Challenges For the Gifted Child
Perfectionism: By their own admission, talented adolescents often feel like perfectionists. They have learned to set their standards high, to expect to do more and be more than their abilities might allow. Childhood desires to do demanding tasks PERFECTLY become compounded during adolescence. Child psychology experts agree it is not uncommon for talented adolescents to experience real dissonance between what is actually done and how well they expected it to be accomplished. Often the dissonance perceived by young people is far greater than most parents or teachers realize. Risks Taking: While risk taking has been used to characterize younger gifted and talented children, it often decreases with age. As gifted children increase in age, they are less like to take chances as other children their age. Gifted children appear to be more aware of the negative outcomes of certain activities. This affects their decision-making and often plays a role in determining their participation. In short, their intelligence often leads them to reject even those acceptable activities that carry some risk (e.g., advanced courses, strong competition, public presentations), for which high success is not as predictable and lower standards often acceptable. One other possible cause for less risk taking could be the need for control. Teachers often discover that some gifted children do not turn in their assignment, even though it’s above average, due to the fact that the student made the decision and has control not to turn the assignment in to the teacher. Accomplishing and Meeting Expectations: Some children have a difficult time accepting criticism, suggestions, and emotional pleas from others. Parents and teachers often add their own expectations and goals to even the brightest students' achievement plans. It’s not uncommon for others' expectations for gifted young people compete with their own dreams and plans for the child. Gifted children report situations of being pushed to the point of doubt and despair by well-meaning parents, teachers and peers. Students may hear comments like, "Prove to me you are as gifted as you think you are" or “If you think you are so talented, then solve this.” Impatience: Like many other adolescents, gifted students can be impatient. They may be too eager to find solutions for difficult questions, or overly zealous in developing relationships. Impulsive decision-making may become a pattern that may lead the gifted child to feel particularly intolerant of unresolved situations. Their impatience with a lack of clear-cut answers, options, or decisions drives them to seek answers or options that do not exist. Anger, frustration and disappointment may occur when solutions are not available. This may cause the gifted child to become overwhelmed, particularly when their peers tease or make fun of failures. Misperceived Identity: When a gifted child’s high expectations, goals and mature communication skills attempts to match an adult like pattern, a stage normally achieved after the age of 21, a gifted child may be challenged with social-emotional problems. If the child seem reaches out prematurely for career choices that will short-cut the normal process of identity, a misperceived identity may occur leaving the child social challenges and emotional frustrations. Coping Strategies A research study done by Buescher & Higham (1985) on gifted and talented students suggested various strategies can be utilized to help gifted children overcome some of their challenges with peers. Table 1 depicts the strategies suggested by the adolescents, arranged according to their assessment of acceptablity for use.
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