COUNSELLING THE EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN

Counselling is a highly personalized intimate dialogue or interview between a counsellor and a person experiencing some emotional, social, educational, physical, vocational problem. A Counsellor is a person trained to help people solve their problems. Many people think that, counselling is a developmental educational service for the "normal" people experiencing normal developmental problem. Counselling is a service for crisis intervention and treatment for the handicapped as well as a service for the normal people experiencing relatively normal problems.

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COUNSELLING THE GIFTED AND TALENTED:
Gifted and talented children are those identified by professionally qualified persons, who, by virtue of understanding abilities, are capable of high performance. These children require differential educational programme and/or services beyond those normally provided by the regular school programme in order to make meaningful contribution to themselves and the Society.
A counselling programme for the gifted must take into account the needs of these children. The gifted children need adequate challenge in order to exercise their talents. The practice of keeping gifted students in classes where they do not get adequate challenges could be detrimental to them. There may be tendency for the gifted to dominate conversations in the class with the less bright ones being edged out of active participation in classroom activities. On the other hand, the gifted may experience boredom relative to class activities far below standard, thereby making them to remain silent throughout class activities. Gifted children may sometimes appear to be rude, boastful and exhibit an extremely high self -concept. This may seem from the fact that they are superior to their peer group and occasionally find some weaknesses in the teachers. They feel that other people do not have much to offer and insist that their viewpoints are the best. They are generally like by their peer group because of their academic and vocational skills.

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The Counsellor must ensure that the gifted children get sufficient challenging tasks. It is the duty of the classroom teachers to identify the gifted children in their classes. Once discovered teachers of specific subjects can work with the counsellor to offer challenging tasks. This is because if the gifted children are left in the regular classes, unchallenged, and uncatered-for, they would definitely look for avenues to expel their excessive energies. Sometimes, the activities they choose for themselves may not be recommendable.
The counsellor should work with gifted children in exploring challenging vocational fields and also to test them in order to help them match their attributes and potentials.

The counsellor can help the teacher plan enrichment programmers to enable the gifted move at their own pace. There are many ways by which the teacher can provide enrichment for the intellectually gifted children. One method is for the teacher to provide them with additional reading assignments or study additional subject. Enrichment could also be provided by grouping gifted children together and providing them with problems to solve.
Regarding behavioural anomalies, the gifted are usually well adjusted. If any anti-social behavioural trait is discovered, the counsellor can use behaviour modification techniques to solve the problem.
It is true that gifted have potential for varied competence. This potential however stands a high risk of being abused by the parents and the gifted themselves. Gifted children possess immense talents. Counselling is essential for helping them direct their great potential which will be beneficial to themselves and society.