Show summary Hide summary
The Unique Morning Patterns of Highly Gifted Minds
Among highly gifted individuals, those first few minutes after waking up really are something special. Their active, always-on brains shape the way they greet the dawn—and that includes a morning routine they seem to adopt instinctively. You could say their internal engine never quite stops revving, even during sleep.
The Science Behind Their Sleep
Over the years, research has shined a light on certain sleep characteristics specific to people with high intellectual potential. One example comes from a study led by Dr. Revol, head of Child Neuropsychiatry at the Neurological Hospital of Lyon University Hospital in France—a child psychiatrist who specializes in gifted children. Published in 2003, the research compared 196 gifted children to 226 children in a control group, all between the ages of eight and eleven.
Anglo-Saxon burial reveals “unprecedented” secrets: experts stunned by 1,400-year-old grave mysteries
What Your Instinctive Tree Choice Reveals About Your Personality—Experts Explain
What did they find? Gifted children go through more sleep cycles per night—an average of 6.4 compared to 4.2 for their peers. Even more intriguing, each cycle is shorter, lasting about 70 minutes (whereas the cycles of others average about 90 minutes). REM sleep—the stage when the brain is especially active—also shows up earlier in the night for gifted children. As morning approaches, their sleep tends to become lighter or remain in the REM phase.
What’s Happening in Those Brains?
According to psychologist Arielle Adda, an expert on gifted children and author of the upcoming book “From Gifted Child to Gifted Adult: Building Your Personality” (due out February 2025), there’s a logical explanation:
“Gifted people process information faster than average. And it’s during REM sleep that the brain sorts, ranks, and organizes data,”
she told the French publication Le Figaro Étudiant. Another peculiarity: gifted individuals tend to dream very vividly, which she says is further evidence of sustained brain activity through the night.
Early Rising and a Love for Books
This ever-active mind, however, has its downsides at dawn. Adda notes:
“Many parents tell me their children wake up very early, sometimes as early as 5 a.m. They start getting restless, moving around in bed or even getting up.”
She’s quick to warn that waking up early does not automatically mean a child is a budding genius, but this is a habit seen in many highly gifted kids. Upon waking, many reach for a book if one is within arm’s length—no surprise to Adda:
“Gifted individuals are naturally drawn to reading.”
Some parents, she explains, end up removing books from their children’s bedrooms because this very early reading habit keeps them from falling back asleep.
“They’re still kids—they need their sleep,”
she reminds us, with a gentle nudge towards parental responsibility.
