told is the problem may be holding the gift you have been waiting for them to grow into. Sit with it. Watch for it. And if you see it, say it out loud. Because the child who is seen as gifted grows more into who they are.

Want to walk through this with your own child?

I made you a free worksheet. It is called 'The Strengths Reframe: A 7 Day Watch List.' It walks you through naming one hard trait, finding the gift hidden inside it, and watching for that gift for seven days. By next week, you will have evidence in your own handwriting that everything you needed to see was already there.

Download the Worksheet here.

Vicky Westra is the founder of Neuroshifts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit championing neurodiversity and emotional well-being for individuals, families, and workplaces. She lives in Florida with her husband Pier, their daughter Gabbi (who communicates by Letter Board), and their growing community of parents moving from survival to thriving.