Western Australia's association for gifted support, advocacy and resources
In this presentation about overexcitabilities (OEs), Mimi Wellisch will argue that information about OEs given to parents who are new to giftedness can cause more harm than good and that OEs have now been superseded. Mimi will briefly trace the history of the association between giftedness and Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration (TPD) which includes OEs. Recent research has demonstrated that giftedness has a good fit within the internationally accepted 5-factor model of personality, whereas the TPD is neither universally accepted, nor well researched. It is now also understood that negative aspects of OEs are more likely to be signs of ADHD, ASD or other known neurodiversities. Three parents are quoted about believing that OEs were just gifted ‘quirks’, which led them to miss having their child assessed for disorders in a timely manner.
Mimi Wellisch is a registered psychologist and director of Clever Kids Consultancy, where she has assessed children for giftedness for the past 20 years. She holds Bachelor and Master degrees in Early Childhood Education and was an early childhood teacher and director of preschools and long day care services for over two decades. She later worked as a Children’s Services Adviser in NSW, licensing and regulating children’s services. Mimi’s interest in gifted education arose from a chance choice of an elective unit in gifted education during her Bachelor studies. Her passionate interest led to her first research project of NSW educator attitudes to gifted pre-schoolers for her Masters. Since then, Mimi has undertaken a number of other research projects in the area of giftedness. She is author of books and peer reviewed journal articles about giftedness. She has presented at many local and international conferences, and was President, Vice President and Treasurer of the then NSW Association for Gifted and Talented Children. She was awarded a PhD in Psychology in 2015 in relation to her research on the association between attachment, maternal depression, and the identification of giftedness in children.
