THE PROBLEM OF PLAY
Reports by gifted children themselves show that they are, as a group, much interested in play, and that they have more "play knowledge" than has the average child. When their reports are compared item by item with reports similarly rendered by unselected children, it appears that the gifted know more games of intellectual skill, such as bridge and chess; that they care less, age for age, for play which involves predominantly simple sensori-motor activity which is aimless; and that gifted girls are far less interested in traditional girls' play, as with dolls and tea sets, than unselected girls are. The gifted enjoy more complicated and more highly competitive games than the generality do, age for age. Outdoor sports hold a high place with the gifted, being almost as popular among them as is reading.
But although they love play, and have much play knowledge, the play of the highly intelligent works out in practice as a somewhat difficult compromise among their various powers. They follow their intellectual interests as far as they can, but these are checked in many ways by age, by degree of physical immaturity, and by tradition. An eight-year-old of 160 IQ may, for example, be deeply interested in tennis, but he is likely to be more or less kept from playing because his physical development is not yet equal to the demands of the game. He may love to play bridge, but others of his age who are available as playmates do not, of course, know how to play bridge, and he is not allowed to sit up at night when his elders play.
By trial-and error experience, the highly intelligent child has to work out an adjustment if he can, but there is likely to be noticeable difficulty if he tests above 170 IQ. In the ordinary course of events, it is hard for such a child to find playmates who are congenial both in size and in mental interests. Thus many of those who test very high are finally thrown back upon themselves, and tend strongly to work out forms of solitary, intellectual play. [7] The same situation is discovered in studies of the childhood of eminent persons. Yoder [8], in his study of the juvenile history of fifty very eminent persons, concluded that their play "was often of a solitary kind." Reading, calculation, designing, compiling collections, constructing an "imaginary land," evoking imaginary playmates—these forms of play stand out prominently among the recreational interests of such children. Since physical activity is hard to carry out interestingly alone, their play tends to become habitually sedentary. Nevertheless, they develop a high degree swimming, skating, and other forms of athletic enjoyment which do not depend upon being included in a group.
Of six young children testing above 180 IQ, known to the present writer, only one [9] had no conspicuous difficulty in play, during early childhood. [10] The other five were all so divergent from the usual in play interests that parents and teachers noticed them. They were unpopular with children of their own age because they always wanted to organize the play into a complicated pattern, with some remote and definite climax as the goal. As the mother of one six-year-old said, "He can never be satisfied just to toss a ball around, or to run about pulling and shouting." Children of six years are ordinarily incapable of becoming interested in long-sustained, complicated games which lead to remote goals, but are, on the contrary, characteristically satisfied only by the kind of random activity which bored this child of 187 IQ. The playmates of ordinary intelligence naturally resented persistent efforts to reform them and to organize them for the attainment of remote goals. Furthermore, they did not have in their vocabulary words that the gifted child knew well, used habitually, and took for granted. Literally, they could not understand each other. The result was that the child of 187 IQ did not "get along" with those of his own age and size. But when he sought to join the play of children of his own mental age (above twelve years), the six-year-old was rejected by them also, as being "a baby" and "too little to play with us." The child, thus thrown back upon himself, developed elaborate mathematical calculation, collecting, reading, and games with imaginary playmates, as his chief forms of play.
These young children of extremely high intellectual acumen fail to be interested in "child's play" for the same reasons that in adulthood they will fail to patronize custard-pie movies or chute-the-chutes at amusement parks. It is futile, and probably wholly unsound psychologically, to strive to interest the child above 170 IQ in ring-around-the-rosy or blind-man's-buff. Many well-meaning persons speak of such efforts as "socializing the child," but it is probably not in this way that the very gifted can be socialized. The problem of how the play interests of these children can be realized is one that will depend largely on individual circumstances for solution. Often it can be solved only by the development of solitary play.
What, if any, effect the habitual evocation of imaginary playmates, and the elaboration of the imaginary land, may exert on character formation and habits of adjustment in adulthood is at present unknown. Psychologists should study the hygienic aspects of these methods of finding satisfaction outside of the real world. Since gifted children are, as has been stated, on the whole a stable and rational group, perhaps no effects, or good effects only, result from this play of the imagination.
SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE GIFTED GIRL
It has been mentioned that gifted girls are less interested in traditional girls' play than are unselected girls. They show a preference for boys' books and boys' play, and a greater community of interests with boys than the generality of girls display. This merely means that girls of a high degree of intelligence are, as a group, more competitive, aggressive, and active than girls are supposed to be.
An illustrative case is that of a seven-year-old girl of IQ 170, whose mother wished to learn from psychology how to break her child of being a "tomboy" and how to rear her to "be a lady." The mother complained that the girl had never cared for dolls, that she would not take an interest in her clothes, and that she wanted to do nothing after school but read or play "rough, outdoor games." "How," inquired the mother, "could I break her of the habit of climbing lampposts?" This child was active and competitive. When asked why she did not play with dolls, she replied, "They aren't real. The doll that is supposed to be a baby doll is twice as big as the one that is made like a mother doll."