He or she may feel more comfortable interacting with the teacher and other adults rather than same-age peers. This can lead to anti-social behaviour or even bullying. It can help to offer a gifted child counselling on how to find common subjects to talk about and connect with others. Remind them that many children at school experience social problems and they are not alone. Emotional maturity and self-esteem. Giftedness can sometimes be accompanied by asynchronous development when it comes to maturity.
This means that while the child is extremely intelligent he or she still has difficulty dealing with emotions, which can put a strain on parents and teachers when it leads to inappropriate behaviour. Providing coping strategies and modelling interactions can lower the risk that they will suffer negative consequences as a result of any emotional immaturity. Dyslexia that affects literacy skills. Dyslexia is a different way of processing language in the brain that can cause problems sounding out words and spelling.
Recognizing giftedness in dyslexic children is about listening to oral vocabulary, observing creativity and problem solving skills , noting a wide range of interests and advanced sense of humour and finding a general curiosity in the child and ability to learn through experience. Helping a child develop coping strategies is essential, as is providing resources that can build phonics knowledge and improve reading and writing ability — learn more about assisting dyslexic students in the classroom.
Dyspraxia and motor skills deficiencies that can impact on handwriting. The child can be somewhat clumsy, unable to use scissors or participate in certain sports and experience pain when writing by hand.
Thicker writing utensils may help, as can teaching dyspraxic children how to touch type. Facilitating writing is especially important for gifted students so they can express their ideas on paper and demonstrate their giftedness.
Learn more about helping dyspraxic learners. It may be the case that a gifted child also struggles with attention difficulties. These can include selective attention in which they are able to focus on specific subjects of interest but struggle to follow classroom lessons.
Schoolwork may be hard to complete because of a difficulty in keeping the brain on task and when hyperactivity is an issue there may be impulsivity, outbursts at school or acting out.
Offering a gifted child a combination of emotional counseling , strategy training and access to accommodations, such as using a computer at school, is important, as is tailoring the approach to the individual child.
Touch-type Read and Spell has a touch-typing program that teaches keyboarding skills in a dyslexia-friendly way. It can be used from age 7 on and has a more grown-up interface which may benefit gifted children who can find some solutions too baby-ish. In addition to being used by the British Dyslexia Association, the program has worked for students with dyspraxia, ADHD, and many other learning difficulties or differences.
By practicing multi-sensory phonics exercises, phonemic awareness is enhanced and bite-sized lessons make it easy for students to build momentum and gain confidence. The following are some broad guidelines—representing a variety of viewpoints—for strategies to prevent or reverse underachieving behavior. Gifted children thrive in a mutually respectful, non-authoritarian, flexible, questioning atmosphere, according to psychologist Silvia Rimm, PhD, who wrote about the "disappearance of underachievement" in the s.
Although these principles are appropriate for all children, parents of gifted children—who believe that advanced intellectual ability also means advanced social and emotional skills—may allow their children too much decision-making power before they have cultivated the wisdom and experience to handle such responsibility. Gifted children need reasonable rules and guidelines, strong support and encouragement, consistently positive feedback, and help to accept limitations—their own, as well as those of others.
Gifted youngsters need adults who are willing to listen to their questions without comment. Some questions may reflect their own opinions, and quick answers can prevent them from using adults as a sounding board. When problem-solving is appropriate, offer a solution and encourage your gifted child to come up with their own answers and criteria for choosing the best solution.
Listen carefully. Show genuine enthusiasm about students' observations, interests, activities, and goals. Be sensitive to problems, but avoid transmitting unrealistic or conflicting expectations and solving problems a student is capable of managing themselves.
Provide students with a wide variety of opportunities for success, a sense of accomplishment, and a belief in themselves. Encourage them to volunteer to help others as an avenue for developing tolerance, empathy, understanding, and acceptance of human limitations. Above all, guide them toward activities and goals that reflect their values, interests, and needs, not just yours. Finally, reserve some time to have fun, be silly, and share daily activities.
Whether or not a gifted child uses their exceptional ability in constructive ways depends, in part, on self-acceptance and self-concept. As educator Judith Halsted wrote in , "An intellectually gifted child will not be happy, complete until he is using the intellectual ability at a level approaching full capacity.
Providing an early and appropriate educational environment can stimulate an early love for learning in gifted children. A young, curious student may easily become turned off if the educational environment is not stimulating; class placement and teaching approaches are inappropriate; the child experiences ineffective teachers; or assignments are consistently too difficult or too easy.
The gifted youngster's ability to define and solve problems in myriad ways often described as fluency of innovative ideas or divergent thinking ability may not be compatible with traditional gifted education programs or specific classroom requirements, in part because many gifted students are identified through achievement test scores, according to psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance.
Silverman suggests that gifted underachievers often have advanced visual-spatial ability but underdeveloped sequencing skills; thus they have difficulty learning such subjects as phonics, spelling, foreign languages, and math facts in the way in which these subjects are usually taught. Students can often be helped by knowledgeable adults to expand their learning styles, but they also need an environment that is compatible with their preferred ways of learning. Older students can participate in pressure-free, non-competitive summer activities that provide a wide variety of educational opportunities, including in-depth exploration, hands-on learning, and mentor relationships, according to Berger.
Some students are often more interested in learning than in working for grades. Such students might spend hours on a project that is unrelated to academic classes and fail to turn in required work.
They should be strongly encouraged to pursue their interests, particularly since those interests may lead to career decisions and life-long passions. At the same time, they ought to be reminded that teachers may be unsympathetic when required work is incomplete.
Early educational guidance emphasizing creative problem solving, decision making, and setting short- and long-term goals often helps gifted students to complete required assignments, pass high school courses, and plan for college. Providing real-world experiences in an area of potential career interest may also offer inspiration and motivation toward academic achievement.
Overemphasis on the achievement of outcomes rather than a child's efforts, involvement, and desire to learn about topics of interest is often a pitfall of parenting. The pressure to perform tends to emphasize outcomes such as winning awards and getting straight A's, for which the student is highly praised.
Encouragement ought to emphasize effort—the process used to achieve, the steps taken toward accomplishing a goal, and the overall improvement. Gifted students who are underachievers may be viewed as discouraged individuals who need extra encouragement, but they tend to reject praise as artificial or inauthentic. Be mindful about how you issue praise to your child. Tell them when you are proud of their efforts. Constant competition may also lead to underachievement, especially when a child consistently feels like either a winner or a loser.
Avoid comparing children with others. Show children how to function in competition and how to recover after losses.
Study skills courses, time-management classes, or special tutoring may prove ineffective if a student is a long-term underachiever. This approach will work only if the student is willing and eager, if the teacher is chosen carefully, and the course is supplemented by additional strategies designed to help the student.
On the other hand, special tutoring may help a struggling gifted student who is experiencing short-term academic difficulty. In general, special tutoring for a gifted student is most helpful when the tutor is carefully chosen to match the interests and learning style of the student.
Broad-ranged study-skills courses or tutors who do not understand the student may not be as effective. Some students, particularly those who are highly capable and participate in a variety of activities, appear to be high achievers when learning in a highly structured academic environment, but are at risk of underachieving if they cannot establish priorities, focus on a selected number of activities, and set long-term goals.
Additionally, there are some students who may appear to be underachievers but are not necessarily uncomfortable or discouraged. It's possible that they're dissatisfied and discontent in middle or secondary school in part because of the organization and structure , but are happy and successful when learning in an environment with a different structural organization.
They may handle independence quite well. Underachievement is made up of a complex web of behaviors, but it can be reversed by parents and educators who consider the many strengths and talents possessed by the students who fall into this category. Get diet and wellness tips to help your kids stay healthy and happy. National Association for Gifted Children. Front Psychol. Deslisle J, Berger SL. It's hard to picture many liberals getting worked up about the plight of smart kids—even those who are poor—for fear of being labeled elitists.
For them, "lifting the floor" will continue to be the top education priority, along with micromanaging the system. Instead, conservatives should take up this cause, and Republicans should heed the advice of David Brooks :. That ambitious kid in Akron—and millions more like her—are ready, willing and able to transform their own lives, to benefit from America's long but now waning promise of upward mobility, and to boost the country's futures along the way.
But they and their families can't do it on their own. For better and worse, it's our public education system that must serve as the primary engine of their advancement and opportunity—and it's conservatives who should press it to take this responsibility as seriously as the education of children who can barely read. It's morally correct. It's educationally sound. It's economically beneficial. And to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, it has the additional advantage of being politically shrewd.
A version of this article appeared on Atlantic. Chester E. Finn, Jr. From until , he was John M. Advancing Educational Excellence. Search Search. You don't have to search hard for evidence that teachers and school systems are neglecting gifted students. Photo by Krissy. Venosdale cc Are our national education-reform priorities cheating America's intellectually ablest girls and boys?
Despite plenty of evidence that America is failing to nurture its gifted students, the problem fails to awaken much interest from education leaders and philanthropists. Consider these possible explanations. There are too many bright students whose families don't have the information or means to navigate the system.
How many millions of high-potential young people lack support and are therefore falling by the wayside? Instead, conservatives should take up this cause, and Republicans should heed the advice of David Brooks : What exactly happens to the ambitious kid in Akron at each stage of life in this new economy? What are the best ways to rouse ambition and open fields of opportunity?
Let Democrats be the party of security, defending the 20th-century welfare state. Be the party that celebrates work and inflames enterprise.
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