Feature

Parenting Principles That Work

Volume 3 / Issue 4 / Summer 2003

Most gifted children enjoy relatively good overall psychological health. Research supports the view that intellectually and athletically gifted youth have better-than-average social adjustment. However, we know less about the social adjustment of gifted children with talents in music, drama, dance, the visual arts, and other culturally valued domains.

Some authorities feel that gifted children possess a unique set of characteristics that put them at risk for psychological problems. For example, they have been described—I would suggest stereotyped—as excitable, driven to perfection, nonconforming, and strong-willed. Children who show these characteristics do tend to be more vulnerable to social and emotional difficulties.

Although most gifted children enjoy better-than-average social adjustment, some gifted children experience distressful psychological problems.

As a child psychologist who has counseled gifted children and their families for over twenty-five years, I have found that not all gifted children easily navigate the turbulent social and emotional waters of childhood and adolescence. Three parenting principles have proved particularly useful to me in helping parents raise well-adjusted gifted children. Because of their unique talents, gifted children experience the world differently from other children. Yet psychologically they have much in common with them.

Promote Balance in Your Child’s Life

Nurturing your child’s special gifts is important, but so is fostering other important aspects of development. Providing your child with every available opportunity and resource is tempting. However, when promoting your child’s special talents is overemphasized, in terms of time and energy spent, travel undertaken, schedules rearranged, and the like, your child may miss out on important socialization experiences and be at greater risk for developing psychological problems. That is, too much of a good thing in pursuit of developing your child’s potential—tutoring, practice, special classes, after-school programs, summer camps—can be detrimental to his or her psychological health. Provide your gifted child with enough time and opportunity to interact socially and recreationally with same-age peers—not necessarily gifted children—in enjoyable, noncompetitive activities. Downtime can be a precious gift for the gifted child.

Set and Enforce Limits and Rules

Clearly stated limits, rules, and expectations for conduct help all children become successful human beings. Age-appropriate limits enable children to learn how to get along with others, maintain friendships, and deal with conflict. They also communicate a sense of security and a message of parental love.

Some have suggested that gifted children need fewer constraints, but no evidence supports this position. Tempting as it may be to think that your gifted child has better judgment and is more socially mature than other children his or her age, this is not necessarily true.

It is perfectly normal for your child to challenge the rules you set. Gifted children, in particular, will be curious about the rationale for each rule and about whether and how they will be punished if they break it. To make it easier to enforce rules, hold regular family meetings to discuss them, and use constructive discipline when your child breaks a rule. Information on how to run a family meeting and use constructive discipline can be found in Early Gifts: Recognizing and Nurturing Children’s Talents (see sidebar).

Encourage Social Intelligence

Social intelligence ensures that your child will become courteous, likable, helpful, trustworthy, empathic, and easy to get along with, as well as be a good listener and a team player. These important social skills have been described as aspects of emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book on the subject made the public aware of the importance of reining in one’s emotional impulses, accurately reading social cues and other people’s feelings, delaying self-gratification, tolerating frustrating situations, and handling relationships smoothly.

Children with well-developed social intelligence seem at ease with peers and adults, self-confident, and able to master stressful situations. They also tend to be friendly and appealing. Remember that children’s social intelligence may not be as advanced as their intellectual development or special talents. In fact, it would be surprising if their emotional maturity were as highly developed.

Children don’t come into the world knowing how to behave socially. Gifted or not, they need to learn good habits, manners, and social skills through the all-important process of character development. Here’s how parents can teach social intelligence:

• Set a good example. Nothing is more influential than teaching by quiet example.
• Make standards clear and expectations high but not unreasonable. Gifted children, like all children, enjoy living up to their parents’ expectations.
• Talk about right and wrong. Discuss the way people ought to live and treat one another. Don’t preach, but hold Socratic dialogues with your child.
• Avoid rescuing your child. Although it is tempting to solve children’s problems for them, it robs them of the opportunity to develop problem-solving skills, confidence, and self-sufficiency.
• Look for warning signs. If your child displays any of the following behaviors, you need to spend more time nurturing his or her social intelligence: has no friends, is a poor loser, lacks confidence, plays too aggressively, is easily upset or quick to anger, is bossy, doesn’t share or respect others’ property, is uncooperative in group situations, doesn’t respect authority, rarely compromises, shows little empathy for others, is discourteous, doesn’t enjoy socializing with peers or family members.

To raise a resilient, well-adjusted child, promote balance in your child’s life, set limits and rules for appropriate behavior, and teach good social skills, habits, and manners. Make family time a priority, and don’t overload your child’s schedule to the point that achievement becomes the only important thing in life. Raising a gifted or talented child is not easy, but knowing the right kind of guidance and wisdom to give can make it an enjoyable experience.
—Steven I. Pfeiffer, Ph.D., ABPP

Steven I. Pfeiffer is executive director of the Duke University Talent Identification Program and holds faculty appointments in psychology, education, and child and family policy at Duke.