“Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.” Friedrich Nietzsche.
KOKO is a way to get more visibility on yourself and create your development potential to utilize more opportunities. KOKO stands for Strength, Development, Opportunities and Obstacles, you might say a kind of SWOT for smart children and adolescents.
There is a huge psychological diversity among children with high potential (Robinson, 1981). Cognitive very smart people come in all shapes, colours and sizes (Passow, 1981). In my private practice I work for 25 years passionately together with intelligent, creative, sensitive, critical and wonderful young people. Together we focus on the strengths and weaknesses (development), opportunities and obstacles in their individual lives. I have developed a simple method to map this. Children, parents, teachers identify the individual strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and obstacles forces on a specially designed sheet. Child and (current) environmental factors play a dynamic and interactive role in the development of a child to adult. Child factors are the genetically growth potential in predisposition and the individual development history so far. These factors have an important place on the sheet. By partnering with parents, teachers and the young people themselves, we can arrive at a clear picture of the moment. Psychologists can complement this, when necessary, with a professional supplement by adding test results. At that point we have a characteristic artistic plan of an individual child or adolescent to self actualisation. KOKO is developed for a specific group, the cognitively high intelligent with high potentials. For these children their precocious development leads to a different development than those of age peers, which can lead to feeling different. Specific barriers that these children encounter are discussed.KOKO is displayed in the form of a spiral. This represents resilience. The spiral may be pressed down (by the characteristics of the child, environmental factors, or the dynamic interaction between them) and this may lead to a halt in the developmental growth, regression and to the formation of rust spots at the points at which the spiral for too long a time is pressed.

copyright: Mia Frumau